Hello, I'm Michael Watson, joined by Sarah Lee, and this is the Influence Watch podcast.

What makes a journalistic outfit completely independent?

According to drop site news, the outlet is exactly that, and readers supported to boot.

But recent Open Society Foundation's spending reports suggest that the outlet is not completely

readers supported.

George Soros's philanthropy spent $250,000 to support the creation of a MENA desk for the group through a fiscal sponsorship cutout.

Joining us to discuss the Open Society drop site relationship is Chuck Ross, senior investigative reporter at the Washington Free Beacon.

Chuck, before we begin, can you introduce our listeners to your work with the Free Beacon?

Yeah, and thanks for having me on.

I'm an investigative reporter over at the Free Beacon.

I've been with the outlet for going on four years now.

And I cover the gamut, you know, political, any political current events, campaign

spending and special interest groups as well, like Open Society and many of the others that

you guys at Capital Research also cover. In my work, I use a lot of, not to give you a plug right

up front, but I use so much of you guys' stuff or come across, it's usually on the first page

of Google search for many of the groups that we like to look into, to track their spending,

see their funding. Yeah, so it's a lot of fun to be on that beat, as you guys probably know as well.

We'll never turn down a plug. So what is this drop site news? You founded it. What do they cover?

What's their ideological position? Yeah. they launched last year last uh june or july uh

it was started by several former uh reporters at the intercept uh the intercept being the left

leaning website that was for years funded by Pierre Omidyar, the eBay billionaire.

And famously created by Glenn Greenwald and his crew that were part of the Snowden NSA leaks.

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