Outlet profile

Baptist News Global

U.S. center-left, progressive religious

Owned byIndependent nonprofit; no parent company. Governed by its own board. The Associated Baptist Press Foundation holds an endowment in support of operations. Affiliated as a partner of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship but editorially independent.

FundingReader donations (roughly two-thirds of annual budget) and foundation grants plus endowment income (roughly one-third). Key funders include the John and Eula Mae Baugh Foundation, CBF North Carolina, and the Prichard Family Foundation. No advertising revenue; no donor exercises editorial control.

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Baptist News Global traces its roots to two predecessors: the Religious Herald, founded in Virginia in 1828 and one of the oldest Baptist newspapers in the country, and Associated Baptist Press (ABP), founded in 1990 after Southern Baptist Convention leadership fired two Baptist Press editors in a dispute over editorial independence. ABP operated as a wire service for Baptist publications for more than two decades. In 2013 the ABP and Religious Herald boards approved a merger; the combined organization launched January 1, 2014, initially under the name ABPnews/Herald, before rebranding as Baptist News Global on October 13, 2014. The outlet positions itself as editorially free from denominational or donor control and has built a reputation for factual accuracy, receiving high marks from fact-checking monitors. Its coverage has included investigative reporting on sexual abuse in Baptist churches and extensive commentary on denominational divisions. Media bias analysts, including Media Bias/Fact Check and AllSides, rate it as left-center or lean-left, reflecting its tendency to frame issues—church-state separation, LGBTQ inclusion, racial justice—from a theologically and socially progressive Baptist standpoint. During the Trump administration's second term it has reported critically on the administration's approach to the Johnson Amendment, press access restrictions, and what it describes as a Christian nationalist policy agenda.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-08-25; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

← Back to track record