Two liberal media groups are joining forces. CNBC reported on Aug. 13, that NBCUniversal has invested $200 million in the privately-owned digital media company Vox Media.
Vox Media Chairman and CEO Jim Bankoff told Squawk Box that the money would be going into building Vox brands, advertising capabilities, technology and infrastructure.
“We want to be the leading media company going into this next generation, and that requires -- in a changing environment we want to make sure we have the capital to do what we need to in order to act opportunistically,” Bankoff said.
In early 2014, Vox Media brought on former Washington Post WonkBlog writer and MSNBC contributor Ezra Klein (and two other Washington Post bloggers) to start a project which would ultimately become the liberal website Vox.com. Vox Media owns a few other websites as well, including SB Nation, Re/code, and Eater.
According to Politico, Klein first asked the Washington Post to foot the $10 million bill for his venture, but the Post said no. Comcast, the owner of NBCUniversal, ended up financially sponsoring the startup.
Since the March 2014 launch, Vox.com has been earning well deserved criticism, both for its liberalism and its poor news judgment. Just three weeks after going live, Vox.com conducted an interview on income inequality in a DC bar serving $16 cocktails. Even MSNBC staff don’t take Vox.com seriously.
In 2010, Klein made disparaging comments about the Constitution on MSNBC saying, “the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago.” He also said reading the Constitution aloud is a “gimmick” because “it has no binding power on anything.”
Klein is also known for starting the infamous private liberal media listserve, JournoList, where like-minded media from top liberal news outlets like the Washington Post, The New York Times, and Newsweek discussed how to best control the media message.
NBCUniversal, Comcast, and Vox Media have all demonstrated their allegiance to lefty bias through donations to Obama, support for environmentalism and bashing conservatives.
