In January 2022, former CIA agent-turned whistleblower, John Kiriakou revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy—a non-profit corporation created in the 1980s by President Ronald Reagan and funded by the United States Congress—had funnelled millions of dollars into British independent media groups since 2016. These include investigative outlets such as Bellingcat, Finance Uncovered and openDemocracy, as well as media freedom and training organisations like Index on Censorship, Article 19, the Media Legal Defence Initiative, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.[1]