The Knight Foundation: A $100M Censorship Behemoth That Partnered With USAID
via Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz (excerpt)
SUMMARY
The Knight Foundation is one of the most well resourced philanthropic organizations in the United States, with $2.6 billion in assets as of 2023.
The Foundation is tied to the foreign policy blob - in the 2010s, it entered a public-private partnership with USAID to facilitate influence operations abroad.
After the 2016 election, it created the Knight Research Network, which became a major bank roller of the censorship industry.
The Knight Research Network poured more than $100 million into a variety of organizations known for their deep roles in online censorship, including the Global Disinformation Index, Meedan, and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.
Knight also targeted swing states in 2024 to “fortify the election.”
Its recommendations include deeper government oversight of the tech sector, “nonpartisan expert” advice to lawmakers on tech matters, and nationwide “digital and media literacy” lessons in schools.
For over seven decades, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation was regarded as one of America’s nonpartisan philanthropic giants — a champion of journalism, civic life, and the arts.
But in the last decade, the foundation that once funded local newsrooms and journalism schools has transformed into one of the most powerful underwriters of the censorship industry, funding a sprawling network of researchers, activists, and institutions that work to police speech under the banner of “disinformation.”
Founded in 1950 by newspaper magnates John S. and James L. Knight, the foundation began as a traditional journalism philanthropy, endowing university fellowships at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and MIT.
By 2023, it managed $2.6 billion in assets, with offices in 26 U.S. cities where the Knight brothers once published papers.
The USAID Partnership
In 2010, the Knight Foundation took a step beyond America’s borders — hand in hand with USAID, the now-shuttered arm of the U.S. influence around the world, and one of the federal government’s foremost suppliers of “counter-disinformation” dollars.
That was the year Knight joined a public-private partnership with USAID called the MATADOR (Media Assistance Utilizing Technological Advancements and Direct Online Response) program, training NGOs across Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa in media, get-out-the-vote, and anti-corruption campaigns.
The program was launched months before the outbreak of the Arab Spring, when US overseas influence operations were at an all time high.
According to US State Department archives, the MATADOR program focused on “election monitoring, distribution of unbiased election news and information, encouraging youth participation in politics, getting out the vote, and engaging the public in monitoring corruption.”
This, especially the language on influencing the flow of news and information and get-out-the-vote campaigns, echoes the language used by Western-backed influence operations aimed at influencing political outcomes overseas.
Following the 2016 election, that same model of information control and influence turned inwards against the American citizenry — and the Knight Foundation was at the heart of it.
The Knight Research Network: $107 Million for “Disinformation Studies”
By 2019, the overwhelming priority of the Knight Foundation …