The Justice Department just announced major charges against one of the left’s most dishonest and radical smear organizations. But you wouldn’t know it by reading and watching legacy media.
Following Tuesday’s indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — which allegedly distributed more than $3 million in fraudulent payments to racist groups like the KKK from 2014 to 2023 — the so-called “defenders of democracy” in America’s corporate press have gotten to work. Not by honestly reporting on the bombshell charges, but by running interference for their far-left ally — one who has vilified conservative organizations by classifying them as “hate groups” alongside actual extremist groups.
For context, the DOJ said that the federal indictment returned by the Alabama-based grand jury detailed how the SPLC allegedly began a “covert network” in the 1980s comprised of individuals “who were either associated with violent and extremist groups … or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction.” The SPLC, however, purportedly declined to inform its donors that “some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche summed up the case perfectly by saying, “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
If Americans were to consume USA Today’s summation of this scandal, however, they’d likely come away with the conclusion that these alleged tactics are no big deal. The left-wing outlet ran an article by national correspondent Will Carless titled “Key civil rights group indicted for paying informants. But FBI does it too,” which effectively downplayed the DOJ indictment by comparing the SPLC’s alleged actions to those embraced by federal agents.
As one might imagine, USA Today was hardly the only “news” outlet to pull this type of chicanery.
The New York Times ran the headline “Justice Dept. Charges Prominent Civil Rights Group With Financial Crimes,” which conveniently omits the bombshell detail about the SPLC’s alleged siphoning of millions of dollars into actual extremist groups. While such information is included in the article, Times reporter Devlin Barrett seemingly did his best to run cover for the SPLC by framing criticisms of its role vilifying conservative groups as another example of “Republicans pounce!”
“The Southern Poverty Law Center was formed in 1971 in Alabama and is best known for investigating groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations. In recent years, Republicans have accused the group of unfairly targeting conservative and Christian organizations, labeling them as extremists,” Barrett wrote.
[READ: Flashback: Indicted SPLC Once Targeted The Federalist For Publishing An Attorney General’s Speech]
CBS News’ Sarah Lynch and Jacob Rosen similarly obfuscated the SPLC’s role as a left-wing smear machine.
In their write-up of the charges, they characterized the far-left group as just a good ole “nonprofit” whose work includes “track[ing] white supremacist and other hate groups across the U.S.,” and that is “best known for … investigating the Ku Klux Klan.” The two writers seemingly tried to make it appear as if Republicans are sympathetic to such extremist groups by not-so-subtly including a vague description of their SPLC criticisms in the same paragraph.
“The SPLC is a nonprofit that tracks white supremacist and other hate groups across the U.S., and has been a frequent target of President Trump’s allies. It is best known for its work investigating the Ku Klux Klan,” Lynch and Rosen wrote.
Only after trudging through 10 additional paragraphs are readers given more context about the Trump administration and conservatives’ criticisms and the SPLC’s smears.
The media’s bid to whitewash the DOJ’s indictment has also included efforts to ignore the explosive story altogether. In other words, to lie by omission.
The Media Research Center reported late Tuesday night how many major networks didn’t bother informing their viewers about the charges brought against the SPLC.
The MRC’s Free Speech America separately reported that major news-aggregation sites like Google, MSN, and Yahoo “ran other crime-related stories, including CNN smearing Kash Patel,” in light of the SPLC indictment. It additionally reported that, “Google News did not run a single story [Wednesday] morning in its top 20 about the SPLC being indicted,” and “instead it promoted … NPR stories about a naked mole rat colony and a golden helmet.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
