In her first week on the job last year, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that she planned to shake up the establishment-oriented press corps by creating a seat at White House press briefings reserved for new media outlets — a broad category that would include “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators,” she said. 

One recent pick for the daily new media seat in the rotation stood out: Drop Site News, a publication founded in the summer of 2024 to offer reporting explicitly hostile to Israel over the war in Gaza and the U.S. response to it. 

The far-left Drop Site’s inclusion among the outlets in Sunday’s press rotation — the group of TV, radio and print outlets selected to travel with and report on the president for the day — was a marked contrast to the mostly right-wing outlets like The Federalist and Gateway Pundit that are usually selected. Some newer, more centrist sites like Semafor and NOTUS have also been selected for the new media seat. 

Drop Site launched in July 2024 with an 8,000-word interview with two senior Hamas leaders in an article described as an “exclusive” conversation with officials from the terrorist group about “their motivations, political objectives and the human costs of their armed uprising against Israel.” Since then, the outlet has gained a reputation of credulously reporting on Hamas’ claims and repeating the group’s propaganda. 

Last April, Drop Site’s official X account, which has 273,000 followers, shared a message from Hamas calling for “days of rage in the face of the occupation and its supporters.” Drop Site has also vigorously argued that claims that Hamas terrorists raped anyone during the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel are false, despite widespread Israeli testimony to the contrary. A recent social media post from the site called it a “racist lie” to claim that rape occurred on Oct. 7. 

A national security reporter at Drop Site said in a post on X in January that Iran “should have fired every single missile on Oct. 8 while Israel was in disarray.” Amid anti-government protests in Iran that were violently suppressed by the regime last month, Drop Site shared a video that reportedly showed thousands of people marching “to express unity with the Islamic Republic’s leadership and reject what officials described as foreign-linked unrest and plots aimed at destabilizing the country.” 

Drop Site was founded by Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim and Nausicaa Renner, veterans of the far-left investigative outlet The Intercept and outspoken critics of Israel. Scahill described Drop Site as “a non-aligned, investigative news organization” that will take “big swings at powerful people and institutions.” Grim did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. 

The news outlet is a nonprofit, funded by reader contributions. It is fiscally sponsored by Social Security Works Education Fund, a Washington organization that educates about the importance of Social Security benefits. Open Society Foundations, George Soros’ philanthropic organization, donated $250,000 to Drop Site in 2024 to support its Middle East coverage, the Washington Free Beacon reported. 

In September 2025, Drop Site promoted a fundraiser to “help the journalists in Gaza City evacuate safely.”

Drop Site’s inclusion in the press pool occurred on a Sunday, when Leavitt did not host a press briefing, so its reporter did not get the opportunity to ask a question. Still, the outlet chosen to fill the new media slot is selected by the White House communications team, not by the independent White House Correspondents Association. 

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. 

In December, Scahill went to Doha, Qatar, to interview Khaled Meshaal, who spent 20 years leading Hamas’ political bureau. Drop Site published the text of their interview in full, in which Meshaal offered a look at how Hamas views the publication: “I appreciate your keenness to conduct this interview and for providing this space and platform for me and for all those who represent the Palestinian cause,” Meshaal said.