TheNZThrower
Active Member
Hi everyone! An article by a Conservative newspaper called Human Events alleges that the chief editor of the Kyiv Independent, Olga Rudenko, was part of an organisation (Media Development Foundation, or MDF) that has received funding from the US government via the NGO National Endowment for Democracy (or NED), and hence the paper is a compromised source. The article first states that:
Now according to its own website, the MDF is a provider of courses to help develop the business and organisational skills of independent media outlets:
Which appears to confirm the claims of the Human Events article. It then cites an article by the socialist magazine Monthly Review (MR) that states that on the same day that this first archive was created, a second archive was created several hours after that showed an error message:
The implication of all this, to briefly summarise it, is that as the chief editor of the Kyiv Independent is part of an organisation that has received funding from a US government funded NGO called the NED, and as the current NED grant search page shows ''no results found'' for any grants on Ukraine, it must follow that the US is funding media favourable to it in Ukraine for its own agenda and is covering it up the funding trail in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, as why would such an alleged deletion occur so soon after the invasion?
However, not is all it seems, as pretty much all other nations, say India for example, also don't allow for searches prior to 2017:
The same still applies to even the countries that do show grant results, such as Brazil:
This is rather weird as if the NED wanted to cover up their funding record in Ukraine pre-2017, why do the same for every other nation?
This also isn't considering that in the same screenshots above, the NED states that the grant data is refreshed periodically to ensure that new awards are in the search. So this can serve as a potential explanation behind the absence of results for Ukraine as of now in the grant search.
So how would you make of this, as I'm no expert in these affairs? Does an organisation being funded by the NED necessarily means it's a puppet of the US government?
So if we take a look at the first link, it takes us to the ProMarket website which does state in its about section that it is sponsored by the Stigler Center as a project against special interest groups. The linked article does mention Rudenko's membership at the MDF.In September 2021, a profile of the Independent's chief editor, Olga Rudenko, appeared in ProMarket, a publication of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Rudenko was visiting the school for a journalism development program. According to ProMarket, she is also a board member at the Media Development Foundation, an NGO that has received at least $225,140 from the NED. You won't find that without a digital archive because the NED's records of funding projects in Ukraine was either moved or deleted recently.
Now according to its own website, the MDF is a provider of courses to help develop the business and organisational skills of independent media outlets:
With that out of the way, the major claim of the MDF having received grants from the NED comes from this archived NED webpage on the grants it has awarded, which do mention the following MDF grants:Media accelerators and courses for media managers aim to help independent media become sustainable by developing business skills, forming strategic plans as well as reviewing and optimizing their organizational structures, improving newsroom management through tech innovations and KPIs, maintaining the best mentors expertise in the region, connecting them with partners within the private and donor sector and providing funding for project implementation and mentors' support to launch/scale independent, sustainable media ecosystem with strong ethical and professional standards of journalism.
Which appears to confirm the claims of the Human Events article. It then cites an article by the socialist magazine Monthly Review (MR) that states that on the same day that this first archive was created, a second archive was created several hours after that showed an error message:
It then claims that:The archived webpage captured February 25, 2022 from 14:53 shows that NED granted $22,394,281 in the form of 334 awards to Ukraine between 2014 to the present. The capture at 23:10 the same day shows "No results found" for Ukraine. As of right now, there are still "No results found" for Ukraine.
Looking at the current grant search webpage of the NED as of now, compared to its archived version at Feb 25, it confirms the claims of MR.Additionally, the current database search criteria have been restricted, previously funding from 2014 to present could be searched, currently only 2017 to present is searchable per the drop-down menus. There are multiple news reports before February 25 corroborating this $22,394,281 amount.
The implication of all this, to briefly summarise it, is that as the chief editor of the Kyiv Independent is part of an organisation that has received funding from a US government funded NGO called the NED, and as the current NED grant search page shows ''no results found'' for any grants on Ukraine, it must follow that the US is funding media favourable to it in Ukraine for its own agenda and is covering it up the funding trail in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, as why would such an alleged deletion occur so soon after the invasion?
However, not is all it seems, as pretty much all other nations, say India for example, also don't allow for searches prior to 2017:
The same still applies to even the countries that do show grant results, such as Brazil:
This is rather weird as if the NED wanted to cover up their funding record in Ukraine pre-2017, why do the same for every other nation?
This also isn't considering that in the same screenshots above, the NED states that the grant data is refreshed periodically to ensure that new awards are in the search. So this can serve as a potential explanation behind the absence of results for Ukraine as of now in the grant search.
So how would you make of this, as I'm no expert in these affairs? Does an organisation being funded by the NED necessarily means it's a puppet of the US government?