NY Times Calls Soros A "Philanthropist"

First, excerpts from a Sept. 28, 2004 NY Times story; then my comments below the star line.

Times reporter Katharine Seelye began - - -

George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has given $18 million to Democratic advocacy groups to defeat President Bush, is preparing to spend millions more because he fears that Senator John Kerry might lose.

By mid-August, Mr. Soros had given more than $15 million to advocacy groups like America Coming Together. At that time, he said in an interview on Monday, he fully expected Mr. Kerry to win the election. But recently, Mr. Soros saw what he called the outrageous and slanderous Swift boat commercials against Mr. Kerry and how they had damaged his standing in the polls.

Since then, the Hungarian-born Mr. Soros said, he has become so worried that Mr. Bush will win the election that he increased his giving, to $18.2 million, and has scrapped a trip in October to Russia to work against the president's re-election.

"America has gone off the rails," he lamented in the interview over a lunch of Dover sole at his home in suburban New York. "I've been accused of messianic fantasies, and I will own up to them. To the extent that I can contribute to improving the world in which we live, I want to do it, and I'm in a better position than a lot of other people."

In the last 25 years, Mr. Soros, 74, has given hundreds of millions of dollars to philanthropies overseas like helping blacks go to college in South Africa, building a system to filter water in war-torn Sarajevo and shipping hundreds of photocopying machines to Hungary to advance an independent press. He also spent more than $500 million in Russia on health and educational programs.

Mr. Soros has now set his sights on the United States. "If I could contribute to repudiating the Bush policies, I think it would be the greatest good deed I could do for the world," he said as he announced his tour at the National Press Club here.

Such ambitions have given Mr. Soros the status of whipping boy for Republicans. They find that mention of his name helps them raise money. …

Mr. Soros, whose $7.2 billion fortune makes him the 24th richest person in the United States, has become the biggest donor to the 527 advocacy groups, a category named for the section of the tax code that covers them. He pledged $10 million to America Coming Together for a registration and get-out-the-vote drive, but gave a total of $14.5 million.

His other contributions to Democratic 527's are $2.5 million to Move On.org Voter Fund; $325,000 to Young Voter Alliance; $325,000 to 21st Century Democrats; $300,000 to the Real Economy Group; and $250,000 to Democracy for America.

He has also pledged $3 million to the Center for American Progress, a research group led by John Podesta, President Bill Clinton's chief of staff. Mr. Soros has given $1.5 million to the center.

He said that in this election year he had had minimal contact with Mr. Kerry, largely because campaign finance laws bar coordination between candidates and 527's, and he is such a large donor to the 527's that such contact would be not be correct.
The two men are neighbors in Sun Valley, Idaho.

You can read the entire Times story here.

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My comments:

Wasn’t that nice of the Times to tell readers Soros is a “philanthropist.” And in the very first sentence, no less.

And you noticed later in the story Times reporter Seelye detailed some of Soros' "philanthropic" giving. I’m sure Soros appreciated that.

But how often do you see the Times call a major contributor to the GOP a “philanthropist” and detail his or her philanthropic giving? Yet many of them are extraordinarily generous people who contribute to a charitable and social betterment causes.

As for the two men being neighbors in Sun Valley, Idaho, that’s true.

But what the Times didn’t tell its readers was that Soros only bought a ski lodge close to the Kerry’s ski lodge after it became clear Kerry would be the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

Seelye’s story is an example of “hearts and flowers” journalism by a major Democratic Party newspaper covering one of its party’s most generous – er, er – ( we shouldn't call Soros a “philanthropist,” should we?).