‘Water Bug Journalism’ Leaves Most Important Aspect of ‘No Kings’ Protests Unreported

Conservative author-commentator M. Stanton Evans often criticized what he regarded as “water bug journalism”—superficial news reporting that, like an insect skittering across the surface of a puddle, is a mile wide, but an inch deep.

That’s how the now-deceased Evans—who founded and for a quarter-century (1977-2002) ran the Washington-based National Journalism Center to train right-minded would-be reporters and editors—likely would have characterized news reporting on last weekend’s nationwide leftist “No Kings” protests.

News accounts of the Oct. 18 demonstrations against President Donald Trump, particularly in liberal news outlets, unquestioningly took protest organizers’ word for it that some 7 million people had participated in the events across some 2,700 locations.

But do the math.

That would translate to an average of nearly 2,600 demonstrators per venue, when most of them had far fewer than that.

While there were a number of stunningly large “No Kings” marches involving thousands of protesters in a few big cities, intuitively as well as mathematically, it’s highly improbable that there were enough of the latter to add up to either the 7 million total or to that 2,600 average. (The first such “No Kings” protests on June 14, Trump’s birthday, supposedly drew 5 million participants, a figure likely also exaggerated.)

The water-bug superficiality of most mainstream media reports on the “No Kings” protests wasn’t limited to merely echoing crowd-size estimates from the events’ organizers.

As is typical of most such political demonstrations, news accounts focused on the grievances of individual protesters, many of them interviewed at random. Often, they would struggle to come up with a coherent answer when asked to specify which of Trump’s policies they objected to and why.

Some claimed to be generically protesting the Trump administration’s purported “authoritarianism”—whether that was the deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (despite that being required by federal law) or the hysterical, hyperbolic claim of Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., of the president’s “step-by-step plan to destroy all of the things that protect our democracy.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., addresses “No Kings” demonstrators in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

As they should, per basic Journalism 101, most reports did present “the other side,” quoting dismissive remarks from Trump and fellow Republicans, who referred to the protests as unpatriotic, leftist “Hate America” rallies—which, for all too many of the demonstrators, they were. (Just as an aside, the mobs were not very diverse, with a disproportionate share of protesters being older and white, a detail that went largely unremarked.)

But the biggest disservice left-leaning media outlets did to their readers and viewers in reporting on the protests was to fail to look beyond the superficial. So far as I know, none sought to pull back the curtain on the most troubling aspect of the “No Kings” leviathan.

To organize and coordinate such a massive, nationwide event requires an enormous administrative and communications infrastructure—along with huge sums of money and paid personnel to pull it off. Conservative online influencers have tracked and documented some of these professional protesters, who have reportedly appeared at other demonstrations.

Clearly, given its sheer size and scope, “No Kings” could not be an all-volunteer event cobbled together on a shoestring budget. And it wasn’t. There were hundreds of millions of dollars from private left-wing foundations and nongovernmental organizations making it all possible.

In other words, “No Kings” was hardly grassroots. It was largely astroturf.

According to Seamus Bruner, the director of research at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, “We traced $294,487,641 to the official No Kings 2.0 partners & organizers … all funneled through the same ‘Riot Inc.’ dark-money networks.”

Bruner wrote the 2023 book “Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life.”

Not surprising to anyone who follows such things, the nonprofit clients of Arabella Advisors and the George Soros-backed Open Society Foundations network vied for the distinction of being the head of the dark money snake, contributing $79.8 million and $72.1 million, respectively, per Bruner’s tally, followed by the Ford Foundation ($51.7 million), the Tides Foundation ($45.5 million), the Rockefeller Foundation ($28.6 million), and two foundations linked to relatives of billionaire investor Warren Buffett ($16.7 million).

As such, it was richly ironic that The Washington Post’s Oct. 19 print-edition article on the “No Kings” demonstration in the nation’s capital reported on a protest sign reading, “Billionaires are killing USA.”

The next day, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., took Bruner’s list a step further, posting on the social media platform X a chart listing 82 left-wing organizations partnering with “No Kings” and how much money they had received from those foundations.

“The ‘No Kings’ protest was completely organic, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Luna wrote sarcastically.

From Luna’s list, you can see that the nearly $300 million tsunami of cash was largely passed through sundry left-wing nongovernmental organizations, at least some of which likely also receive federal grant funding.

If asked, those NGOs would surely deny spending any of their federal funds illegally on leftist activism and agitation, but as we all know, money is fully fungible.

That brings us back to conservatives such as Evans, who as far back as Ronald Reagan’s presidency railed about the need for the federal government to “defund the Left.” Trump has picked up that ball and run with it, defunding myriad federal government grant-making operations, which is why leftist NGOs are screaming like scalded cats.

Obviously, “No Kings” didn’t spend that entire $294 million last weekend. The Guardian of London reported Wednesday that the groups “No Kings” comprises are building “a nationwide rapid-response network that will call on supporters to take new actions each week.”

“Leaders of the organizations told the Guardian that there was energy for ‘some type of disruption,’ and future actions could include targeted boycotts, campaigns at universities, more street protests, and electoral organizing in local communities.”

All of that to say, if there are still any true investigative journalists remaining out there, there could be Pulitzer Prizes waiting for those with the gumption and curiosity to do a deep dive into “No Kings” with a series of articles exposing the octopuslike tentacles of its organizational and financial infrastructure.

Where to begin? Follow the money.

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