The AP spent decades telling Americans its reporting was objective.
Then a journalist started tracing where the paychecks for 50 of its reporters actually came from.
It turns out AP climate reporters spread across the globe are working for someone other than the AP.
AP News Liberal Bias: How $8 Million in Foundation Grants Built the Climate Desk
The Associated Press is bleeding subscribers.
To survive, it started taking money from outside foundations – groups that pay for specific reporters to cover specific issues.
In 2022, the AP put more than two dozen journalists on the climate beat in what it described as its largest single expansion ever funded through philanthropic grants.
The price tag was more than $8 million over three years, courtesy of five organizations: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.
About 20 of those climate journalists were brand-new hires.
And that is just the climate beat.
In total, roughly 50 AP journalists now hold positions funded entirely by outside grants.
The AP insists it retains "complete editorial control."
The Walton Family Foundation – the charitable arm of the family that owns Walmart – told a very different story with its checkbook.
It started with a two-year, $785,000 grant in 2021 that funded three AP reporters dedicated to environmental and water coverage.
By 2023, that investment had more than tripled – a new three-year, $2.5 million commitment that added a Spanish-language reporter and a photographer on top of the existing positions.
That is the kind of growth a funder shows when it likes what it is getting.
Walton Family Foundation and Rockefeller Are Writing AP Paychecks for Reporters Who Cover Their Agenda
The Walton Foundation is not a neutral charity with a soft spot for journalism.
In 2022, when Biden signed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act – a $370 billion giveaway to the green energy industry – the Walton Foundation applauded.
"Government, business, tribal nations, philanthropy, advocates, and others will all need to build on this historic investment together," the foundation declared at the time.
That is the organization now writing paychecks for AP climate reporters.
The Hewlett Foundation's record is worse.
Capital Research Center reported in late 2025 that Hewlett funneled more than $1 million to Christianity Today – including $600,000 specifically for elections coverage – and that the magazine subsequently ran pieces encouraging evangelical Christians to sit out the 2024 election.
Evangelicals vote Republican by overwhelming margins.
The Rockefeller Foundation – which has spent a century funding left-wing causes and more recently the climate advocacy movement – rounds out the AP's donor list.
Every one of these five foundations exists to advance the same climate agenda their AP reporters now cover.
When a reporter's paycheck comes from an organization that celebrated the Inflation Reduction Act, that reporter does not spend the next three years investigating whether the Inflation Reduction Act was a disaster for American energy consumers.
The math is simple.
A recent Pew Research Center analysis found 57% of Americans have low confidence in journalists to act in the public interest.
Pew also found that Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans to trust journalists – 61% versus 25%.
That gap exists for a reason, and the reason is now a matter of public record.
President Trump understood the pattern when he signed Executive Order 14290 in May 2025, cutting off more than $1 billion in federal funding to NPR and PBS under the title "Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media."
The same Walton Family Foundation funding AP climate reporters also funds NPR.
The AP discloses its grant arrangements – in small type, at the bottom of stories, after readers have already absorbed the coverage.
That disclosure is better than nothing.
But it is not transparency.
Transparency would mean printing at the top of every climate story: "This article was produced by a reporter whose salary is paid by organizations that have spent billions of dollars advocating for Green New Deal policies."
Instead, readers get a footnote and a reassurance about editorial independence.
The next time an AP story lands about energy prices, clean energy mandates, or the legacy of Biden's green agenda, the funding trail is now a matter of public record.
The AP did not pay for those words.
The climate crusade did.
Sources:
- Gary Abernathy, "Fair Question: Who's Paying for Climate Reporting in the Mainstream Media?" RealClearEnergy, August 24, 2026.
- Walton Family Foundation, "Ahead of Earth Day, Walton Family Foundation Renews Support to The Associated Press for Environmental Reporting," April 21, 2023.
- Capital Research Center, "The Hewlett Foundation's Mission to Divide and Rule the Right," November 20, 2025.
- Executive Order 14290, "Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media," The American Presidency Project, May 1, 2025.
