Analysis: Shallow (bad) journalism presented nothing-burger ‘No Kings’ rallies as a big deal

Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, October 26, 2025 Real World News

The “news story” on “No Kings” pushed by legacy media was that it was a monumental event in which seven million diverse Americans gathered in a grassroots effort across the nation to protest President Donald Trump’s “authoritarian” policies.

On the other hand, would the average news consumer consider this newsworthy or even interesting?

Independent media reported what the legacy “reporters” would not: That far fewer than seven million participated; Most were older white people; Few if any could specifically identify any Trump policies that are “authoritarian”; Many spewed vile rhetoric in praise of violence against conservatives; and it was hardly an organic uprising but a well-funded organized event fueled by mountains of cash from leftist billionaires.

If any of those in major media reporting on “No Kings” passed Journalism 101, it seems they forgot what they learned.

In an Oct. 25 analysis for The Daily Signal, veteran newsman Peter Parisi compared the legacy media coverage of “No Kings” to conservative author-commentator M. Stanton Evans’s criticism of 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,” Parisi wrote.

For seven million people to have participated in the rallies across some 2,700 locations, there would have to have been an average of nearly 2,600 demonstrators per venue. Most 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,” Parisi noted.

But the water-bug superficiality wasn’t limited to crowd size.

“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,” Parisi wrote.

The biggest disservice left-leaning media outlets did to their readers and viewers in reporting on the protests, Parisi continued, “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.”

Legacy media did not touch this most import

“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,” Parisi wrote. “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.”

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).

The irony, of course, was lost on The Washington Post, which in its Oct. 19 print-edition article on the “No Kings” demonstration in the nation’s capital pointed out one protest sign which read: “Billionaires are killing USA.”

Parisi concluded: “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.”

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