October 5, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A newspaper editorial page last month opened fired on the philanthropist George Soros’s nonprofit work, but several blog writers have jumped to his defense.
In a three-part series, Investor’s Business Daily‘s editorial writers last month excoriated Mr. Soros and his Open Society Institute, calling them “secretive” and a “threat to democracy.”
“Soros’ ‘shaping public policies,’ as OSI calls it, is not illegal. But it’s a problem for democracy because it drives issues with cash and then only lets the public know about it after it’s old news,” says one opinion article.
The Open Society Institute has called the editorials a “smear campaign” and along with others have said they are rife with falsehoods.
In particular, several people dispute Investor’s Business Daily charge that the institute awarded $720,000 to James Hansen, a scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who has been outspoken about his concerns on global warming.
On his blog Mr. Hansen said he never received money from Mr. Soros. He did receive legal aid from the Government Accountability Project, a charity that assists government whistleblowers and is a beneficiary of the Open Society Institute.
Mr. Hansen writes that he even turned down a $10,000 award from the Government Accountability Project to avoid any appearance that he spoke out on the Bush administration’s policies towards climate change for monetary purposes.
“The bottom line is: I did not receive one thin dime from George Soros,” Mr. Hansen writes.
While a few bloggers
have hailed the editorials against Mr. Soros, other commentators, including Robert McClure, an environmental reporter for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have poked holes in the Investor’s Business Daily’s account. On the Seattle newspaper’s Dateline Earth blog, Mr. McClure calls the editorials the “swift boating of a climate scientist.”
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