Investigative Report Part Two: Idaho – Are ESG and DEI Influencing the Information You’re Receiving?
By Sarah Clendenon • May 31, 2023Investigative Report: Idaho Dispatch is digging into who owns the newsrooms in Idaho. Who controls what the public sees and hears? Who decides what information is worthy of publishing? What is the culture of these organizations, and what are the factors in their decision-making?
In Part One of this series, Idaho Dispatch brought you the names of the companies or organizations that own many of the newsrooms in Idaho. We provided links to their webpages for the public to inspect for themselves. You can view the article here: Idaho – Who Controls the Information You’re Receiving? – Idaho Dispatch
Here in Part Two we dig further into the culture, policies, and motivations behind these entities. We look at the implementation of ESG and DEI policies and practices. The list is in no particular order, but mirrors the order of our previous article and our new video, which can be seen here: ESG & DEI In Idaho News Rooms (rumble.com)
“ESG” is an abbreviation that was first used by the United Nations in reference to what they describe as responsibilities of people and companies in being a “global citizen.” It is difficult to track down the first use of the term ESG, but it is believed to have originated in United Nations documents dating back three decades or more. You can browse some of the UN information here: Economic and Social Council
As explained in our video, ESG stands for Environmental Social Governance. The “S” or Social in ESG contains and represents DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. DEI is being adopted by many American companies and by their own accounts, it is the driving force behind many news organizations’ story choices, hiring practices, and overall culture. Instead of just reporting the news, these companies explain that they report to the community in specific ways to address social change, diversity, and racism.
From this Forbes article,
“The abstract nature of ESG means that some companies choose to connect their ESG efforts to the UN’s 17 development goals, as these are specific and concrete. Many companies select a couple of development goals and make concrete ESG policies in these areas. For example, they may phase out single-use plastic to reduce ocean pollution under the UN goal “Life Under Water,” or reduce emissions and pollution from production or construction as part of the UN goal “Sustainable Cities.” Using the development goals makes ESG tangible for employees and provides a clear starting point for the organization.”
Idaho State Treasurer Julie Ellsworth recently published a video illustrating her understanding of how implementing ESG ratings will negatively affect Idaho businesses. Ellsworth notes,
“It is not hard to see how these ESG rating criteria can negatively affect Idaho and our industries. It is important that we protect our state and our businesses.”
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Here we compile ESG/DEI information coming from the companies and organizations that own the newsrooms that provide reports to Idahoans.
ADAMS PUBLISHING GROUP (APG) (18 news outlets owned in Idaho, see our previous article for the list): A privately owned pension fund company. They do not list ESG or DEI anywhere on their webpage that we could find.
TEGNA, INC. (owner of KTVB Boise, KSKN Spokane, KTFT Twin Falls, KREM Spokane): Tegna’s 2021 ESG Report is divided into the following categories: Environmental, Social Impact, DEI, Serving our People, and Corporate Governance. From the report,
“TEGNA’s desire to accelerate the pace of racial diversity and inclusion at our stations parallels our determination to ensure our coverage and storytelling reflects the communities we serve. Our customized Inclusive Journalism Program seeks to deliver such coverage through unconscious bias, inclusive reporting, leadership training and diversity and inclusion content audits in all 49 of our newsrooms.”
Tegna explains in the report that they keep track of their greenhouse gas emissions, socially impactful investigations, how they decide to spend money and donate in support of “sustainable development goals,” the DEI culture they are building including their metrics and tracking, and their inclusive journalism programs and progress.
TEGNA-2021-ESG-REPORT_230526_200354McCLATCHY MEDIA NETWORK (owner of The Idaho Statesman): McClatchy is owned by a private hedge fund company, Chatham Asset Management. Chatham recently paid a $19.3 million penalty because of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation. The Idaho Dispatch will bring you more information on this in a future article.
STATES NEWSROOM (owner of Idaho Capital Sun): States displays this page on their website: DEIJ – Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice: https://statesnewsroom.com/deij which explains,
“We incorporate values of diversity and equity in selecting stories to pursue, choosing sources to consult, and crafting language to publish. We are guided by such values in hiring for our newsrooms, fostering organization culture, and retaining staff members.”
Also,
“We recognize that people from marginalized communities face challenges that others do not, and our work will not ignore society’s inequities. We intend to produce the kind of journalism that is a force for positive social change and that challenges the inequality and racism many readers experience.”
It goes on to list what they describe as recent accomplishments, which includes, in part,
- Maintained a DEIJ committee to advise the organization’s leadership on steps it can take to further actualize values of diversity and equity
- Advertised open positions at States Newsroom with professional organizations, such as National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Asian American Journalists Association, Native American Journalists Association, to ensure our candidate pools include as much variety as possible
- Included language about our appreciation of difference in the About our Culture section of every job post
- Impressed the importance of States Newsroom’s DEIJ values upon every hiring manager and editor during any hiring process
- Pursued reporting and sourcing with an eye to diversity and inclusion
- Began to establish partnerships with HBCUs and minority-serving institutions to provide opportunities for training young journalists of color
- Hired an experienced consultant then transitioned to a full-time practitioner to take the lead on all DEIJ matters
- Provided the majority of our staff with a DEIJ training”
SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP, INC. (owner of KBOI Channel 2): Sinclair has been criticized for a one-size-fits-all approach to managing their newsrooms nationwide. In this video, which includes Idaho’s KBOI 2 News, you hear Sinclair newsrooms across the US reading the exact same script in their evening reports: Sinclair’s Soldiers in Trump’s War on Media – YouTube
Christopher S. Ripley, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sinclair Media Group had this to say when introducing their 2022 ESG report,
“At Sinclair, our mission to create, innovate, and lead; deliver must-have content across all platforms and devices; and attract and retain the best employees, goes hand-in-hand with our commitment to sustainability, diversity, community outreach, journalistic integrity, and good governance. By prioritizing environmental, social, and governance initiatives we are not only doing what is right for our communities, our people and our planet, but we are also creating long-term value for our shareholders.”
You can view the 2022 Sinclair ESG Report in its entirety here:
Sinclair ESG Report 190259_230508_114808For additional study and information, try searching “ESG origin” and browse the online results.
Tags: Adams Publishing Group, DEI, Diversity, Environmental Social Governance, Equity, ESG, Globalism, Idaho State Treasurer, Inclusion, Julie Ellsworth, Mainstream Media, McClatchy, Media, Media Bias, News, Racism, Sinclair Broadcast Group, States Newsroom, Sustainable Development, Tegna, UN, United Nations
Remember folks this is a planned Globalist’s attack to control all.
“ESG” is indeed an acronym for “Extreme Satanic Globalism”.
This is who controls the narrative. If written today, the WEF would be included. It comes from the top:
https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/
DEI is wasting billions of dollars every month in corporations across the western world and they popped up overnight. What is their purpose? Why would corporations all en masse agree to waste this money on something that offends and alienates much of their workforce? Because globalism is the goal. They see this loss of money as a temporary loss, thinking they are investing in some glorious future. I got news for them.
Thank you for this article! It is one of the most factual, unbiased and open treatments of these 2 abominations to freedom that I’ve ever read. Much appreciated!
5 stars……………..
Keep up the investigation. This is great reporting. Thank you.
As someone with a university journalism degree and mass communication graduate courses, I have known even well before how biased to the left, the journalism industry has been for so many decades. In the early 20th Centura, they called it, “Yellow Journalism.” When students were asked in my journalism program, why they wanted to become journalists. The oft-always answer was, “so I can make a difference.” I was smart enough to reply to them, “Your job is to report the news, honestly, factually and NOT make a difference.” Even so-called, “most believable man” CBS News’ Walter Cronkite was a leftist. His February 27, 1968 anti-Vietnam War opinion piece he broadcast gave the North Vietnamese more staying power, and helped the anti-war, leftist political violence and movement escalate. Cronkite lamented how the USA lost the Tet Offensive, but in reality, it was won by the Americans. On the other side of the coin, President Lyndon Johnson escalated the Vietnam War, when in 1964, he used the fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin incident, where he claimed the North Vietnamese fired on our ships. This led to congress funding the war, which led to tens of thousands of American dying in Vietnam. Naturally, the fake news of the day, did not delve into this, or report on it hugely. It is known that JFK wanted to pull out of Vietnam, as he saw (as with the French) was a losing proposition. This is just one of many thousands of examples of press coverage by Walter Cronkite and many other journalists that helped shaped America / and not for the better, I might add. I have so many more examples leftist bias, but those are for another day. A good source is mrc – dot – org.
“Your job is to report the news, honestly, factually and NOT make a difference.”
SPOT ON!
Tv watching and media believing people are the most dumbed down people on the planet. Idahoans are as dumbed down as the rest of the nation . We should include the schools and their unionized teachers as part of the problem.
Visit the following information which describes who controls what, and you will be interested to know the answer.
Visit Rumble and do a search on
“MONOPOLY – Who owns the world? [MUST SEE]”
by stopworldcontrol.
If you have not seen it, you need to. I also suggest that Idaho Dispatch consider sharing this information.
Thank you to Idaho Dispatch for standing out from the fake news propaganda driven MSM which has infected most of Idaho’s news stations, cable, and social media, etc. Idahoans need to support you in your efforts, you are doing a great thing.