“Now more than ever, the world needs an honest newsroom.” With these words, the little-known Informing America Foundation was awarded the $250,000 Gregor G. Peterson Prize in “venture philanthropy” last December for its “high-quality journalism.”

If few had heard of IAF, hinted the nonprofit’s CEO, Debbie Myers, it was by design. “We stay very much under the radar,” she said, accepting the prize at the 2024 annual summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate-funded group that works to advance conservative policies at the state level. IAF’s goal, Myers explained, was to create an “ecosystem” of news. The group boasts of funding a network of thousands of platforms that have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories, from the alleged corruption of Joe Biden to the supposedly nefarious mission of the US Agency for International Development, along with more recent attacks on critics of President Donald Trump.

IAF’s tax filings, which say its mission is funding “investigative, explanatory, data-driven and multimedia journalism,” show it brought in close to $8 million in contributions during its first year, with the largest nonprofit donation coming from the family foundation of Diana Davis Spencer, whose late father, an investment banker, once chaired the Heritage Foundation. In subsequent years, millions have flowed to IAF through donor-advised charities that do not disclose the source of their initial contributions.