George Soros’ basis denies giving cash particularly to purchase Maine newspapers
AUGUSTA, Maine — The muse tied to Democratic megadonor and philanthropist George Soros denied Tuesday a report stating it donated cash particularly to assist a nationwide nonprofit buy Maine’s largest newspaper chain earlier this yr.
The Open Society Foundations, which Soros started in 1979 and helps an array of liberal and charitable causes around the globe, has lengthy been publicly listed as a supporter of the Nationwide Belief for Native Information, the nonprofit that bought the Masthead Maine community of twenty-two newspapers in July for an undisclosed worth.
The information web site Semafor reported Sunday evening that each Soros’ group and Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, whose personal basis has supported liberal causes, gave “hundreds of thousands” to the Nationwide Belief for Native Information for the acquisition of the Maine newspapers that embrace the Portland Press Herald, Lewiston Solar Journal and three different dailies together with 17 weeklies.
The Maine papers haven’t disclosed their actual funders, one thing that their leaders mentioned they plan to do with out offering particulars. The nationwide reporting highlights hurdles of their transition from the normal media mannequin of getting funding nearly solely by subscriptions and promoting to at least one that features giant charitable donations.
Semafor cited a “individual with direct information of the undertaking” in reporting on the Maine connection. The story didn’t embrace any feedback from Open Society or Wyss spokespeople, as a substitute citing a Nationwide Belief for Native Information spokesperson who denied the funds had been particularly for the undertaking.
An Open Society Foundations spokesperson advised the Bangor Each day Information on Tuesday that “our grants to this point haven’t included earmarks for particular initiatives.”
“We’ve got supported the Nationwide Belief for Native Information since 2019, together with many different foundations that worth the contribution of long-established and community-rooted newsrooms,” the spokesperson for the Soros group mentioned.
Messages left with the Wyss Basis and Berger Motion Fund, each of that are affiliated with the Democratic megadonor Wyss, weren’t instantly returned Tuesday.
The nationwide belief bought the newspapers in collaboration with the Maine Journalism Basis after Masthead Maine proprietor Reade Brower publicly indicated his intent to promote his media empire in March. The brand new group of web sites is dubbed the Maine Belief for Native Information.
In response to an emailed query about how a lot cash — if any — the Open Society Foundations and Wyss gave to assist with the acquisition of the newspapers, Maine Belief for Native Information CEO and Writer Lisa DeSisto mentioned funds “got here through the Nationwide Belief, in addition to from dozens of Maine philanthropists and lots of of Maine Belief readers.”
“As Maine Belief Writer, I can inform you that whereas our title is new, our values stay the identical,” DeSisto added. “We’ll proceed to look out for Maine, discover the reality, and assist our readers perceive their communities.”
DeSisto indicated in a follow-up e-mail the Maine Belief for Native Information has a “plan” and “formal protocols” to reveal donations and that she would offer extra particulars by Tuesday, however she had not responded by late Tuesday afternoon.
In contrast to the Nationwide Belief for Native Information web site, the Maine Belief for Native Information web site doesn’t at the moment have a web page itemizing its supporters. The Bangor Each day Information, a family-owned paper, takes donations from readers and customarily discloses them on-line.
Soros, a Hungarian-American businessman who made a lot of his fortune as a hedge fund tycoon and has donated generously to the Democratic Get together, is a frequent goal of right-wing critics. Soros, 93, who fled Hungary as a teen to flee the Nazi occupation, has additionally been the common topic of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
He and Wyss are main gamers in nationwide Democratic politics. A conservative group mentioned Soros has given $21 billion to political causes since 2000, whereas Wyss has given lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to each political and environmental causes. Each are linked with Arabella Advisors, which runs nonprofits together with one which spent closely on the 2020 U.S. Senate race right here.
The renewed discussions on which teams are funding Maine’s newspapers come because the state’s information panorama has shifted to turn out to be dominated by nonprofit or independently-owned websites as legacy, corporate-owned media websites have continued to shrink nationally.
It contains the BDN, listener- and donor-supported Maine Public, investigative outlet Maine Monitor, Maine Beacon, which is tied to the liberal Maine Individuals’s Alliance, and the Maine Wire, which is affiliated with the conservative Maine Coverage Institute.
On Tuesday, the nonprofit Maine Morning Star launched, with three reporters, a columnist and editor working for the web web site that covers state coverage and politics. The Maine Morning Star is a part of States Newsroom, a left-leaning nonprofit that launched in 2019 and has newsrooms in about three dozen states.
The Maine Wire used the Semafor report on Wyss and Soros’ teams purportedly donating particularly to assist buy the Masthead Maine websites to say the vast majority of Maine’s every day information shops at the moment are bankrolled by a few of the nation’s largest donors to the Democratic Get together and left-wing curiosity teams.
The Maine Wire has acquired monetary backing from teams tied to billionaire conservative activist Leonard Leo, who praised the location in a current interview with editor Steve Robinson.
