Last of Four Parts
To hear the left tell it, Fox News has a "history of inciting Islamophobia and racial and ethic animosity" and tries to "race bait its viewers." One staffer is called a "hit man," while his network is accused of "attack politics." A highly questionable study is hyped by numerous outlets claiming that it "confirms that Fox News makes you stupid." Fox is called simply: "The Liars' Network."
Sure, liberals have it in for Fox News, but that deep-seated, anti-Fox agenda isn't just an organic response from the left. It's a George Soros-funded "echo chamber" "in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times." That's how the strategy was described in a report by the Soros-funded Media Consortium called "The Big Thaw."
The goal is "Taking Down Fox News," as "Mother Jones," a member of the consortium, described it in a headline. That article, about another Soros-funded operation called Color of Change, explained how "it successfully urged several advertisers, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and RadioShack, to pull their ads from Beck's show." In all, nearly 30 organizations have attacked Fox News in the six months since the beginning of December, 2010.
Think Progress, the heavily Soros-funded blog for the Center for American Progress, slammed Fox more than 30 times in six months. AlterNet, an especially unhinged liberal outlet, went after the network at least 18 times in those months. It is one of 45 organizations aided by Soros' support of the Media Consortium - "a network of the country's leading, progressive, independent media outlets."
These outlets are all part of Soros' web of media organizations that mirror his view of Fox as their enemy. That's the way he describes it in the new book, "The Philanthropy of George Soros." "Those in charge of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, have done well in identifying me as their adversary," he wrote. "They have done less well in the methods they used to attack me: Their lies shall not stand and their techniques shall not endure."
That anti-Fox agenda is reflected in plans by another group in Soros' pocket to target the network specifically. Media Matters founder David Brock said his Soros-funded operation ($1.1 million) will "focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests."
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute, which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
The left hating Fox isn't new. But the efforts of the different groups take on an amazing similarity. Take the University of Maryland study that seemed so critical of Fox News. The study itself included this nugget: "This suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on." That didn't stop any of the groups from using it against Fox News. AlterNet, Washington Monthly, Think Progress and The Nation. It quickly moved into the mainstream media from there.
That's just part of Soros' influence. He denies having a media empire, despite spending easily more than $48 million on that empire and having top journalists from more than 30 major news organizations serving on the boards of groups he funds. It reaches at least 180 media organizations, and many other groups he funds include a media component in what they do.
In the case of Robert Greenwald, he's turned attacking Fox into a mini-industry. Greenwald is founder and president of Brave New Films, also part of the Soros-funded Media Consortium. Greenwald was also behind "OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," The site for the movie that argues: "FOX News is on a witch hunt. Fight back." The Brave New Films site has an entire section going after Fox called: "When Fox Attacks." It claims: "Videos from this campaign have been viewed over 8 million times."
When Soros was criticized by Fox, multiple pieces of the Soros Empire responded. In one case, Jonathan Schell, a fellow at The Nation Institute, another part of the Media Consortium, made Fox News out to be anti-Semitic for criticizing Soros. An opinion piece titled, "The Protocols of Rupert Murdoch," a reference to the infamous anti-Semitic "Protocols of The Elders of Zion," blasted Glenn Beck.
Schell claimed Beck's criticism of 'the financier and philanthropist George Soros' in effect "recycles, almost in carbon copy, the tropes of the most virulent anti-Semitic ideologues." The column was distributed by another Soros-funded entity, Project Syndicate, which reaches "462 leading newspapers in 150 countries," with a monthly circulation of 72,815,528.
It's that sort of cooperation that makes the Soros-funded "echo chamber" successful. Go on AlterNet and find articles from The Nation, a rant by Robert Greenwald or an interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Or go on New America Media's site and find an article from Color Lines.
The content from the 180 media sites that Soros helps support can be linked, cited or reposted, adding to the sense that there is strong interest in any particular "progressive idea." It's just one more way George Soros influences the media.
Disclaimer: This writer has been on Fox News numerous times and writes a column that often runs on Foxnews.com. He has never received any compensation from Fox.
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.
