George Soros isn't behind everything the left does, but it sure seems like he helps fund it all. The lefty magazine Mother Jones released a tape [1], reportedly obtained from a Democratic Super PAC in Kentucky, in an effort to hurt Mitch McConnell's bid for reelection in the U.S. Senate. But, Mother Jones has funding baggage of its own.
Mother Jones is the news outlet of The Foundation for National Progress [2], the left-wing "umbrella organization that exists to publish and support Mother Jones." It also founded the Media Consortium. The FNP received $485,000 in Soros funding in 2008. The Media Consortium, also still under the umbrella of the FNP, has received $675,000 since 2000, adding up to $1,160,000. Those figures come from 990 forms from Soros' Open Society Foundations.
The Media Consortium is designed to be a progressive "echo chamber," where left-wing media outlets can network and share ideas. Other members of the Consortium include such liberal outlets as The Nation, Alternet and The American Prospect.
The McConnell tape, released by Mother Jones and promoted by other media outlets, including all three major networks [3], was recorded by the liberal Democratic Super PAC Progress Kentucky, which has raised nearly $5 million in a campaign to replace McConnell in the U.S. Senate. The FBI is currently investigating [4] the legality of the recording. Mother Jones was also the news outlet that released the "47%" video of Mitt Romney [5] back in September of 2012.
Soros's donations go to fund an extensive network of liberal media outlets, which have received more than $52 million [6]. Those operations include a wide range of liberal news operations as well as the infrastructure of news - journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations. Since 2000, Soros has given away more than $550 million [7] to liberal organizations in the United States through his Open Society Foundations.
Progress Kentucky also made the news back in February, when the group tweeted out a racially-charged comment about McConnell's wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, suggesting that she was working to outsource jobs to China. The tweets have since been deleted, and Progress Kentucky issued a statement [8] apologizing for the incident.