A “misinformation” tracker that says to be “nonpartisan” and is partnered with Big Tech to determine what news sources are “trustworthy” received major help in launching from an influential Democratic-linked dark money juggernaut, records show.
The Trust Project, a coalition of media groups that works with the likes of Microsoft and Google to purportedly inform people about websites that abide by its “trust indicators, said it is spearheading a “nonpartisan campaign” to thwart “misinformation.” This same charity got “off the ground” thanks to the New Venture Fund, one of the largest left-leaning dark money groups in the United States, fiscally sponsoring it between 2019 and 2021 and steering it over $3 million from anonymous donors, according to tax records reviewed by the Washington Examiner and the fund.
The prior sponsorship and New Venture Fund grants, which were sent to the Trust Project from 2019 to 2021 for “arts, culture, and humanities,” could conflict with the group’s claims of being “nonpartisan.” The New Venture Fund is one of several groups managed by Arabella Advisors, a massive liberal dark money network that has come under GOP scrutiny for an apparent lack of transparency.
“As an independent 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, New Venture Fund (NVF) supports a wide range of nonpartisan projects aimed at creating positive impact in our communities, our country, and our world,” an unnamed spokesperson for the New Venture Fund told the Washington Examiner. “Our work with the Trust Project is a prime example of the important role fiscal sponsors play.”
“From 2019-2021, NVF provided the Trust Project with a platform to quickly launch and scale its work until it became its own independent 501(c)(3),” the spokesperson added. “Like other fiscal sponsors, NVF is not the original source of funding for the projects it incubates.”
The Trust Project dubs itself “a collaboration” that receives money from Microsoft and Google and includes various members, including the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, which has been the target of records requests from Republicans over its “disinformation” tracking efforts. The project technically formed in 2018 and, in 2021, obtained tax-exempt status, according to a letter from the IRS.
Microsoft, as well as Bing, Google, and Facebook, use the Trust Project’s “trust indicators” and related “machine-readable signals” to “more easily surface” stories online alleged to be reliable, according to the project. As far as one indicator, the project holds that “diverse” voices show a story may be reliable. Readers should seek “evidence that the journalist pays attention to diversity,” according to the Trust Project.
“What are the newsroom’s efforts and commitments to bring in diverse perspectives across social and demographic differences?” the Trust Project asks on its website. “Are some communities or perspectives included only in stereotypical ways, or even completely missing?”
The Trust Project, which disclosed on 2021 tax forms over $951,000 in revenue, counts as its CEO Sally Lehrman, a writer and former senior journalism fellow at Santa Clara University in California. Planning for the project began in 2014, and three years later, in 2017, Santa Clara University received an $85,000 grant for “strategic planning” on it from Democracy Fund, a group launched by billionaire eBay founder and Democratic donor Pierre Omidyar, according to tax forms and the project’s website.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Lehrman said her organization doesn’t “label any organization as unreliable or the like” but rather maintains news outlets as partners that “demonstrate journalism’s commitment to transparency, accuracy, inclusion, and fairness so that the public can make informed news choices.”
The CEO also said the project’s relationship with New Venture Fund “would not have any impact on our ability to be strictly nonpartisan,” adding, “We continue to remain strictly nonpartisan.”
“New Venture Fund is one of the largest fiscal sponsors in the country and works with many, many types of nonprofits, which is what led us to choose them. It’s also important to know that NVF was not involved with us programmatically in any way,” said Lehrman, who noted that the Trust Project had strictly “a grant administration relationship” with the fund.
Democracy Fund has since granted at least $1 million to the New Venture Fund for the Trust Project, financial disclosures show. The Trust Project said in a press release in May 2019, in which the group announced it was “spinning off as an independent nonprofit organization,” that it had pocketed $2.25 million “in total gifts” from Democracy Fund, Facebook, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, a liberal group founded by billionaire Craigslist founder and Democratic donor Craig Newmark.
“Practically every day, we learn more about how determined liberal Democrats and their financiers are to censor and silence media and individuals that don’t think the way progressives want,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has launched investigations this year into the U.S. government funding groups trying to thwart “disinformation,” told the Washington Examiner. “We need to expose this everywhere we find it.”
The New Venture Fund’s involvement with the Trust Project is “not surprising” given the Arabella-linked group had helped support ACRONYM, according to Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of the conservative watchdog Americans for Public Trust.
ACRONYM was a “progressive” media group led by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan that has, in turn, supported Courier Newsroom, which McGowan founded and runs websites across the U.S. that watchdogs allege have masqueraded as local news to boost Democratic political candidates.
McGowan now leads a group that aims to fight “disinformation” called Good Information, whose charity arm includes Richard Stengel as a director, according to tax forms filed in 2021. Stengel was the founding leader of the Global Engagement Center, a State Department-housed interagency. The GEC has been the target of congressional investigations led by Issa and other Republicans following a series of Washington Examiner reports on it granting $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index — a group feeding blacklists of conservative media outlets to advertisers with the aim of shutting down disfavored websites.