WaPo Hit Job on Kochs Relies on Soros-Funded Facts
The Washington Post slammed Charles and David Koch for their “political network” on the paper’s front page Jan. 6, but they partnered with a group funded by George Soros to get their information.
The Post proudly stated its partnership with the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a group they labeled “nonpartisan.” Nowhere in their 2,457-word hit job on the Kochs, did the Post mention CRP’s Soros funding or Soros’ similar network of organizations and media outlets he uses to influence politics and the economy.
Apparently blind to the hypocrisy, the Center for Responsive Politics has received $725,000 from liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2000. To the Post, the CRP was merely “a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.”
The Post attacked the Koch brothers, as well as a number of right-leaning groups, including the NRA, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Americans for Tax Reform.
The Washington Post only briefly touched on liberal donors, admitting that “[t]he left has its own financial muscle,” but it failed to mention Soros at all. While the article brought up liberal funding from unions and the liberal Democracy Alliance (an organization of liberal billionaires and strategists), it also failed to mention the money that other liberal billionaires and foundations have given.
In the past 10 years, Soros has given more than $550 million to liberal organizations in the United States. That total represents about 27 percent of the $2 billion given out by the American branches of his Open Society Foundations from 2000 to 2009. The Center for Responsive Politics received an additional $100,000 from liberal journalist Bill Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media and Democracy in 2004.
— Mike Ciandella is Research Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Mike Ciandella on Twitter.
