Central ND News

A North Dakota News Cooperative correspondent said his organization has “no position opposing or promoting oil and gas development” in the state after partnering with a group funded by organizations opposing oil and gas development.

The cooperative co-published a story Nov. 1 with an organization called “Floodlight News.” That article was, in part, about the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

Co-op correspondent Michael Standaert shared a byline on the story with Floodlight’s Miranda Green.

Among Floodlight’s funders is the Tides Foundation, “a major center-left grantmaking organization and a major pass-through funder to numerous left-leaning nonprofits,” reported Influence Watch.  

The group had $581 million in revenue and $979 million in total assets, according to the foundation’s 2022 IRS 990 forms. 

Floodlight received $45,000 from the Tides Foundation in 2021 and 2022.

The Tides Foundation in 2014 funded a group that promoted the work of a now-imprisoned woman charged with "domestic terrorism" over her attempted sabotage of the DAPL.

That group, Media Island International/Rising Tide North America, received at least $40,771 from Tides, according to IRS reports. 

Rising Tide North America in October 2016 listed Ruby Montoya as a press contact on its website. 

Montoya was sentenced in 2022 by a federal court to serve six years in prison for Conspiracy to Damage an Energy Facility for numerous acts to damage the DAPL in Iowa and South Dakota.

“Specifically, Montoya admitted to damaging and attempting to damage the pipeline by: (1) using an oxyacetylene cutting torch to burn holes in the pipeline, and (2) setting fire to pipeline instrumentation and equipment in Mahaska, Boone, and Wapello Counties within the Southern District of Iowa,” said a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Iowa. 

Montoya “and 42-year-old activist Jessica Reznicek snuck through security fences, set fire to equipment and used chemicals to burn holes in the pipeline itself from 2016 to 2017, according to their plea agreements,” reported WBDO Radio. “In 2021, after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in prison.”

“Notably, both women faced sentencing enhancements under a criminal statute designed to penalize acts of domestic terrorism,” said the news report.  

Kathryn Snyder, a senior advisor at the Tides Foundation, who describes herself as “a queer, gender nonconforming black woman,” wrote in January 2017 of her participation in the anti-DAPL protests and wrote that “Tides stands with” the anti-DAPL movement. 

The protests, which occurred in 2016 and 2017, aimed to halt the construction of the reported $3.8 billion pipeline and “drew thousands of people to camp out” in Morton County, the Associated Press reported.

The protests resulted in 761 arrests, according to MPR News. Charges ranged from trespassing to more severe offenses. A significant number of those arrested were from out of state.

Certain days of the protests resulted in dozens of arrests, such as February 1, 2017, when 76 people were arrested after Morton County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Rob Keller said a “rogue group of protesters” had trespassed on private property.

The State of North Dakota is currently suing the federal government to “recoup $38 million it claims it spent policing the protest camps,” Source NM reported.

Attorneys for North Dakota reportedly argued in court records that the protests “resulted from an illegal occupation on federal lands and led to ‘frequent outbreaks of illegal, dangerous, unsanitary, and life-threatening activity on federal, state and private property.’”

North Dakota Special Assistant Attorney General Paul Seby said in court that the aftermath of the protests “required a four-day cleanup of the camp and 600 bins to remove 9.8 million pounds of trash,” according to MPR News.

Floodlight, which says it “investigates the corporations and political interests stalling climate action,” is also funded by Rockefeller Family Fund’s Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas, which said in a 2022 press release that it “makes grants to organizations fighting oil and gas infrastructure.” 

This organization also gave the Tides Foundation $125,000 in 2022 and the affiliated Tides Center $190,000 that same year, according to IRS reports.

“We have no position opposing or promoting oil and gas development in North Dakota,” Standaert told Central ND News. “People quoted in our stories may have a position either way, but we do not have a position.

When asked about the funders of Floodlight, the group with which he shared a byline, Standaert said Central ND News would have to “talk to them (Floodlight) about their funding.”He said he would’ve done the story “with or without Floodlight.”

Standaert joined the co-op in 2023 after living and working in China for sixteen years, according to his bio on the organization’s web site.

Standaert’s co-author, Miranda Green, is based in Los Angeles and reports on “climate focused projects,” according to her personal website. 

Standaert’s and Green’s story was, in part, about Central ND News reporting on the DAPL protests, with the duo writing, “the protests over the pipeline are old news.”

The featured photo for their story, however, highlights a Sept. 18 Central ND News story, “Canadian national faces 20 years in federal prison for acts of sabotage against Dakota Access Pipeline, Keystone Pipeline,” regarding a new development over a man charged with violent acts as part of a DAPL protest.

That story, which was also covered by numerous North Dakota and national news outlets, including CBS News, was regarding Cameron Monte Smith, a 49-year-old Canadian national who pled guilty in September to shooting an electricity substation in North Dakota and the Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota, both linked to protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

The state of ND’s ongoing litigation against the federal government over the DAPL protests also makes stories about the pipeline protests new and relevant.

Founded in 2021, the ND News Cooperative is a 501(C)3 nonprofit that says it was started “to bring reliable, dependable journalism about North Dakota to North Dakotans.”

While both the cooperative and Floodlight list their donors on their site, their news story about the pipeline does not mention Floodlight’s funders’ anti-oil and gas advocacy, specifically the group’s opposition to the DAPL and support for DAPL protestors.