The Associated Press is delivering to its subscribing 1,500 American newspapers content, it has emerged, penned by groups with financing from philanthropist George Soros and another far-leftist billionaire who not only campaigned for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org.
The AP announced last month it will allow its subscribers to publish free of charge work by four nonprofit groups, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica.
Controversial Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of President Obama who was embroiled in a recent national race scandal, sits on the board of ProPublica. The group defines itself as 'an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.'
ProPublica was founded with a $10 million yearly grant from Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation, which was one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders and savings and loans. The Sandlers last year sold their business to the Wachovia Corporation for about $26 billion, a deal which valued their personal shares at about $2.4 billion.
The Sandlers are major donors to the Democratic Party and are top funders of ACORN, MoveOne.org, the American Civil Liberties Union and other far-leftist groups like Human Rights Watch.
In 2008, the Sandlers were behind two controversial California Political Action Committees, Vote Hope and PowerPac.org, which spent about $5 million in pro-Obama ads in that state. The two groups were run by the Sandler's son-in-law, Steve Phillips, the former president of the San Francisco School Board.
The journalistic integrity of the Sandler-backed ProPublica, however, has been repeatedly called into question.
A report by the Capital Research Center concluded ProPublica 'churns out little more than left-wing hit pieces about Sarah Palin and blames the U.S. government for giving out too little foreign aid.'. ...
