Soros bankrolled ‘hate crime’ database used by media

By Art Moore

George Soros (Wikimedia Commons)
George Soros (Wikimedia Commons)

Left-wing billionaire activist George Soros bankrolled a massive “hate crime” database used by media that is stocked with claims by the likes of the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center and the Hamas-founded Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The partners that used the database of unverified claims of hate crimes include Google News Labs, New York Times Opinion and ABC News, according to tax documents and interviews compiled by the Washington Free Beacon.

The investigative non-profit ProPublica launched the project, “Documenting Hate, in January 2017 in response to the election of Donald Trump.

The Free Beacon noted the New York Times supported the project in an editorial.

“As reports of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic harassment and attacks poured in after the election of Donald Trump, many Americans wondered whether they represented a nationwide increase in hate crime,” the Times editorial board wrote. “While the Southern Poverty Law Center saw a dramatic increase in reports after the election, it’s not yet clear whether this indicates a nationwide trend.”

Amid accusations of tolerating sexual harassment and racial discrimination, SPLC fired co-founder Morris Dees on March 13. Last Friday, SPLC President Richard Cohen resigned.

CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to fund the terror group Hamas, was itself designated by an Arab Gulf nations as a terrorist organization. According to FBI evidence, the Washington, D.C.-based group was founded by members of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Soros made it possible

Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society, according to tax forms, gave $200,000 in 2017 to ProPublica “to create a well-reported data set of hate crimes and to produce high-quality investigative reporting on the subject.”

Another $375,000 donation was made to ProPublica “to support the hate crimes tracking project.”

Soros gave $200,000 more to the group, the Free Beacon said, which was split between “general support” and a separate initiative on online price discrimination.

After Trump’s election, Soros vowed to pour $10 million into combating hate crimes.

Richard Tofel, the president of ProPublica, confirmed to the Free Beacon that while “Documenting Hate” is not mentioned on the tax forms, the Soros donations were for the project.

He said the Soros donations made it possible to launch the program and sustain it.

Tofel told the Free Beacon that “all sorts” of national news stories have come from the database.

But he said it’s the responsibility of the media partners to verify the information and do further reporting.

The Free Beacon said other media partners involved in “Documenting Hate” include BuzzFeed News, Huffington Post, the Guardian, the Boston Globe, NBC News and Fusion.

Hate crime hoaxes

Many hate crime incidents reported by major news outlets in recent years have turned out to be false, the Free Beacon noted.

The author of “Hate Crime Hoax,” Wilfred Reilly, found more than 400 hate crime hoaxes while conducting research for his book.

Reilly, an assistant professor of political science at Kentucky State University, wrote in USA Today that the Jussie Smollett hoax is one of many widely reported instances.

He said “these cases are not isolated outliers.”

The website Fake Hate Crimes, citing news sources, has a running list of 353 hate-crime hoaxes.

Art Moore

Art Moore, co-author of the best-selling book "See Something, Say Nothing," entered the media world as a PR assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. He reported for a Chicago-area daily newspaper and was senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine and an editor for Worldwide Newsroom before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He earned a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College. Read more of Art Moore's articles here.


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