George Soros funding "grassroots" media activism
It was only natural that, once Canadian conservatives started the work of forming a conservative news network, that Canadian leftists would blow a gasket.
They actually weren't alone.
An intriguing new detail in the Canadian left's efforts to derail a conservative news network in the participation of Avaaz.org, a George Soros-funded organization dedicated to global leftism.
The organization has been organizing an anti-Sun TV petition which has already earned a few black eyes. Journalists who did not sign the petition were signed up for it. After Avaaz accused proponents of Sun TV of sabotaging the petitioon, it became apparent that numerous fake signatories were signed to the petition in order to demonstrate the petition's lack of basic controls.
While the mismanagement of the petition is extremely amusing, the involvement of George Soros' money is particularly illuminating.
In the United States, George Soros' money is currently funding another bid to derail a conservative news outlet. This time, the target is Fox News itself.
The campaign is Turn Off Fox. The basic idea is for participants to go to public places that play Fox News, feed them talking points about why they think it's bad, and complain until the manager agrees to turn it off.
A Whois.com domain lookup identifies the Turn Off Fox website as registered to Oakland, California's Citizen Engagement Laboratory. The Citizen Engagement Lab's website offers very little public attention about its activities.
As it turns out, the Soros Foundation funded the CEL to the tune of $300,000.
The level of Soros' involvement is clearly debatable. After all, it isn't as if Soros is directly involved in the decisions made by all of the groups his organization funds.
It could simply be a case of the left hand not knowing what the other hand is doing.
Then again, Soros was involved in an attempt to bail out Air America.
Regardless, the presence of George Soros' money should remind any observers precisely what both of these campaigns -- the Avaaz petition against Sun TV and the Turn Off Fox campaign -- really are:
Astroturf.
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
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It is interesting watching the left welcome Americans to help attack Canadian culture because it does not share their political ideology.
ReplyDeleteWow. So...a leftist billionaire is providing funding to leftist advocacy groups?
ReplyDeleteHoly cow. You deserve a Pulitzer for that journalistic coup, dude.
Balbull whispers...
ReplyDelete"advocacy groups"
"advocacy", such a lovely word.
Hey come on, Balbulican. I'm just applying the left's own standard here.
ReplyDeleteA few billionaires gave some money to FreedomWorks, and Rachel Maddow used it to declare the entire Tea Party movement to be astroturf.
The difference is that this campaign to looks largely funded by the Soros Foundation, and the Tea Party is largely funded by... individual Tea Partiers.
So, applying the same standard, and applying it better.