Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy has been highlighted for its collaboration with liberal media and activist foundations, as detailed in a report by Restoration News.
According to Restoration News, the Shorenstein Center has shifted from its original purpose as a legacy media fellowship institute to becoming a significant narrative driver aligned with progressive ideologies. Established in 1986 with a $15 million endowment from the Shorenstein family, the Center has since received support from prominent liberal donors such as the Open Society Foundations, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Knight Foundation. Restoration News claims that the Center now focuses more on coordinating narratives among media elites and politically sympathetic academics rather than on journalism itself.
From 2017 to 2019, the Shorenstein Center hosted First Draft News, an organization funded by Soros and Google. The organization was tasked with creating cross-platform “anti-misinformation” coalitions. According to the Shorenstein Center, First Draft trained over 3,700 journalists across multiple continents to respond uniformly to breaking news events challenging mainstream narratives. This initiative was supported by foundations like the Ford Foundation and Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund. Its CrossCheck program served as a verification mechanism for election and pandemic coverage.
The Technology and Social Change Project (TaSC) at the Shorenstein Center was directed by Dr. Joan Donovan from 2019 to 2023. The project aimed to analyze misinformation as a “societal disease.” According to the Center’s final report published in May 2023, TaSC applied a public health framework to study online disinformation’s spread and impact. It claimed that misinformation should be treated similarly to tobacco smoke or pollution. The report documented work with government-funded NGOs such as USAID and the National Democratic Institute to influence foreign information ecosystems in countries like Brazil and India—efforts critics allege blur lines between public health, propaganda, and foreign policy.
The Shorenstein Center is part of Harvard Kennedy School and focuses on examining journalism’s role in democratic governance. According to its official website, it supports initiatives like Journalist’s Resource for summarizing academic research for journalists and awards such as the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Despite its mission of fostering public-interest journalism, it has faced scrutiny for fostering partisan alliances and amplifying content from liberal advocacy organizations.
