The media-censorship mafia in Ukraine are up-in-arms that members of the U.S. Congress dared move this week to turn off the U.S. government’s funding spigot for Ukraine’s Data Journalism Agency ("Texty") and similar “fact-checking” and “anti-disinformation” operations which have been fingering prominent Americans for sanctions for acting as “Russian propagandists” by simply questioning the U.S. policy of unending support for Ukraine’s war against Russia. The brawl began after Texty published such an enemies list on June 6, under the title, “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists, Who and How They Advocate for Ending Support to Ukraine.”
The press spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine assured Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 14 that “the State Department had no role or involvement in the aforementioned project ‘Roller Coaster’ released by Texty.org.ua.” The statement is very precise: The State Department denies only that it had any involvement in that specific project by Texty.org.ua.
Texty itself appears to fear that it would collapse without U.S. funding. Texty’s articles “exist thanks to grants from international organizations,” it explains on its “Principles” page. Republicans in the U.S. Congress are trying “to strip us of donor funding,” it squealed in an hysterical June 13 statement. Not true: The effort is only to cut off U.S. funding, channeled through multiple routes which are coming to light one-by-one.
Texty.org.ua is well known as one of USAID’s favored “disinformation fact checkers” going back more than a decade, with the State Department’s TechCAMP program using Texty co-founder Anatoliy Bondarenko as a “data journalism trainer,” reportedly from 2013-2015. Texty is currently a “subcontractor” for the Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services (TAPAs) program run jointly by USAID and UK AID, and also “currently has a U.S.-funded subgrant through the National Democratic Institute (NDI),” USAID and the NDI respectively confirmed to RFE/RL. What other U.S. government largesse Texty may receive through USAID’s U-Media program in Ukraine ("the largest media development activity in Ukraine’s history") and other such programs not yet known.
Mediarukh (Media Movement), the Ukrainian journalists and “fact-checkers” association of which Texty.org.ua is a member, aggressively charged June 13 that the threat to cut U.S. government funding for Texty.org.ua “constitutes direct pressure on freedom of speech and an independent [!] media.” Instead, they demand that the “freedom of speech” of U.S. Congressional leaders which must be curtailed, unless they support Ukraine 100%, calling on the U.S. Congress and Senate “to conduct its own investigation and determine whether the facts outlined in the Texty.org.ua publication do demonstrate the dissemination of narratives resonant to aggressive Kremlin propaganda in the United States.”
