Outlet profile

Common Dreams

U.S. left

Owned byIndependent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (no corporate parent); founded by Craig Brown and Lina Newhouser

FundingReader donations (small individual contributions, tens of thousands of donors annually) plus limited nonprofit foundation grants (e.g., Park Foundation); accepts no advertising or corporate/government funding

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Common Dreams was founded in 1997 by political consultant Craig Brown and his wife, Lina Newhouser, as a nonprofit alternative to corporate-owned media, explicitly built to amplify progressive voices and causes. It grew from a small email digest into a widely read news aggregation and opinion site, publishing original reporting alongside syndicated wire stories and op-eds from prominent left-leaning writers such as Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, and Naomi Klein. The outlet has always relied on small-dollar reader donations rather than advertising, which it says protects it from corporate influence, supplemented by occasional foundation grants. Independent media-bias monitors, including Media Bias/Fact Check and AllSides, consistently rate it as left-leaning in story selection and language, while generally rating its factual accuracy as high due to sourcing practices. It has occasionally faced criticism for republishing pieces later found to be unreliable or from contributors with credibility problems, prompting periodic editorial corrections. Common Dreams has covered every U.S. administration from an anti-corporate, anti-war, pro-labor and pro-environmental perspective, and its framing of the Trump administration since January 2025 has remained sharply adversarial across topics including immigration enforcement, health care policy, and press access.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-09-24; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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