The Transformation of Poynter: From Journalism Trainer to Industry Gatekeeper With Ties to Big Tech and Federal Taxpayer Dollars
For decades, the Poynter Institute served as journalism’s premier training ground, teaching reporters the fundamentals of clear writing, ethical decision-making, and investigative techniques.
In the late 1990s, I attended a Poynter seminar designed for mid-level managers who sought to sharpen their skills and take on more significant roles in a news organization. In the early 2010s, I authored content for and helped build one of Poynter’s first online training modules, which focused on ethical news decision-making that spanned editing and photo selection. At that time, I appreciated Poynter’s commitment to teaching and training the industry. What I learned helped me to be a better editor, and the work that I produced helped editors to think about how they could improve their work products.
Today, however, Poynter occupies a markedly different position in the media landscape—one that raises questions about institutional neutrality and the concentration of influence in American journalism. The cultural shift that has occurred is stark. As palattable as the difference between Coca-Cola Classic and New Coke.
Poynter was not inherently political when I interacted with it years ago. It was neutral.
Then it wasn’t. And it still isn’t.
Where this transformation is clearest is in Poynter’s self-coronation as the arbiter of what is and isn’t factual. That links directly to Poynter’s acquisition of PolitiFact (from its corporate cousin, The Tampa Bay Times) in 2018 and its launch of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). These moves shifted Poynter from teaching journalism to actively producing it, and from training practitioners to certifying who qualifies as a legitimate fact-checker globally. That evolution has allowed it to become the self-proclaimed decider of good and bad, and to divide the news industry into white hats and black hats.
And with that, it became a partisan player. It started calling balls and strikes. Its fact-checks around coverage of Russian collusion, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and January 6 were relevant in real-time consideration because the fact-checks associated with those stories leaned distinctly in one direction. As glaringly obvious were the sins of omission during President Biden’s administration, where his consistent speaking gaffes and steady stream of incoherent public moments–all of which when objectively considered were symptoms of his cognitive decline–were largely ignored.
The financial architecture supporting this evolution deserves scrutiny. Poynter’s funding once relied heavily on tech platforms like Google and Meta (both of which have ended their financial support of fact-checking) along with major foundations including Gates, Knight, Omidyar, and Newmark.
It was also revealed last week through a fundraising letter from Poynter President Neil Brown, who also is on the board of IFCN, that Poynter had accepted significant taxpayer money from the federal government during the Biden administration. That work included the use of taxpayer dollars to train foreign journalists, “in fragile democracies in Central and Eastern Europe,” through the State Department and separately to train personnel at the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which Brown referred to in his letter as “our largest teaching client.”
The focus of that funding structure—while perhaps necessary for Poynter’s survival—created clear conflicts when the same platforms funding Poynter were subject to fact-checking by Poynter-certified organizations.
The IFCN certification process exemplifies this new gatekeeping role. It is a journalistic black box. Organizations seeking platform partnerships for fact-checking must obtain IFCN certification, giving Poynter significant influence over which voices can participate in content moderation decisions. It includes on its advisory board recently retired Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who was among the first prominent fact-checkers in the industry and whose work has been long criticized for political bias.
This concentration of authority in a single institution, particularly one dependent on tech and government funding, represents a departure from the distributed, competitive marketplace of ideas that traditionally have characterized American journalism.
Critics point to patterns in how Poynter-affiliated entities characterize news organizations across the political spectrum. A review of Poynter’s commentary and PolitiFact’s work shows frequent labeling of certain outlets as “right-leaning” or “conservative,” while similar ideological labels for left-leaning outlets appear far less frequently. This asymmetry in labeling suggests an institutional blind spot that undermines claims to neutrality.
The practical impact extends beyond labeling. When Poynter-certified fact-checkers flag content, platforms may reduce these outlets’ distribution in search results or append warning labels. This power to influence reach and credibility creates soft censorship that bypasses traditional editorial competition. News organizations find themselves navigating not just audience preferences and advertiser demands, but also the standards set by a centralized fact-checking infrastructure with a distinct political leaning.
American journalism has a trust problem with the American people, and fact-checking as we know it today throws fuel on the burnpile. Watch this video from the Pew Foundation about trust, released in January 2022, before the Twitter Files reporting came to light. An update today would almost certainly show that trust is even lower.
This dynamic contributes to journalism’s increasing polarization. Rather than fostering a diverse ecosystem where different editorial approaches compete for credibility, the fact-checking infrastructure creates a “with us or against us” atmosphere.
Organizations that challenge fact-checker determinations risk being labeled as promoters of “misinformation,” while those that align with fact-checker perspectives may receive an implicit credibility boost.
The Center Square newswire has had disagreements with Poynter, and the resolutions fell short because they ultimately were defended by pointing to Politifact.
Case in point: When I reached out to Poynter in January last year about a story their reporter Angel Fu wrote about the Baltimore Sun using The Center Square, I was met with outright contempt. My concern then was that Fu had labeled The Center Square as “conservative” without external citation. Poynter administrator Jennifer Orsi, Vice President, Publishing and Local News Initiatives, stood behind the work, writing back: “In terms of the description of The Center Square as ‘conservative,’ I think we are going to have to agree to disagree. My colleagues at PolitiFact -- whose reporting I trust -- have used this descriptor several times in recent years in fact-checks that mention The Center Square.”
It must be great to create cover for your subjectivity with fact-checking controlled by your own organization. Apparently, newsrooms with clearly progressive editorial approaches are OK, but if you are not onboard with that, your product is “conservative.” Keep in mind that The Center Square publishes none of its own opinion work, and that our staff is not granted the liberty of presenting any point of view. And I would point Orsi to the multiple media monitoring platforms not associated with their reporting that label The Center Square’s work as “center.”
But the sad reality is when you focus on taxpayer issues – the size, scope, and cost of government as part of government-accountability reporting – Poynter views that as “conservative” because Politifact says so.
Outside of our own experiences, the controversy surrounding coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election illustrates the tensions created by fact-checking. While mainstream outlets received Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting, subsequent investigations and disclosures have raised questions about key aspects of the story. Independent journalists and media outside of the mainstream that questioned the prevailing narrative early on often faced fact-checks and platform restrictions, only to see some of their skepticism validated by later revelations.
Looking at this coverage from the vantage point of time, you must ask: Were the fact-checkers and accolades biased, or has mainstream media become that bad at telling the American public the truth?
You may recall the Jack Dorsey-era of Twitter, and then the Post-Elon Musk reporting on government influence at Twitter (then X) to suppress certain stories. Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, David Zweig, Alex Berenson, and Paul D. Thacker wrote copiously in 2022 and 2023 about the unholy intersection of government influence and pressure, American journalism, and social media.
This is not to suggest that fact-checking serves no purpose or that misinformation isn’t real. Rather, it’s to recognize that centralizing the authority to determine truth in any single institution—particularly one with specific funding dependencies that it, especially in the case of tech, utilized for algorithmic weighting—creates systemic risks for journalism’s credibility and independence.
The solution isn’t to abandon efforts to combat misinformation, but to acknowledge that Poynter’s evolution from neutral trainer to active participant in content adjudication represents a fundamental shift requiring greater transparency and accountability, but – more important– intentional ideological range.
Right now, as the government has bowed out of supporting Poynter directly or indirectly, it is asking you to pay to keep their interpretation of fact-checking alive. Be wary, because when any institution accumulates the power to significantly influence which journalism is seen as legitimate, questions about that institution’s own biases and dependencies become paramount.
Journalism thrives on competition, skepticism, and diverse perspectives. The concentration of fact-checking authority at Poynter and its certified partners, combined with their integration into platform content moderation, risks creating a monoculture that mistakes institutional consensus for objective truth. For an industry already struggling with public trust, this additional layer of gatekeeping may exacerbate rather than solve journalism’s credibility crisis.
Moving forward, journalism must grapple with whether institutions like Poynter can simultaneously serve as trainers, producers, and arbiters of journalism while maintaining the independence and neutrality their influence demands. The answer to that question will shape not just Poynter’s future, but the future of American journalism itself.