By: V4 Agency
The media empire financed by US stock market speculator George Soros features numerous organisations and the world’s most renowned editors and journalists are also among the leaders of groups enjoying the support of the Open Society Foundations.
There are press products and organisations all across the globe to propagate George Soros’s views and they receive significant financial support for their activities from the Open Society Foundations (OSF). Organisations operating within Soros’s network often have journalists and media workers on their boards and advisory bodies.
The foundation run by US stock market speculator George Soros is not only invoved in the financing of human rights and pro-migration organisations,…
United States
Center for Public Integrity (CPI)
The organisation describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom investigating democracy, power and privilege”. Their “reporting focuses on the influence of money and the impact of inequality on our society”. CPI enjoys support from two organisations funded by George Soros, The Washington Post reported back in 2011.Back then, CPI’s board of directors included a host of famous journalists, just like today:
Bill Buzenberg: vice-president of news at both National Public Radio and American Public Media / Minnesota Public Radio.
Christiane Amanpour: former anchor at ABC, currently with CNN.
Arianna Huffington: co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.
Sheila Coronel: former director of The Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Jennifer 8. Lee: spent nine years as a journalist at The New York Times.
Olivia Ma: was the news manager and a member of YouTube’s News and Politics Team. Currently, she is the director of the Google News Lab.
Amit Paley: former foreign correspondent and investigative journalist for The Washington Post.
Erin Schulte Collier: former reporter and columnist for wjs.com for five years, among other jobs.
CPI editor-in-chief, Matt DeRienzo, was previously vice president of news at Hearst’s newspapers in Connecticut.
Mei Fong, director of communications and strategy, worked as staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal’s China bureau.
Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR)
The organisation’s website says: “We are facing an unprecedented number of urgent global crises: the spread of COVID-19, a reckoning over racial injustice, devastating climate events, growing wealth gaps, global migration, the rise of fascism. Our investigative reporting consistently contributes to real-world impact.” In 2018, CIR received 650 thousand dollars in funding from the Open Society Foundations. Its board of directors include:
Phil Bronstein: former director of content development for Hearst Newspapers, as well as executive vice president and editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Suzette Clarke: was an independent producer for Wired, BBC, PBS and Channel Four Films.
Robert King: senior vice president of ESPN.
Robert J. Rosenthal: worked for 22 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer and also reported for The Boston Globe and The New York Times.
ProPublica
The organisation describes itself as “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force”. In 2018, the organisation admitted being financed by George Soros’s OSF, although it tried to downplay it by saying that OSF funded less than 2 per cent of their operations. ProRepublica’s leadership includes:
Paul Steiger (founder): former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal for more than 10 years.
Claire Bernard: wrote for Vogue, The Huffington Post, and Vanity Fair.
Mark Colodny: began his career as a journalist at Fortune magazine.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: wrote for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time.
Claire Hoffman: was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
Members of the organisation’s Journalism Advisory Board include:
Jill Abramson: Former Executive Editor of The New York Times.
L. Gordon Crovitz: Former journalist of the Wall Street Journal.
Free Press
“We seek to change the media to transform democracy to realize a just society,” the organisation’s website says.
In 2017, Free Press received 875 thousand dollars from OSF. Interestingly, there are numerous university professors on its board:
Ben Scott: Former director of the German think-tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, also funded by George Soros. Scott also appeared in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign team.
Olga M. Davidson: works at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations at Boston University.
Victor Pickard: associate professor of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where he heads the Media, Inequality and Change (MIC) Center.
Robert W. McChesney: professor at the Department of Communication of the University of Illinois.
Europe
Balkan Investigative Regional Network (BIRN)
The organisation received 37.4 thousand dollars from the Soros network in 2018. They have offices in six countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Romania) and employ dozens of journalists. The management also includes journalists who used to work for well-known media outlets:
Ana Petruseva: worked for Reuters, Deutsche Welle, Telma TV and Dnevnik.
Robert Bierman: was the CEO of Washington Post Live.
Steve Crawshaw: has been employed by several organisations funded by George Soros (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch), and worked for Granada Television and Independent.
Tim Judah: worked at The BBC and has also been a Balkan correspondent for The Times and The Economist.
Direkt36 Ujsagiro Kozpont Nonprofit Kft.
It describes itself on its website as an “investigative journalism centre.” It received nearly 50 thousand dollars from Soros’s Foundation twice in 2018. Their advisory board includes:
Marton Galambos: founding editor-in-chief of the Hungarian edition of Forbes magazine.
Ellen Hume: worked as a White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and a reporter for Los Angeles Times.
Fundacion Porcausa De Investigacion Y Periodismo
The Spanish organisation received 80 thousand dollars in funding from OSF in 2018. Its website states that they are etrying to transform the production and dissemination of knowledge and truthful information, so that they reach the largest possible number of people. The organisation’s sponsors include:
Gonzalo Fanjul: author of the 3,500 Millions blog of El País.
Gumersindo Lafuente: the deputy director of eldiario.es.
Soledad Gallego-Díaz: the current director of El País.
Iñaki Gabilondo: worked mainly in radio and television, for media outlets such as Radio 16, Televisión Espanola, Cadena SER, Cuatro, CNN + and Canal +
Journalismfund.eu vzw
On its website the Brussels-based organisation states that it is “dedicated to advancing independent cross-border investigative journalism across Europe in order to promote democracy.” In 2018, they received 500 thousand dollars from George Soros, and their board members include:
Piet Depuydt: a journalist of the Belgian newspaper De Tijd. He has also worked for the Dutch NRC Handelsblad.
Iris Musschoot: talent & development manager at the Belgian public broadcaster VRT.
Margo Smit: the ombudsman for the Dutch public broadcaster NPO. She has worked for several newspapers.
Hans Wolters: COO of the Soros-funded European Council on Foreign Relations in London
The organisation’s international advisory board has nearly 30 journalists.
