I subscribe to ProPublica because the group often does valuable investigative reporting, just as I subscribed to Glenn Greenwald this year even after he took my substack subscription money and then produced nothing for months because he was sick or something. (Not again, Glenn, Sorry.) However, I will not give money to organizations who lie to me. This is how the year-end appeal I just received from ProPublica begins:

It’s no secret that American democracy is in peril. The 2020 elections were unlike anything our country has seen before — election deniers, an insurrection and bad actors sowing disinformation shed a harsh light on the fragile state of our democracy. As a ProPublica reader, I know you’ve been aware of these growing threats for some time now.

ProPublica is no bystander when it comes to ensuring a transparent government, regardless of who is in power. As a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom, we believe that investigative journalism is one of the most powerful tools we have to ensure a healthy democracy…

I would eagerly support a competent news organization that is genuinely “nonpartisan,” but this “nonpartisan” fundraising message quickly dog-whistles to progressive and Democrat readers in its second sentence. “Election deniers” is a swipe at Trump and Republicans. “Insurrection” is an inexcusable Axis lie that is an example of “bad actors sowing disinformation.” It is breathtakingly cynical to claim “nonpartisan” status after writing that. The appeal either is an insult to my intelligence, or a wink-wink assumption that “we know you’re one of us and know what we really mean.”

Are there any genuine non-partisan (I use the hyphen) “watchdog” groups? C.R.E.W. lies when it says it is, as documented here regularly until I just started ignoring them. Media Matters is even worse: a news media watchdog that somehow only finds fault with Fox News. Newsbusters does a much better and fairer job flagging left-wing bias in the media, but 1) that’s shooting fish in the proverbial barrel and 2) if it has ever criticized Fox for conservative bias, I missed it. I thought Greenwald’s old stomping ground The Intercept was genuinely non-partisan until it joined the “Let’s pretend Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation until Biden is safely in the White House” conspiracy.

I might support an organization that does a competent and ethical job at exposing corruption on only one side of the political spectrum if it displayed enough integrity to admit its biases and objectives, but that’s not ProPublica, as this recent series (by a conservative watchdog group) made clear.

ProPublica’s fundraising letter also made its biases clear in its first two paragraphs, while treating this potential donor as either an idiot or a willing enabler of ProPublica’s deception.