In this list, you will see we include George Soros’ foundation, the Open Society Institute. We are honored to be among a wide range of wonderful press and journalism organizations that have received OSI support over the years, including the Columbia School of Journalism, the Annenberg School of Communication’s Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy at the University of Southern California, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Furthermore, OSI publicly lists its grants to the Center for Independent Media in its online grants database. For instance, this link shows a $20,000 grant to Minnesota Monitor in 2006, which we were honored to receive:
http://www.soros.org/grants/research/results.php?s=issue&q=&issue=Media%2C+Arts+%26+Culture&p=15

In 2007, the Center for Independent Media received a $100,000 grant from OSI, towards general operating support. We are enormously grateful for OSI’s ongoing support.

In addition to OSI, we are equally honored to receive support from the foundations listed on our corporate web site (link above), including:

Arca Foundation
Arkay Foundation
Bauman Family Foundation
Better World Fund
Bohemian Foundation
Brett Family Foundation
Gill Foundation
Open Society Institute
Park Foundation
Quixote Foundation
Rockefeller Family Foundation
SEIU
Sunlight Foundation
Surdna Foundation
Wallace Global Fund

Our diversity of funding ensures our independence, as do our internal editorial policies. Our funders do not tell us what to write, and fund us with an expectation that our programs will pursue an independent journalism. Our growth is a reflection of our success in fulfilling our mission of independence.

We look forward to enormous success with the Washington Independent.

We in Minnesota have been waging a war for honesty with another of the center’s enterprises, a political blog known as "Minnesota Monitor".

From the start, this blog, as well as the "Center for Independent Media" itself had been pegged as yet another spin off of George Soros’s covert propaganda enterprises, while the former editor and staff made virulent denials of any such connection.

In fact, in time they deleted any suggestions of the sort from their comments. Did someone say somthing about "transparency"?

Now however, a former writer has gone on record as admitting the Soros connection and so has the editor of Minnesota Monitor.

After a solid year of denials…dozens of denials.

Before you folks get anywhere near "accuracy and fairness", you need to start with "truthfulness".

The fact that you are funded by George Soros and other leftist philanthropic sources may or may not make what you report biased, but denying such connections shreds any shot at credibility right from the start.

You may be "independent" from corporate influence, but you certainly have no claim to independence from influences of any sort.

That being said, I do look forward to getting the left’s perspective of what is going on in Washington from the Washington "Independent".

Best of luck,

Thomas Swift

(I’m contributor to Looktruenorth.com, which is wholly self supporting and receives no funding from anyone)