Honestly, $50,000 for a year-long writing project, where you also have to deal with oversight, is a total gyp.
I guess Poles are poor, but they’re surely not that poor.
I guess to some people it would be new news that the US State Department pays media outlets all over the world to publish certain news stories. It’s not news to me. I’ve been trying to explain this to people for years.
RT:
The US Consulate General in Krakow is soliciting Polish outlets to write about Ukrainian refugees “returning and rebuilding,” it emerged on Wednesday. Washington is offering $50,000 for the year-long project.
The project “to promote coverage in Poland by local and regional media representatives of stories in Ukraine” was first spotted by a Telegram channel based in Belarus. It can be found at the website of the US embassy in Poland, under the designation WAW-NOFO-FY23-05.
It was unclear when the solicitation was originally posted. However, the deadline for submissions is end of the day Friday, September 15.
According to the post, the goal is to “promote in-depth reporting by local and regional Polish media of the return of Ukrainian families from Poland to Ukraine and their social and physical rebuilding efforts, particularly those built on partnerships between Poles and Ukrainians.”
The articles should fuel “public understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by Ukrainians” as well as interest in Ukrainian “efforts to return and rebuild” and the “enduring impact of support provided by Polish society to Ukrainian refugees.”
The solicitation suggests the project would actually be given to a Polish NGO, with US embassy staff having “substantial involvement in the grant implementation, including reviewing and approving selection of participants, trainers, and award decisions within the project.”
The NGO would get a grant of $50,000 (about 215,500 zloty at the current exchange rate) and then have Polish journalists compete for portions of the money. The embassy would evaluate their success by the “quality and reach of reports generated.”
The project also includes at least one workshop teaching the reporters “culturally sensitive and trauma-informed manner and how to create compelling human-interest stories in this context,” taught by “experts in the intersection between mental health and journalism in war zones” and others with the relevant experience.
The entire project is slated to run for a single year, though Washington reserves the right to extend that if it’s judged to be “in the best interest of the US Department of State.”
You can look at the purpose of this story…
The Poles are unhappy about the Ukrainian refugees, who behave very badly and cause bad problems in their country. The US State Department feels a need to micro-manage stuff like this, so they go in with propaganda saying the refugees are leaving soon (which is obviously untrue) and praising the Poles for their generosity.
This is pretty subtle propaganda, really. But this sort of project is probably determined by AI at this point. Probably, an AI said that the Polish hostility to Ukraine refugees could create a problem, and suggested this as the solution. I don’t really see how else you could come up with something like this.
The State Department, particularly through NED, has been running foreign media since forever, but it is much more blunt and straightforward – basically just saying the US is good and everyone else is evil, and attacking any politician or group that opposes this agenda.