The freeze on USAID by the Donald Trump administration has ruffled plenty of feathers worldwide. It has come to light that this US government funded programme was used to set narratives, disrupt democracies and push an agenda that was most of the time anti-national in nature.
Now Wikileaks has revealed that the US had transferred nearly half a billion dollars through Internews Network, a global media non-governmental organisation. Internews is alleged to have promoted covert censorship and media control.
Internews is headed by Jeanne Bourgault who according to reports earns $451,000 annually. She is an advocate for global advertising exclusion lists. She has also pushed for censorship which she has deemed as disinformation.
More about Internews
Internews says that it has worked with 4,291 media outlets has produced 4,799 hours of broadcasts in one year alone. It says that the broadcasts have reached up to 778 million people.
It was revealed that Internews has trained over 9,000 journalists in 2023 while also supporting social media censorship initiatives. Data shows that 87 per cent of the funding which is around $415 million came from USAID in the last 17 years. An addition $57 million was awarded by the US Department of State during the same period.
USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over…
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 8, 2025
It is argued that Bourgault’s censorship programme is subjective as her own definitions of good or bad. This in itself is contentious and social media users have labelled the US government supporting the government as a literal state propaganda network.
According to one social media user, a director of Internews also serves as Reddit’s vice president of communications. This has fuelled concerns about its role in social media censorship.
The India link
Interestingly Internews also has an Indian link. This has exposed a far reaching attempt to influence narratives in some media houses operating in the country. The connection is with an alleged media literacy programme called as Factshala.
Factshala which operates under DataLeads claims to be an educational platform for media personnel. DataLeads is founded by Syed Nazakat and claims to have trained 75,000 media personnel.
Factshala is backed by the Google News initiative against misinformation. The main link is however to Internews which has USAID backing. This only makes it clear that USAID was indirectly shaping the Indian media education.
Factshala also has an ambassador programme and has media personalities such as Shekhar Gupta of The Print, Faye D’Souza of Beatroot News and Ritu Kapoor from The Quint.
According to Factshala, its Ambassador Programme is run by DataLeads in association with The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Its digital media literacy programme MediaWise is run with the support of the Google News Initiative. It claims that this programme is to enhance the voice of media literacy in India by empowering people of all age groups to become more critical consumers of content online.
It further says that in an era of abundant misinformation the ambassadors will provide invaluable resources and offer knowledge and insights to sort fact from fiction online in a bid to slow down the spread of misinformation. It is an opportunity to drive positive change within the community, it further says.
Factshala may claim that it aims to slow down the spread of misinformation. However it clearly has an ideological tilt and hence their training programme cannot be called as neutral. They are partners with groups such as Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics, which is a think-tank founded by Prashant Bhushan. Chi think-tank conducts workshops at its centre in Himachal Pradesh. Training programmes are conducted by the lines of Harsh Mander, Kavita Krishnan and Sori Sori all of whom have been branded as naxal sympathisers. Sambhaavnaa has also invited AltEd to conduct multiple sessions. AltEd is part of Alt News which was founded by Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha, who have been called out for their selective bias.
In a nutshell Factshala appears to be part of a larger global initiative to influence media operations in India. It seems to be aligned closely with a Western-funded narrative rather than an independent one attached to India.
With Bharat growing at a rapid pace, there are major global players who want to control the narrative to show the country in poor light. They have realised that the best way to spread this fake narrative about India being a land of underdevelopment and communally sensitive is through the media.
The Soros connection
Any programme that is aimed at disrupting the right narrative more often than not has a George Soros connection.
Internews has ties with Soros’s Open Society Foundation and this has raised concerns further. In 194, during the siege of Sarajevo, Internews and Soros partnered to establish the Balkan Media Network, connecting independent media houses in the former Yugoslavia. Soros has been accused for his role in the collapse of the Eastern Block and alleged interference in domestic affairs.
According to Wikileaks Internews is linked to Richard J. Kessler, a Democratic donor, and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe. Jeane Bourgalt had in 2023 launched a $10 million fund at the Clinton Global Initiative supported by Hillary Clinton.
Wilileaks highest Internews’ opaque operations which included six subsidiaries, one based at Cayman Islands which is a major offshore financial centre. Its main billing address is listed as an abandoned building in California.
Moreover, the history of Internews traces back to funding from the Ford Foundation, George Soros and Omidyar. These are all organisations known for their political media projects. It may be recalled that Soros had announced that he would invest $1 billion to remove Prime Minister Narendra Modi from his post in the 2024 election.
While announcing the freeze on USAID, the White House said in a statement that USAID does not align with American interests and sometimes destabilises world peace.
