Knight’s rightward tilt
In early interviews with the Community Info Coop, Knight Foundation stakeholders expressed confusion about how the foundation could publicly express values of inclusion and equity while simultaneously supporting people and organizations dedicated to reinforcing systemic racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
Some Knight Foundation grantees said they would consider reevaluating their relationship with Knight — no matter the financial benefit — because they were distressed by how their relationship with the foundation may be normalizing Knight’s practices.
Read more from Knight, the far-right, and Christian nationalists, the previous post in this series analyzing DEI and accountability at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Read more at knightdei.org.
In an interview with Community Info Coop researcher Simon Galperin, a former Knight Foundation staff member described the Knight’s rightward tilt as a push for “ideological diversity” driven by Alberto Ibargüen, who became president of the foundation in 2005 after leading the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald as publisher.
In a separate interview, a Black journalism leader shared knowledge of comments made by Ibargüen that doubted the ability of Black journalists to be “objective.”
When speaking about racism, Ibargüen has repeatedly evoked the Knight Foundation’s efforts to diversify its portfolio of asset managers, giving more women and people of color oversight of how Knight invests and grows its endowment.
Ibargüen also goes out of his way to note how well those women and people of color-owned asset managers perform, a common form of covert racism called “ascription of intelligence” or the assumption that people of color and women are not as capable as white men.
The grantmaking areas where the Knight Foundation invested most in DEI may reflect this assumption. Journalism Education (38% DEI spending) and Professional Development (34% DEI spending) were among the categories of grantmaking where the highest proportion of DEI dollars went in 2020.
Just 5% of all of the Knight Foundation’s journalism grants were dedicated to DEI initiatives or organizations serving diverse populations that year.
In an emailed statement, the Knight Foundation Director of Communications Rebecca Dinar said that 59% of grant dollars went to BIPOC or women-led organizations in 2021, a figure the Community Info Coop could not independently verify.
If true, the Knight Foundation’s 2021 grantee cohort may be among its most diverse. It is undoubtedly the smallest as 2021 saw Knight award its lowest amount of new grants since 2010 and the second lowest proportion of its endowment since 2008, according to the foundation’s website.
