The Right-Wing Megadonors Financing Media Operations to Promote Their Ideologies

[Center for Media and Democracy]

“For decades, Charles Koch has been committed to radically changing American society into a libertarian paradise, free from taxes and regulations, in which the wealthiest oligarchs, like himself, can destroy the environment, exploit their workers, and reap astonishing profits.”

“His “Structure of Social Change,” first introduced by his top strategist, Richard Fink in the late 1970s, was a plan to weaponize philanthropy by using three areas of influence that would, together, gradually push far-right economic ideas into the American mainstream. The strategy begins with the funding of free-market university programs, something the Charles Koch Foundation has done at hundreds of higher education institutions including George Mason University, Florida State, and Western Michigan University, to produce the “intellectual raw materials” for libertarian policies. Then, Koch and his wealthy allies fund think tanks and policy shops that would convert the academic literature into usable policy proposals, which, in the third stage, Koch-funded advocacy groups promote to government officials and the greater populace.”

“A CMD investigation has found that the family foundations of Charles Koch and a number of similarly-minded right-wing megadonors, along with two donor-advised fund sponsors that they use to shepherd their charitable contributions and receive special tax breaks, have donated at over $109 million to media operations since 2015, nearly all of them conservative.”

“Longtime right-wing funders such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, and the Charles Koch Institute have showered many of the same media groups with millions of dollars over the same period. The recipients range from the nonprofit behind The New Criterion, a magazine that runs lengthy think pieces from conservative intellectuals, to the libertarian Reason Foundation, to James O’Keefe’s far-right smear operation, Project Veritas.”

“The donors investigated by CMD provided more than half of the contribution revenue over the researched time period for several conservative news operations, including the Lucy Burns Institute and the American Media Institute.”

Read more: Right-Wing Megadonors Are Financing Media Operations to Promote Their Ideologies

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