Correction to “Mother Jones Dark Money” Report

Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monika_Bauerlein)

On July 8, Honest Media published our investigation of Mother Jones’s funding titled Mother Jones Dark Money. Today, we issue a correction regarding two mis-statements of fact.

1. Citing the watchdog website Open Secrets, we reported that Mother Jones contributed $705,416 to various Democratic Party organizations and candidates. We should have said that Mother Jones collected that much in revenue from those Democratic Party organizations and candidates, who purchased advertising space from Mother Jones. 

2. We reported that Type Media Center publishes The Nation; however, the two organizations are no longer affiliated. 

Besides these corrections, we stand by the rest of the reporting.

On July 13, Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein emailed Honest Media to point out these mistakes and to lodge her complaint that our reporting was “defamatory” due to this. In no way did we intend to defame any person or institution. We are more than happy to point out the errors we made, and correct them.

However, Bauerlein also objected to our use of the word “dissembling” to describe her avoidance of direct response to questions we posed in a series of emails. In those emails we asked nine questions, but Baurlein chose to answer only three.

That exchange, with our questions, is included below with the most pertinent sections highlighted. Note that font sizes vary in different emails as they appear this way in our inboxes.

Initial query from Honest Media to Mother Jones

Initial response from Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein

Follow-up email from Honest Media with a series of precise questions about Mother Jones funding

Reminder to Bauerlein when she did not respond to Honest Media’s questions

Response from Bauerlein that fails to address most of our questions

Further questioning from Honest Media to seek clarification on subscriber revenue

Final response from Bauerlein

Summary

As the exchange shows, Ms. Bauerlein chose to answer questions 3, 5, and 6c from our June 13 email, or three of our nine questions.

She repeated that Mother Jones is supported by 250,000 individuals and foundations, but would not answer whether the revenue reported as “membership dues” is in fact generated by magazine subscriptions. This information is significant. 

As our analysis revealed, only 103 individual, but unidentified, contributors provided $11M of Mother Jones’s revenue in 2021, while “membership dues” provided only $4M. Clearly, a very small group of wealthy individuals and/or organizations are providing the bulk of the magazine’s revenue. 

This was, and remains, our main point. Mother Jones is not the grassroots publication it purports to be.

We apologize for the previous mis-statements of fact, but stand by the remainder of the report.