Opinion: IRS Slow to Approve on Nonprofit Journalism Groups, Too

Leaders of a transparency watchdog group and a nonprofit investigative reporting organization assert in a Washington Post opinion piece that the “real scandal at the Internal Revenue Service” is not about targeting conservative political groups but stifling journalism outfits.

Kathy Kiely, managing editor at the Sunlight Foundation, and Diana Jean Schemo, executive editor of 100Reporters, write that since 2008 the lag time for approval of journalism groups’ applications for tax-exempt status has grown from three months to two to three years.

The authors cite recent findings by the Council on Foundations, the Knight Foundation, and other philanthropic groups that the IRS is seemingly “slow-walking” 501(c)(3) applications from the nonprofit journalism start-ups that have proliferated amid financial troubles in the commercial news media. 100Reporters has been waiting nearly a year for its IRS review and has lost donors as a result, they say.