The Media Research Center’s Tom Olohan devoted a Nov. 29 post ranting that a George Soros-funded group did to right-wing groups what the MRC did to Soros — point out funding:
An organization funded by a leftist billionaire recently published a report smearing donors to political and media groups on the right.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) Research Director David Armiak published an article on Nov. 17 classifying the financial backers of the DonorTrust non-profit as people fueling so-called “culture wars and spreading climate misinformation, Trump’s big lie, and hate.” Armiak listed a large number of political, media and non-profit organizations including the Media Research Center, which he said received $160,600 from DonorTrust.
The CMD sought to target donors to DonorTrust, in an alleged effort to combat dark money in politics and limit the influence of billionaire Charles Koch. Despite this stance, the CMD has hypocritically taken money from leftist groups like billionaire George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society and from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation in order to complete its “opposition research” and left-wing “agitation” work, according to Influence Watch.
Olohan can’t even get the name of the group that his employer has taken money from — it’s DonorsTrust, not DonorTrust. Olohan also doesn’t explain what, exactly, the “smear” is of DonorsTrust since he doesn’t dispute the accuracy of anything in the article, and he’s not going to admit that, by this same definition, the MRC “smeared” Soros by obsessively looking into what he funded. Instead, Olohan tried to portray fairly mainstream liberal views advanced by CMD as “radical”:
The CMD has also embraced radical positions on energy. In 2022, the CMD published an article that referred to ESG disclosures and divesting from “waning” fossil fuels as “routine practices.” The CMD has even positioned itself to the left of leftist billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who has bragged about shutting down coal plants and pushing states to adopt net-zero policies. A 2020 CMD article scolded Bloomberg for being unwilling to immediately get rid of natural gas and further cripple American energy.
Moreover, Armiak wrote about the alleged “manufactured crisis around so-called ‘woke’ capitalism, which demonizes companies that embrace environmental, social, and governance factors (ESG) in their business and investing practices.” Concerns about ESG investing are not a “manufactured crisis.”
Of course, as part of the right-wing noise machine loudly complaining about ESG, Olohan would deny it’s a “manufactured crisis,” even as he went on to continue to manufacture it, whining that “Aside from environmentalist pressure campaigns, organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) impose their own ESG scores to pressure companies.”
The MRC finished out 2023 and entered 2024 making its usual attacks on George Soros:
- Shellenberger to Tucker: Soros and Bloomberg Promote ‘Anti-Human Death Cult’ (in which Olohan touted how Michael Shellenberger “attacking leftists such as Soros and Bloomberg for their efforts to deprive humanity of not only coal but also natural gas and nuclear energy”)
- ‘Not for Sale’: Ex-Prosecutors Hail Voters’ Latest Rebuke of Soros Money
- Soros Family to Flood Youth Organizations with Cash Ahead of 2024 Election (yes, Olohan did exactly what he complained CMD was doing to right-wing donors)
- Soros-Backed Disgraced DA Feted by MSNBC Will Not Seek Reelection
Catherine Salgado spent a Jan. 16 post whining that a college Soros has funded is targeting misinformation in artificial intelligence:
A college that has received substantial funds from leftist billionaire George Soros suggested tech companies, particularly artificial intelligence, aren’t censoring enough speech.
Bard College, which has received over a billion dollars in donations and endowment pledge from Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), published a Jan. 13 post on combating artificial intelligence (AI)-generated “disinformation,” the favorite leftist catchphrase to justify censorship.
While seeming to approve of some aspects of X’s (formerly Twitter) Community Notes fact-checking program, the college also promoted Financial Times tech correspondent Hannah Murphy’s assertions that Big Tech isn’t doing enough to quash free speech.
“In a long essay on the dangers and challenges of AI generated disinformation, Hannah Murphy pretty much gives up,” Bard gloomily noted. “She ends her essay arguing that there may simply be no way to combat such advanced disinformation.” Bard noted that Murphy accused some social media, notably X, of not crushing speech enough.
X and Telegram have more “disinformation” now, argued Murphy and Bard, “because [perpetrators] know that the legacy platforms are putting resources into” censorship. X does have Community Notes, which add labels to and then demonetizes posts. Community Notes is censorship under another name, so it’s no surprise that anti-free speech Bard seemed undetermined on whether to critique or praise them.
We’ve documented how the MRC thinks Community Notes is “censorship” when it’s used to fact-check right-wingers (but has no problem with it when used to fact-check liberals).
Salgado returned for a Jan. 19 post engaging in the MRC’s usual dishonest framing of attempts to counter lies and misinformation as “censorship”:
The CEO of an organization funded by leftist billionaire George Soros went to Davos to whine that some U.S. government censorship actions have been restricted.
During the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Davos 2024 conference, Center for Democracy and Technology CEO Alexandra Reeve Givens pushed for increased censorship of free speech and fear-mongered about “AI-generated misinformation,” as reported by Reclaim the Net. Givens even specifically cited her Center’s work with election officials to boost only sources of which she approves and censor other voices, potentially an endorsement of election interference. Such actions seemed unsurprising given her Center’s funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF).
After praising the Biden administration and whining that the majority of election officials don’t search for information from government websites, she endorsed “legislation and regulation” to address supposed misinformation. “So in the United States, for example, right now we have congressional investigations and lawsuits against people that study misinformation about elections on social media platforms,” Givens said.
The MRC, of course, has been a leader in harassing people who try to counter online lies and misinformation because right-wingers rely on them to advance narratives and don’t want people to know the truth.