The Associated Press (AP) fawned over the history and new direction of leftist billionaire Alex Soros’ grant-making behemoth, Open Society Foundations (OSF).
In a July 16 article, the AP carried water for Soros’ restructuring of the OSF, highlighting a new initiative to allocate $400 million to move Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Malaysia and Indonesia away from cheap and abundant sources of energy.
The puff article, which praised the OSF as “one of the biggest funders of human rights advocates and supporters of political dissidents around the world,” had zero criticism of the potentially massive impacts of this spending on the developing nations.
“The goal of the investment was to produce sustainable jobs and a shift toward clean energy and away from carbon intensive industries in Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Malaysia and Indonesia,” OSF President Binaifer Nowrojee told the AP.
The AP and Nowrojee both chose to ignore how important “carbon-intensive” activities are to both developing and developed nations. Oil, natural gas and coal supplied 82% of the world’s energy needs in 2022 and 84% of the world’s energy needs in 2023 according to the Energy Institute. Highly in-demand materials like plastic, cement, steel and fertilizer require fossil fuels for their production and transportation.
Nevertheless, the AP had nothing to report about the OSF plan to push governments to offer tax breaks to compliant businesses, alongside substantial funding for like-minded “think tanks” and “civil society groups.”
This uncritical coverage of Soros’ move is unsurprising as the AP is not neutral on the green agenda. In 2023, a Media Research Center study uncovered that the AP relentlessly pushed climate change propaganda after receiving millions from leftist donors in 2022. The AP also received $300,000 from the Danish eco-extremist group, the KR Foundation, which pushes for the complete abandonment of oil and coal.
Past attempts by environmentalists to impose their green agenda have gone poorly. For instance, in April 2021, Sri Lanka switched away from synthetic fertilizer to organic fertilizer leading to the decimation of food and tea production. Nearly a third of the country’s debt in 2022 was held by ESG-obsessed asset manager BlackRock and the United Nations supported Sri Lanka’s disastrous move by giving them a high ESG score. By July 2022, the switch to organic fertilizer led to massive protests, culminating in the collapse of the Sri Lanka government as hungry protestors stormed the presidential residence and forced the president and prime minister to resign.
Not satisfied with lionizing Alex Soros’ leadership and recent OSF spending, the AP also put a positive spin on the history of the OSF. The outlet wrote that OSF founder George Soros, “survived the Nazi occupation,” entirely neglecting to mention his time spent accompanying an official charged with helping the Nazis confiscate the property of Jewish people in Hungary. Soros himself admitted to this during a 60 Minutes interview.
The AP continued to cast the OSF as a human rights defender against authoritarian regimes while discussing its history. The article complained that Soros’ OSF and his Central European University had been “effectively forced out” of Hungary. Immediately following this, the AP warned that “Authoritarianism and populism is surging in many countries, including in Europe.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact the Associated Press at 212-621-1500 and demand it stop acting as a mouthpiece for the climate change activist lobby.
