Daily Caller Foundation Raked in Big Bucks from Donors Directly Involved in Their Coverage — And Founder Tucker Carlson Is Still Chair

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The Daily Caller News Foundation has raked in lucrative contributions from a long list of donors who have secured flattering coverage on The Daily Caller website — sometimes even by op-eds the donors themselves drafted — all without disclosing the conflict of interest, according to a report by the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger.

Sollenberger, last seen dropping bombshell after bombshell on Herschel Walker’s unsuccessful Georgia Senate campaign, reviewed the tax filings for the foundation, which is registered as a 501(c)4 nonprofit corporation, and found that the organization co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2011 had accepted “tens of thousands of dollars from entities and individuals” directly involved in their affiliated website’s reporting.

The foundation was formed a few years after Carlson had launched the Daily Caller with Neil Patel, to establish a non-profit that could “subsidize not only publication costs, but the production of the actual content—with a built-in tax break,” wrote Sollenberger, along with training young reporters and writing articles, “which the Daily Caller then gets to post to its site for free.”

“Many of the foundation’s donors are tied to industries and issues that the Caller covers frequently,” he added, including energy industry sources like the Ariel Corporation and Charles Koch, “who has provided millions in funding over the years, and at one point reportedly accounted for more than 83 percent of the foundation’s annual revenue.”

But the Caller’s frequent reporting on these donors, or publishing their op-eds, without disclosing their financial support is viewed as a violation of journalistic ethical norms.

“With any news organization that solicits donations, you really have to have an editorial policy that articulates how you separate out your loyalty to your audience and to your journalistic mission from your ties to your donors,” said Kelly McBride, senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute.

In contrast, compare the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit media outlet that heavily focuses on Texas political and economic news, and as a result, does get many donations from some of the same individuals and organizations they cover. However, even the most tangential reference or connection to a donor in a Trib article generates a disclosure at the end of the article and a link to the searchable online financial reports.

When I interviewed the Trib’s founding CEO Evan Smith at the Texas Tribune Festival in September, he was adamant about there being an inviolable line between financial supporters and editorial decisions:

Smith was very proud of the fact that “not one time” had the Tribune “compromised our editorial independence or integrity for a donor or a sponsor. Never. Never.”

He mentioned that they had “driven off” financial supporters on “both sides politically” for “not carrying their water, or doing their bidding.”

“I’ve said many times, I can always get more money. I can never get more integrity. The first time you compromise the independence of your journalism is the last time you’ll have the opportunity to, and should.”

The Beast article listed multiple examples of reporting on the Daily Caller website that could be clearly matched to a specific donor, but no disclosure of the financial conflict of interest was made.

Sollenberger noted another intriguing detail in the tax filings: that Carlson had maintained his role with the foundation, despite his claims otherwise:

The filing also reveals that Carlson, who in 2020 announced he was leaving the Daily Caller and selling his stake in the website, is still the foundation chairman, and has not cut back on his hours.

When Carlson announced his split with the Daily Caller in 2020, he cited work constraints. “I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” the host told The Wall Street Journal at the time, explaining, “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night” on his Fox News program. The tax filing, which covers the following year, shows he continued to hold the chairman position and put in the same hours as in all previous foundation filings—five hours a week.

The Daily Caller and Carlson did not respond to the Beast’s request for comment.