Tag: George Soros

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Keep Big Bird, Ditch the News: A Path Forward for PBS With Budget Cuts

As was the case a half-dozen years ago, PBS and NPR are again the subject of a contentious debate about their taxpayer funding, this time courtesy of President Trump. The problem with that debate, then and now, is that like so many policy disputes, the arguments employed oversimplify the facts and ignore the obvious. I wrote about this matter in 2011 in a piece published in the now-defunct app called The Daily. What follows is an update of that piece.

For years, Republicans and conservatives have accused NPR and PBS of ideological and political bias. Things came to a head in 2010 when NPR fired Juan Williams as a commentator for allegedly making anti-Muslim remarks, and NPR successfully solicited funding for local reporting from a foundation controlled by the uber liberal George Soros.

This perception of bias would be noteworthy enough even if these broadcasters were not financially supported by taxpayers, conditioned on explicit statutory language requiring objectivity and balance. Since, however, they are, the ubiquity and durability of this perception becomes very nearly miraculous. Surely it’s not easy to so thoroughly offend one of the two major parties that, in the House vote in 2011, virtually every Republican member voted to defund NPR » Read More

Maines is president of The Media Institute. The opinions expressed are his alone and not those of The Media Institute, its board, advisory councils, or contributors. The full version of this article appeared in The Hill on March 21, 2017.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Who’s Behind the Push for Net Neutrality?

If “net neutrality” were a life form, it would be classified as a simple organism.  And that lack of complexity, as it happens, is its very appeal to certain “progressives,” garden-variety regulators, and large Internet companies, who see in government regulation of the Internet opportunities to cement and extend their franchises.

The brave and gifted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Ajit Pai, and former commissioner Robert McDowell, are doing all they can to point out the many already identifiable problems, as well as potential pitfalls, that line the path of this regulatory nightmare.  Among those problems are higher user fees to consumers, a slowdown in the rate of investment in broadband infrastructure, regulatory creep, and the wrong kind of example to set before foreign dictators and tyrants.

Alas, none of this is likely to deter the three Democratic FCC commissioners, as instructed by the White House, from passing this regulation.

What has not been much discussed in all of this is the role in the promotion of net neutrality played by some of the actors: activist groups like Free Press, Public Knowledge, and Media Matters; huge grant-giving foundations like the Ford, Soros, and Knight foundations; and companies like Google.   >>Read More

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Revolting Truth

Among the unhappier facts of life in America these days is that more than a few people support the suppression of speech.

The latest evidence of this is the formation earlier this month of a group called Truth Revolt.  Created by David Horowitz, a conservative activist (and erstwhile leftist), TR says its mission is to:

Unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases….

Truth Revolt works to make advertisers and funders aware of the leftist propaganda they sponsor – and bringing social consequences to bear to create pressure on such advertisers and funders.

True to their word, the group published a story last week asking advertisers to drop their support of Al Sharpton’s MSNBC program, Politics Nation. If this sounds familiar, that could be because it bears a striking resemblance to the actions of another group, Media Matters. Founded by liberal activist (and one-time conservative) David Brock, MM has targeted advertisers on shows like Rush Limbaugh and cable’s FOX News

Given their past ideological affinities, and their colorful take on things today, it would be amusing to see Horowitz and Brock duke it out in a debate.  But apart from the muckraking both of them relish, there’s a serious problem with campaigns that seek to silence the speech of those with whom they disagree.

Contrary to popular opinion, however, that problem is not that such campaigns violate the First Amendment.  In fact, the First Amendment doesn’t come into play at all here, except to the extent that these organizations’ right to engage in such behavior is protected against any governmental efforts as might seek to curtail them.

Indeed, when groups like Truth Revolt or Media Matters conjure up campaigns against their ideological enemies, and even when they attempt to silence individuals or media companies by attacking their commercial supporters, they are engaging in fully protected constitutional speech. But that doesn’t mean it’s right, or that it’s consistent with any decent regard for freedom of speech.

The First Amendment exists primarily to protect against governmental interference or control over speech, political speech especially, but the point of it is the protection of speech.  To put it another way, we don’t venerate the First Amendment because it protects the First Amendment; we venerate it because it recognizes the value in, and the basic human right of, the expression of one’s opinions.  Indeed, many countries practice a substantial degree of free speech without even having a First Amendment or its equivalent.

Campaigns mounted against the advertisers of disfavored programs or individuals cross the line between criticism and suppression.  The same could be said of certain attempts by third parties to use government agencies like the FCC to censor TV content they dislike.  Petitioning the FCC is legal, but calling for government censorship threatens the freedom of speech of the writers and copyright holders of those shows.

Because it’s been launched just this month, we don’t yet know what kind of reception or impact Truth Revolt will have.  But if the example of Media Matters is any guide, we can be fairly sure that it will scare away some advertisers, and that the media will cover its actions uncritically … or maybe not.

Founded in 2004, and financially supported by people like George Soros and the wealthy group of liberals that comprise the Democracy Alliance, Media Matters has the ear of many mainstream journalists and news organizations.  And given the liberal bent of much of the mainstream media, it may well be that Truth Revolt will have to depend more on the so-called conservative media for coverage of its campaigns, but probably not always, and not without effect.

Though it’s been reported that Democracy Alliance has moved in recent years more in the direction of a partisan organization favoring Democrats, rather than a progressive infrastructure-building group, the irony of its support of outfits like Media Matters can be seen in its description of itself as a group that “strives to foster an open, vibrant democracy.”

How that is consistent with funding an outfit that traffics in the 21st century’s version of book burning is something perhaps only a “progressive” can explain. And it’s something to ponder as the country celebrates Free Speech Week this month.

                                               

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils. A version of this article appeared in the online edition of USA Today on Oct. 17, 2013.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Funding Net Neutrality … And Worse

There are so many things wrong with the FCC’s codified “net neutrality” rules, the kindest thing one can say about those responsible is that they were all born yesterday.  But criticism of this monstrosity abounds already, and given the potential for it to be wholly or partly undone by the courts or Congress, no further discussion of its many flaws is either timely or necessary.

Just before Christmas, however, John Fund wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal that ought to be required reading for every media and communications mogul in America.  Titled “The Net Neutrality Coup,” Fund recounts the role played by a handful of large grant-giving foundations, and the beneficiaries of their largesse (“paid clappers,” in Ted Turner’s immortal phrase) in the promotion of this cynical creation of the “media reform” movement.

Perhaps the greatest value in Fund’s piece is his finding that most of those foundations that provided the lion’s share of funding for net neutrality were also among the biggest sources of funding for the earlier (and even worse) mischief, “campaign finance reform.”

Fund identifies by name a total of six grant-giving foundations and four operating organizations.  They are, among the former: the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation.

The four operating groups are Free Press, Public Knowledge, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the New America Foundation.  What all of these groups – funders and recipients alike – share in common is that, to varying degrees, they are all liberal-leaning, or “progressive,” as they yearn to be called nowadays.

Missing from this list is another billion-dollar grant-giving group – the Knight Foundation – which, through the Knight Commission, has itself peddled  net neutrality, along with such pap as the need for greater funding of public broadcasting, and tax credits for investigative journalism.  Though we won’t know for sure until its report is issued, the FCC appears to have adopted the Knight Commission’s recommendations as a kind of blueprint in its approach to the commission’s so-called Future of Media initiative.

The reason all of this should be of the greatest importance to everyone, but particularly to titans of media and communications, is simple: The communications policy views of grant-making groups like the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation (not to mention Free Press) are inimical to the well being of media and communications companies.

It’s not entirely clear why the “progressive” moneybags’ lavish spending has not incited individuals with different political views, many of whom have amassed great wealth in the media and communications business, to fund non-profit organizations with more pro-business communications policy views.  Perhaps it’s because some of them, having gotten theirs and now in retirement, no longer care much what happens to the industry of which they were once a part.  Or maybe it’s because many don’t think of themselves, or want others to think of them, as “conservatives,” whatever that means in the context of communications policymaking.

But a likelier explanation is that many fail to understand what a threat to their own and their industry’s welfare some of these groups actually pose.  Perhaps because businessmen are very good at lobbying, and understand the ins and outs of PACs, they don’t see the need to engage their critics in the worlds of academia or think tankery.

It’s a mistake, that, because in truth it’s the people who deal in ideas – intellectuals and artists, activists and policy wonks – who are often the engines in the development of policy issues in which legislators and regulators are but the last people to board the train.  Witness, for instance, net neutrality.

As John Fund puts it, in the conclusion of his WSJ piece, “So the ‘media reform’ movement paid for research that backed its views, paid activists to promote the research, saw its allies installed in the FCC and other key agencies, and paid for the FCC research that evaluated the research they had already paid for.  Now they have their policy.  That’s quite a coup.”

                                                
The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not necessarily of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Juan Williams and NPR

OK, so right off the bat let’s deal with what NPR’s firing of Juan Williams is, and what it is not.  It is a free speech issue, but it is not a First Amendment issue.  This is an important distinction because while many First Amendment issues involve freedom of speech, and many free speech issues involve the First Amendment, it is not the case that all free speech issues are First Amendment issues.

At bottom, the Speech Clause of the First Amendment is a proscription on what government can do to the media, not on what the media can do themselves.  As a practical matter what this means is that NPR’s management had the right to do what they did, and that, were this matter to go before a court, its resolution would not turn on First Amendment case law.

This said, the wisdom of the action taken, and what it suggests about the future of freedom of expression generally, are very much at issue here.

People of a certain age may remember the sad case of Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder, who was fired by CBS for some bizarre off-the-cuff comments he made about black athleticism while having a meal at a Washington restaurant.  Other similar cases are those of Don Imus, and more recently Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez.

So while there are some important differences in these cases, we’re beginning to see a pattern here: When reporters and commentators say things that arguably offend minorities (and thereby disturb the politically correct equilibrium) they get fired.  And the question is whether this is the right, or even the intelligent, way to deal with such issues, especially for media companies?

It used to be believed that the best way to handle speech that is unfair or false was for more speech, not less, and by that measure a better way to have resolved many of these matters would have been for management to issue comments that mock, or directly challenge the falsities, in the offending comments.

Though the dust hasn’t even begun to settle, it’s already clear what many people, of varying political stripes, think of the way NPR has handled the Williams affair: They think it’s a disaster.  As Howard Kurtz, formerly of the Washington Post, put it in a Daily Beast piece: “His firing has backfired, handing FOX a victory and making Williams a symbol of liberal intolerance — on the very day NPR announced a grant from George Soros that it never should have accepted.”

Indeed, the Soros revelation, combined with Republican and (especially) conservative antipathy for taxpayer support of PBS and NPR, guarantee that the Williams flap is not going away any time soon.  As lamented here, there has been a coordinated and richly financed effort underway for months that has, as part of its aim, a substantial increase in government funding for public media generally, and that would oblige PBS member stations to redirect their news programs to more local coverage — the very thing that Soros’s contribution is designed to facilitate at NPR.

But that is a story that will play itself out in days to come.  Front and center now is the question of the impact of the Williams affair on NPR, in which regard it might be useful to examine a couple statements; the offending one, made by Williams, and another, made after his firing, by the president of NPR, Vivian Schiller.

Here’s Williams’s comment: “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot.  But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

And here’s Schiller’s: “Juan Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims between himself and his psychiatrist or his publicist.”

Under pressure, Schiller later apologized for her remark, but going forward that may not mean much.  Put it this way, of these two comments which one do you think is the most mean-spirited and intemperate?  And of the acts at issue — Williams’s comments or his firing – which one do you think does more damage to NPR?

Yes, I think so too.

                                                                           

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not necessarily of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Jane Mayer and the Brothers Koch

If your taste in journalism and politics runs to artless screeds and hatchet jobs, you might want to read Jane Mayer’s “Covert Operations,” published in the Aug. 30 issue of the New Yorker.  Having earlier pilloried such as Dick Cheney and Clarence Thomas, Mayer now does the remarkable – she pillories some more conservatives.

Her latest targets are the wealthy Koch brothers, Charles and David, who together run Koch Industries, the country’s second largest privately held corporation.  Make no mistake, it’s not their wealth that Mayer dislikes, it’s their politics.  This becomes clear (early on and without surcease thereafter) by the sources she quotes and by her strained attempt to brand the Kochs’ philanthropy as something not merely conservative (and therefore wrong) but venal and surreptitious as well.

But never mind.  Other people (as shown here and here) have already undertaken the easy job of deconstructing Mayer’s fable, and in any case, with their kind of money and influence the brothers Koch can take care of themselves.  The objection here is with something Mayer writes virtually in passing, not about the Kochs but about another politically active philanthropist, albeit one with very different political views – George Soros.

Here’s the offending text:

Of course, Democrats give money, too.  Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America.  Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s.  But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that “none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.”  (Emphasis added.)

How many things are wrong with this paragraph?  Let’s count the ways.  First, there’s the very brevity of it.  Here we have what purports to be an expose of extraordinary and dangerous influence on the political process, and George Soros is treated to precisely 74 words – in an article that totals nearly 10,000.

The second problem is the false claim, unchallenged by Mayer, that Soros’s contributions are “transparent.”  As the head of an organization that every day has to contend with the misrepresentations and outright lies of one of the Open Society Institute’s grantees – Free Press – let me report that nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, the amount and kind of Soros’s (and OSI’s) funding of groups like Free Press is unknown (and of no apparent interest to reporters, “investigative” or otherwise.)

There’s yet another problem with the quote attributed to Soros’s spokesman, namely, the assertion that none of his giving benefits his economic interests.  Not to put too fine a point on it, how would anyone know?  After all, the gentleman made his bones in international finance as a currency speculator.  And as recently as March of last year, in the middle of the recession, he was quoted as boasting that he was “having a very good crisis.”

Point being, of course, that hedge funds and other investors often profit by going “short” on securities as diverse as bonds, equities, commodities, and currencies.  In other words, it’s entirely possible, if he’s been making bearish bets, that Soros’s investments have been enhanced by his philanthropy, such have been the disastrous economic consequences of the public policies and politicians he supports.

This said, the thing that’s most wrongheaded about the paragraph at issue is the notion that people’s political views are suspect only when they’re (arguably) motivated by some economic interest.

This canard has been so widely circulated for so long it’s rarely challenged, but it should be.  This, because as anyone who has ever worked in policy circles knows well, those people who are the least objective and truthful are political activists, of whatever cause or political stripe, whose satisfactions come not so much from financial rewards as from the psychological satisfaction they gain as warriors in political crusades.

Consider, again, the example of Free Press.  This noxious organization, whose founders’ political views are in fact incompatible with a free press, makes much of the fact that it doesn’t receive funding from for-profit corporations.  But it gets lots of money from ideologically motivated groups like the Open Society Institute.

That this financial circumstance is treated by so many journalists as thereby absolving Free Press, and kindred organizations, from the kind of skepticism and scrutiny they visit on those that derive some or all of their funding from for-profit entities, amounts to a double standard of some considerable moment.  Because the fact is that, however much the Kochs and other businessmen may contribute to non-profit organizations, it’s a pittance compared to the kind of money provided to left-leaning organizations by the country’s major grant-making foundations.

And what’s the upshot of that?  If you’re a left-of-center activist you have a good chance of scoring big bucks from foundations with a keen political interest in your activities, and as a bonus you can go about your business free of worry that Jane Mayer, or some other reporter, will ever accuse you of being a mouthpiece for “vested interests.”

As in the title of the movie, it’s a wonderful life!

                                                           

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not necessarily of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.