Progressive leftist billionaire George Soros is known to be quite generous in using his wealth to fund a variety of left-wing causes.
Now, it appears that includes a mainstay of the legacy media, as Soros reportedly just purchased a significant ownership stake in The New York Times.
The big purchase
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the purchase of 126,400 Class A publicly traded shares of the New York Times Company by Soros Fund Management LLC was revealed via a May 15 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
At the time the purchase was made, those shares of The Times were valued at around $3,046,000 total.
A review of previous filings by Soros’ fund showed that it had previously invested in The Times at least once before, in 2007.
The Free Beacon reached out to both The Times and a spokesman for Soros’ fund for comment on the purchase, but neither chose to reply.
Will it make a difference?
In the big scheme of things with regard to that overall value of The Times, the $3 million stake purchased by Soros doesn’t appear to be all that substantial.
However, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center suggested it would be “naive” to “disconnect” the purchase of a stake in a major media outlet from a rich and powerful liberal benefactor.
“Soros has long had influence or given direct funding to a wide range of journalism operations from NPR to ProPublica,” Gainor explained. “This is still a big step to be buying a $3-million stake in the top liberal outlet in America.”
Gainor revealed that in just the past eight years, Soros has invested at least $48 million into an assortment of media ventures to include “journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations,” all of which almost exclusively lean left or are in favor of the globalist establishment.
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This purchase of a stake in The Times by Soros is just the latest example of him using his vast wealth to fund and support the agenda of the progressive left through one of the movement’s chief media mouthpieces.
It is also further evidence of the leftist bias and influence among the mainstream media that has given rise to new alternative media outlets in recent years as a counter-balance to that overt bias.