National Defense

China-Linked Media Group In New York Runs Cover For Maduro

Пресс-служба Президента Российской Федерации/Wikimedia Commons

An “independent” media outlet tied to a pro-China megadonor aims to turn Americans against President Donald Trump for his aggressive stance toward Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

New York City-based nonprofit BreakThrough News has spent years telling its audience, which includes more than a million YouTube subscribers, that the now-captured Maduro’s socialist regime is not the corrupt “narco-state” Trump portrays it to be. The group takes large payments from the People’s Forum and the Justice and Education Fund (JEF), two left-wing nonprofits with connections to tech guru and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supporter Neville Roy Singham, according to tax filings.

The Trump administration announced Saturday that the U.S. arrested Maduro and his wife in Venezuela on drug and weapons charges, accusing them of helping “narco-terrorists” flood the U.S. with cocaine. Two of his relatives were sentenced in New York in 2017 on similar charges. The U.S. has also had a full blockade in place for Venezuelan oil exports since December and repeatedly blown up suspected drug trafficker boats believed to be traveling from the region.

“Hours after the U.S. announced the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, First Lady Celia Flores, Venezuelans hit the streets in defiance of U.S. imperialism and the abduction of their head of state,” BreakThrough News said in a Saturday X post — ignoring the opposing throngs of Venezuelans who celebrated the dictator’s ouster both in and beyond their country.

In addition to original commentary, BreakThrough News’ messaging on Venezuela has included videos of translated remarks by Maduro denouncing Trump’s attacks and claiming that his actions are purely about obtaining oil. Trump on Saturday floated having U.S. companies invest in Venezuela’s oil infrastructure to “start making money for” America.

A September 2023 BreakThrough News video titled “Maduro-Xi Meeting: How China and Venezuela are Changing the World” featured host Eugene Puryear praising the two dictatorships for challenging the foreign policy interests of “the Democrats in the White House and … the Republicans.” BreakThrough News also attended a Shanghai summit with other media organizations hosted by the CCP-controlled East China Normal University in 2023, The Daily Beast reported.

The outlet did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

‘Manipulation Without Consent’

BreakThrough News describes itself as “a nonprofit media and educational organization dedicated to independent, fact-based reporting and commentary on a diverse range of issues affecting the global movements for social justice.” Its money comes only from “viewers, supporters, and foundations that share our mission” and not corporations or governments, according to its website.

In reality, the group’s so-called independent journalism amounts to a secretive propaganda campaign backed by well-funded activists, according to the think tank Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI). The NCRI has dubbed such organizations “the Singham Network.”

“In a free country, groups are allowed to advocate for hostile causes, but they are not entitled to do so covertly,” NCRI co-founder Joel Finkelstein told the DCNF. “When a media outlet presents itself as grassroots and independent while operating in coordination with a foreign-aligned network, it turns American audiences into unwitting targets. That kind of undisclosed inside influence moves well past persuasion into realms of manipulation without consent.”

Singham, formerly the head of software company Thoughtworks, has directly funded at least the JEF and People’s Forum, The New York Times reported in 2023. The paper found multiple images on Chinese media of Singham attending propaganda-focused events alongside CCP officials. He reportedly lives in Shanghai and could not be reached for comment.

BreakThrough News received $2.07 million from the JEF and nearly $400,000 from the People’s Forum between its founding in 2020 and 2024, tax filings show.

The group also shared an address with the People’s Forum as recently as 2024, tax records show. Editor-in-chief Ben Becker, Karla Reyes, Yari Osorio and Puryear have each held leading roles at both BreakThrough News and the PSL, a pro-China political party whose supporters join protests around the country after major news events such as Maduro’s arrest. The JEF, meanwhile, listed People’s Forum Executive Director Manolo De Los Santos as the fund’s “director/secretary” in its 2024 filing, underscoring the overlap between all four organizations.

De Los Santos has also praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, advocated for Cuba’s communist regime against U.S. blockades and spent time living there, adding to the list of U.S. adversaries the “Singham Network” defends, according to his own public comments.

“Taken together, this reflects a synchronized media operation sustained by opaque patronage rather than an independent, grassroots outlet,” Finkelstein told the DCNF.

The People’s Forum, the PSL and the JEF did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The outlet “frames itself as independent, but its operating model functions as an information asset within a CCP-aligned influence ecosystem,” Finkelstein said. “It does not simply promote shared narratives; sit operates in coordinated, event-driven bursts, producing rapid, professional media that reinforces a broader protest and messaging apparatus.”