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Outlet profile

The Intercept

U.S. left / progressive

Owned byIndependent nonprofit newsroom (spun off from First Look Media/First Look Institute in 2023); no corporate parent
FundingReader donations and philanthropic grants; formerly bankrolled by billionaire eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar (via First Look Media), who ended major financial support in 2022, leaving the outlet reliant on fundraising and facing significant budget shortfalls
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Intercept launched in February 2014, founded by journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill under First Look Media, the outlet Pierre Omidyar created after backing reporting on Edward Snowden's NSA leaks. It built its reputation on adversarial national-security and surveillance journalism, publishing leaked documents and investigations into U.S. intelligence and military conduct, alongside criticism (including from press-freedom advocates) over source-protection lapses, notably the 2017 arrest of leaker Reality Winner. Omidyar funded the outlet heavily for years but wound down financial support by 2022, prompting The Intercept to spin off in January 2023 as a fully independent nonprofit, now sustained by reader donations and grants rather than a single benefactor. That transition brought financial strain — reports in 2024 described the outlet losing roughly $300,000 a month — leading to layoffs and fundraising drives. Editorially, it maintains a strongly left-of-center, anti-establishment orientation, often critical of both Republican and Democratic administrations on issues like war, surveillance, and civil liberties, but its coverage of the Trump administration since January 2025 has been uniformly adversarial, including a 2026 First Amendment lawsuit against Trump and staff over Truth Social monetization and reporting accusing the administration of open hostility to a free press.

Sources

  1. The Intercept Announces Restructuring as Independent Nonprofit Organization
  2. The Intercept is running out of cash | Semafor
  3. The Intercept, a billionaire-funded public charity, cuts back - Columbia Journalism Review
  4. The Intercept - Wikipedia
  5. First Look Media - Wikipedia
  6. The Intercept Sues Trump for Selling Premium Access to Truth Social Announcements
  7. Trump Admin Tells Court: Let OpenAI Rip Off The Intercept's Articles

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

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