Who's Behind World Net Daily

If this kind of stuff interests you, ConWebWatch tries to get to the bottom of who's funding the lunatic clearing house & right-wing conspiracy shop, World Net Daily:

WorldNetDaily has been notoriously close-lipped about who its backers are. Back in 2002, ConWebWatch asked WND founder and editor Joseph Farah who owns his company and who put up the $4.5 million in startup money for it; he answered the first question (he and the Western Journalism Center he co-founded own a majority of it) but not the second.

In the face of Farah and WND refusing to offer a straight answer, we set off to find one. A ConWebWatch investigation of Delaware corporate records (WND is registered as a Delaware corporation) shows that the members of WND's board of directors -- many of whom have presumably kicked in money for the operation -- are, in contrast to Richard Mellon Scaife's backing of NewsMax, not household names; they are mostly California-based activists who quietly support conservative causes.

The exception to those quiet, California-based traits is Robert Beale, a Minnesota-based technology firm owner who sat on the WND board of directors from 2000 to 2002. As ConWebWatch has noted, the only mentions of Beale by WND came in an April 2002 column by Farah thanking him (and many others) by name as Farah prepared to move from Oregon to the Washington area "to become more visible," and in a June 2003 article by Art Moore detailing Beale's complaint that Minnesota officials seized his $3 million, 30-room house for back taxes. Beale insisted he was not a Minnesota resident at the time and doesn't owe the taxes, but he refused to fight the seizure in state tax court because he denies its legitimacy. The end of the article states: "By way of disclosure, Robert Beale is a board member and stockholder in WorldNetDaily.com."

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