Independent investigative journalism is on its deathbed. Truthtellers like Pro-publica, Mother Jones, Common Dreams, Truthdig, MoveOn, The Nation, the Prospect, and many more are non-profit and independent. They depend on contributions from the public, along with all charities and non-profits who have their hands out.

Most of the in-depth news that non-profits reveal exposes corruption against those without power and influence. It is a different story for news organizations existing for profits. Most are owned by giant corporations with big money. Their news is spectacle-based and agenda-bound.

Lavishly financed by deep corporate pockets and advantageous for the moneyed class, agenda-based news proliferates widely. Independent investigative journalism depends on contributions by millions of donors, most benefitting from the research such journalists do, while the latter, widely dispersed spectacle-based news, is supported by the corporate-fed machine which mostly benefits from its slant.

Sources like Pro-publica publish stories like the continued corruption of SCOTUS justice, Clarence Thomas, who continues to benefit from the contributions of billionaire, Harlan Crow.

Such sources also reveal $1.6 billion in dark money (undisclosed thru SCOTUS rulings) that Leonard Leo, with close ties with The Heritage Foundation, disperses to fill SCOTUS seats with justices who do the bidding of corporations and write legislation for red states to suppress voting.

Heritage Foundation is a tax-exempt 501c not required to disclose donations which are tax-deductible. Totally immersed in politics, it is disguised as a charity which is non-partisan and non-political. Funding comes from over 710,000 supporters, including corporations and billionaires. Meanwhile, non-profits like Mother Jones cover the plight of the vulnerable poor, racism, and the slighted silent majority.

Meanwhile, big money continues to flow from corporate and billionaire coffers to the Republican Party, ever demagoguing, and currently owned in policy and operation by seditionist, twice-impeached, twice-indicted, ever-separatist, and once sued for sexual abuse, Donald J. Trump. And the most egregious source of propaganda, successfully sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $800 million, Fox Spews (cannot be called “news”) stands out as toxic to our national interest.

Other sources, under the guise of social media, includes Twitter and Facebook, operate for-profit and are shielded from responsibility, supposedly by the First Amendment, for a steady flow of half-truths and the pulp that earns attention and profit.

Among the worst offenders in Twitter, for example, look at the postings of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and Jim Jordan, to know the measure of demagoguery that disguises as worthy information. Web platforms like Twitter and Facebook can’t be sued for defamation, violating freedom of speech, or lying. They aren’t legally liable for what their users post.

What does our future hold? Most probably, since governmental policy doesn’t hold social media responsible for its content, and its users and paid clients are free to provide false content, the spurious content will continue.

The right-wing Federalist Foundation is allowed tax-exempt status and undisclosed funders, something sanctioned by justices it funded. Many other billionaire-funded conservative think tanks will also continue under the guise of non-profits who are tax-exempt.

In addition, the red states, free to gerrymander and suppress the vote will make election of Democrats almost impossible in those states and continue to suppress non-white voting.

Money and power will continue to flow to news slanted by for-profit agendas, and non-profit news with an in-depth journalism of truth will continue to disappear, choked off by lack of funding. It is unlikely that government will be allowed to fund non-profit news, considering the Republican opposition to any public enterprise, whether schools, post office, public health, or non-profit news.

After all, Republicans have always been against any funding for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and were ready to tear down any pandemic funding and even future pandemic threats.

This is the American culture that corporations fostered and paid for beginning in the 1970s with the Powell Manifesto.