This is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be ruled out 100% with a funder ahead of time if they want to support truly “independent” work. Pre-screening and advance notice are often used as forms of censorship. To be clear, I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but the risks associated with the sort of process are clear. A strong, public conflict of interest policy can help mitigate these issues. More importantly, I think we’re reaching a point where public interest NGOs should make their agreements with major funders public. Not sure what that could look like, exactly, but it’s worth figuring it out, otherwise this is just going to keep happening.