If you were the editor of a chain of Colorado newspapers, and the chain’s owner and his son controlled foundations that donated big bucks to an organization that you covered regularly, would you let readers know?
And what if the owner’s son also sits on the editorial board of your newspaper chain?
That hypothetical scenario has a real-world equivalent in Colorado.
The Colorado newspaper chain, called the Gazette, consists of the Colorado Springs Gazette, Colorado Politics, and the Denver Gazette.
The newspaper chain’s owner is billionaire GOP donor Phil Anschutz, via his company Clarity Media. He is nonexecutive chairman of the board of the Anschutz Foundation.
His son Christian Anschutz sits on the Gazette’s editorial board. Christian Anschutz is also president of the board of the Anschutz Foundation. He’s also the board chair of his own foundation, the Christian P. Anschutz Foundation.
And the organization that gets money from both Anschutz foundations is the Common Sense Institute (CSI), a right-wing think tank.
Colorado Times Recorder has published a series of investigations detailing the financial and other connections between Anschutz and CSI — as well as a conservative advocacy organization called Advance Colorado, which also gets money from Anschutz and is behind eight measures on November’s election ballot. CSI frequently issues papers in support of Advance Colorado’s ballot initiatives.
The Gazette chain, in turn, writes lots of articles about CSI’s research. In fact, CSI gets more coverage from the Gazette chain than from any other news outlet in the Newsbank database of 12,000 outlets. Forty percent of CSI’s press mentions between January 2020 and February 2026 were from the Gazette chain. And of news outlets in Colorado, the Gazette is by far the most likely to omit the fact that CSI is conservative.
RELATED: Common Dollars & Common Sense: Inside the Persuasion Machine Shaping Colorado Elections
Now the Colorado Times Recorder is providing a fuller picture of the funds both Phil and Christian Anschutz have given to CSI. Since 2014, foundations controlled by the father or son have given CSI grants totaling $735,000, including $585,000 since 2021, when CSI began expanding its operations.
Grants from the Anschutz Foundation totaled $635,000.
And Grants from the Christian P. Anschutz Foundation totaled $100,000.
Despite the donations totaling $735,000 from the Anschutzes’ foundations to CSI — and the fact that Christian Anschutz is on the editorial board of the Gazette chain (and Phil Anschutz owns it) — no disclosure appeared in articles the newspaper chain published this year — or apparently ever — that mentioned CSI.
For example, a story published by Colorado Politics on June 16 focused on a report from CSI, which claimed that a progressive ballot initiative “could undercut Colorado’s business competitiveness,” as the headline on the Colorado Politics news story characterized it.
The story didn’t disclose the Anschutzes’ donations to CSI. The same Colorado Politics news story favorably mentions (and links to) a ballot initiative backed by the conservative group Advance Colorado.
Another example: In June 2024, CSI released a report on fentanyl that it subsequently had to correct because it had exaggerated the drug’s potency, but not before the Gazette covered the report (and then updated it following CSI’s correction). Nowhere in the article, however, was the fact that, between their two foundations, Phil Anschutz and his son gave CSI nearly half a million dollars through 2023.
“Ethically Obligated To Disclose”
When a news outlet, like the Gazette chain, has a financial tie to a subject of a story, the connection should be disclosed, say journalism ethicists.
“When covering information or directly quoting the right-wing think tank the Common Sense Institute, the Gazette is ethically obligated to disclose the contributions that Anschutz family members and the foundations that bear their name have made to that Institute,” said University of Denver Prof. Lynn Schofield Clark, who directs the Estlow International Research Center for Journalism & New Media Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies. “Such disclosure is consistent with the American Press Institute’s ethical guidelines. Readers want to be able to trust that their news sources are free of bias. When those who own news organizations provide funding for organizations promoting particular viewpoints, we all need to know about it so that we can evaluate accordingly what they claim is ‘news.'”
Despite the absence of a disclosure on stories about CSI, editors at the Gazette appear to understand the expectation of disclosures related to the Anschutz family. Last year, when the wife of Christian Anschutz was the subject of a story, the newspaper — after pressure from journalists — published a disclosure stating in part, “The Denver Gazette’s parent company, Clarity Media Group, is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation.”
An email to Chris Reen, the publisher of the Gazette chain and also president of Clarity Media, seeking comment for this story was not returned. Last month, after the abrupt retirement of Executive Editor Vince Bzdek, Reen was installed as the top journalist at the Gazette chain, even though Reen represents the business interests of the Anschutzes, both at the Gazette and at Clarity Media, which also owns the conservative Washington Examiner. Reen has not responded to requests from the Colorado Times Recorder to explain why he’s qualified to be executive editor of the Gazette chain.
