Hi Reader,

During a private June 3 event hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society, Justice Samuel Alito was secretly recorded by an attendee who posed as a Christian conservative. “Why,” she asked, “do you think the Supreme Court is being so attacked and being so targeted by the media these days?” 

“Well, I think it’s a simple reason,” Alito replied. “They don’t like our decisions, and they don’t like how they anticipate we may decide some cases that are coming up. That’s the beginning of the end of it, and there are, there are groups that are very well funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks. That’s what it is.” 

“Like who?” she asked. 

“ProPublica. ProPublica gets a lot of, you know, gets a lot of money, and they have spent a fortune investigating [Justice] Clarence Thomas, for example. You know everything he’s ever done in his entire life, and they’ve done some of that to me, too. But they, you know, they look for any little thing they can find, and they try to make something out of it. That’s, that’s what it is.” 

ProPublica journalists do not misrepresent themselves when conducting interviews. We adhere to a standard of “no surprises.” Anyone mentioned in a story is told what the story will say and given a chance to respond. I invite you to read our ethics policy if you’d like to learn more.

But we still want to address what Alito (whom we wrote about in 2023) said about ProPublica. We thought we’d take this opportunity to elaborate on how, exactly, ProPublica is funded, and clarify the relationship between our funders and our journalism. 

As a nonprofit, ProPublica’s work is powered primarily through donations. We have a policy of transparent financial reporting, issuing three public reports each year that show the impact of our work, along with our annual financial statements. You can find a list of some of our larger donors on our website. You can also find our 990 tax forms dating back to 2007, with details like executive compensation, revenue, expenses and more, in Nonprofit Explorer, the research tool we created to ensure that the annual returns filed by tax-exempt organizations are public and accessible. Our advertising policy is clearly delineated. 

And, my favorite, a lot of our funding comes from our members. Over 55,000 of you. Supported by the public, our newsroom works in the public interest. We are not beholden to individual benefactors. Funders have no say in what we cover. Our mission, above all else, is to expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.

When ProPublica was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for our series on Supreme Court ethics, senior editor Jesse Eisinger, the leader of the reporting team, said:

“What buoys me is that everyone in this room knows that our work is undoubtedly about more than prizes. We are in a privileged position in this world. We can orient ourselves entirely around the search for truth. We aren’t perfect, and we don’t have a monopoly on the truth, but we care about it more than any other value. It’s a dangerous moment for our profession, the most dangerous of my lifetime, and I think in the country’s modern history. But I remind myself that we have no loyalties, belong to no groups, call for no prescriptions, believe in no creeds above the truth. And for that, I am grateful.”

Our summer member drive ends tomorrow. Join us. 

Warmly, 

Ragan Rhyne

Chief Development Officer

Proud ProPublican