We’ve know for years that billionaire speculator George Soros was funding “progressive” media.  In addition to direct support of many “progressive” “news” outlets (including the local Minnesota Independent, a news site seemingly entirely dedicated to covering Bradlee Dean and Michele Bachmann), Soros also helped launch and fund “Media Matters For America”, which generates the memes that the leftyblog hive uses up and down its chain of command.

But the mainstream media?

Yep, so it seems:

When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.

Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”

Of course, journalistic “ethical codes” are merely frameworks by which journalists can rationalize bad behavior, so that’s fairly meaningless.

The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal.

And the Pulitzer itself, while perhaps not a Soros joint, also has its slant.

In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.

We’ll be following this as it develops.

It’ll be interesting watching the mainstream media rationalizing this.  Expect lots of…:

• “The front office doesn’t affect the newsroom” (although they ignore that nuance when talking about Fox News…)
• “Oh, yeah? What about the Kocb Brothers?”  (Not sure that the Kochs perfectly legal contributes are to any organizations that are ostensibly “non-partisan” and “free of bias”).

But don’t expect to violate the “Society of Professional Journalists’ “Code of Ethics”” in any way.  Nothing ever does.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, May 13th, 2011 at 5:01 am and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.