How one of America’s premier data monarchs is funding a global information war and shaping the media landscape
Through
his purchase of influence over the daily flow of information to
American media consumers, a dizzying array of connections to the
national security state, and a media empire that shields him from
critical scrutiny, Pierre Omidyar has become one of the world’s
most politically sophisticated data monarchs.
by
Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal
Part
1
A select
group of national news “stakeholders” gathered at an undisclosed
location for what was described as a “semi-secret” workshop
somewhere in Canada on January 26. The meeting had been convened to
determine how and to whom a “news industry bailout” of $645
million in Canadian government subsidies to private and supposedly
independent media outlets would be disbursed. It was a striking event
that signaled both the crisis of legitimacy faced by mainstream media
and the desperate measures that are being proposed to answer it.
Jesse
Brown, a Canadian journalist who participated in the meeting,
complained that the first thing he noticed about it “was that
one major public ‘stakeholder’ wasn’t represented: the public.”
Inside what amounted to a smoke filled room that was off limits to
most Canadian citizens, Ben Scott — a former Obama administration
official who also served in Hillary Clinton’s State Department —
presided over the discussions. Today, as the director of policy and
advocacy for the Omidyar Network, Scott works for one of the most
quietly influential billionaires in helping to shape the media
landscape and define the craft of journalism itself.
His boss
is Pierre Omidyar, the ebay founder best known for his sponsorship of
The Intercept, a flashy progressive publication that possesses
the classified documents exfiltrated by NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden. Unlike rival Silicon Valley billionaires Peter Thiel, Jeff
Bezos, and Eric Schmidt, Omidyar has mostly managed to keep his
influential role in media below the radar. And while he directs his
fortune into many of the same politically strategic NGOs and media
outlets that George Soros does in hotspots around the globe, he has
never been subjected to the public scrutiny and often ugly attacks
that dog Soros. And yet Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to
the UN and liberal interventionist guru, has explicitly praised
Omidyar as someone who is following in the footsteps of Soros.
The
almost total absence of critical coverage that Omidyar enjoys is
partly the product of his aversion to publicity. Unlike Soros, who
seems to yearn for the media limelight, Omidyar is an eccentric
figure who owns a “safe house” in the wilds of the American West;
he interacts with business partners in virtual-reality simulations he
funds, and has been magnetized by New Age gurus. But the free pass
Omidyar has received from the media is also a testament to how much
money he has channeled into it – as well into the organizations
that ostensibly exist to keep it honest.
While
backing media outlets around the world that produce news and
commentary, Omidyar supports a global cartel of self-styled
fact-checking groups that determine which outlets are legitimate and
which are “fake.” He has also thrown his money behind murky
initiatives like the non-profit backing New Knowledge, the
data firm that waged one of the most devious disinformation campaigns
in any recent American election campaign; and he is a key backer of
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism
(ICIJ), the outfit that holds the Panama Papers and oversees the
strategic dissemination of that leaked trove of financial files to
hand-picked journalists.
At the
base of this vast media empire is a nepotistic culture that has seen
the beneficiaries of Omidyar’s funding come in for gushing praise
from the same fact-checking organizations he supports, while the
journalists nurtured by his donations reap high-profile awards from
the Omidyar-sponsored Committee to Protect Journalists. Last
November, Omidyar backed the release of a documentary hyping up the
journalists that helped expose the Panama Papers, and he is also
involved in a feature film starring Meryl Streep about the leaked
documents and the heroic reporters covering them. The conflicts of
interests created under the billionaire’s watch are many but, as
with his own political activities, they have been scrutinized by only
a handful of journalists.
Behind
the image he has cultivated of himself as a “progressive
philanthropreneur,” Omidyar has wielded his media empire to advance
the Washington consensus in strategic hotspots around the globe. His
fortune helped found an outlet to propel a destabilizing coup in
Ukraine; he’s helped establish a network of anti-government youth
activists and bloggers in Zimbabwe; and in the Philippines he has
invested in an anti-government news site that is honing corporate
surveillance techniques like a “mood meter…to capture
non-rational reactions.” Meanwhile, he has partnered
closely with the leading arms of U.S. soft power, from the U.S.
Agency for International Aid and Development (USAID) to
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) —
acting as a conduit for information warfare-style projects in
countries around the world.
Omidyar’s
political agenda came into sharper focus last May when he began
funding the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a
pet project of neoconservative operative Bill Kristol that has stoked
public fear of Russian infiltration of social media. This December,
it appears that Omidyar’s donations helped Kristol launch a new
online magazine called The Bulwark —
rebranding the defunct Weekly Standard, which
had served as the banner publication of the neocon movement and a
central organ for promoting America’s wars. As usual, the
billionaire’s activities were ignored in progressive media, leaving
the critical coverage to a few right-wing outlets frustrated with
Kristol’s anti-Trump crusading.
Omidyar’s
support for the same neocon guru who oversaw the publication of an
article branding NSA spying whistleblower Edward Snowden as a
“traitor” should place the ebay founder’s acquisition of the
Snowden files in a disturbing light. By establishing The
Intercept and recruiting the journalists who possessed
Snowden’s leaks, the billionaire effectively privatized the files.
Not only did this delay their release, it denied the public access to
the information in order to supply his stable of hired reporters with
exclusive scoops that continue to appear years after they were
leaked. To this day, only a minuscule percentage of the Snowden files
have been made public and, for whatever reason, none of those that
have been released relate to ebay or its assorted business interests.
While
hoarding this valuable trove, Omidyar has forged relationships with
the very same private military contractor that Snowden fought to
expose. Two years after founding The Intercept, Omidyar
welcomed a man named Robert Lietzke to the Omidyar Fellows
program. Lietzke is no small character — he happened to have been
Snowden’s former boss, reportedly one of “three principals
[running] day to day operations” at the Hawaii branch of the
Booz Allen Hamilton defense firm where Snowden toiled as an NSA
contractor.
The
Omidyar Group did not respond to requests for comment on
Omidyar’s involvement with the publication of the Snowden
documents. Additionally, The Intercept did not respond to
questions about the extent of control Omidyar’s First Look Media
enjoys over the Snowden archive.
Through
his purchase of influence over the daily flow of information to
American media consumers, a dizzying array of connections to the
national security state, and a media empire that shields him from
critical scrutiny, Omidyar has become one of the world’s most
politically sophisticated data monarchs.
Yasha
Levine, the author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret
Military History of the Internet, told MintPress: “In
today’s backlash over Silicon Valley’s contracts with American
military and intelligence agencies, people are focused on Facebook,
Google and Amazon — while Pierre Omidyar’s eBay has been entirely
ignored. But Omidyar has been at the forefront of building out
Silicon Valley’s global private-public surveillance apparatus. For
the past decade Omidyar has quietly worked to expand eBay’s
privatized surveillance-state model beyond online sales and into
elections, media, transportation, education, finance, as well as
government administration. His vehicle for that: the Omidyar Group,
an investment vehicle that bankrolls hundreds of startups, business
and non-profits around the world.”
Omidyar’s
political empire consists of a web of organizations overseen by its
center of administration: the Omidyar Group. Each outfit
appears to be an independent entity with its own staff and directors.
Taken together, however, these organizations pursue a mission that
reflects the vision of the billionaire behind it. Below are the seven
initiatives spun out of the Omidyar Group:
Ulupono
Initiative: This group seems to be focused on supporting mundane
activities, mostly centered in Omidyar’s home state of Hawaii.
However, a look under the hood reveals national security-state
connections. For example, Ulupono sponsors a Defense
Department gala for contractors like Snowden’s former employer,
Booz Allen Hamilton. What’s more, a former VP at Booz Allen, Kyle
Datta, is also a general partner of Ulupono.
Humanity
United: This NGO was founded after the largest human trafficking
scandal in U.S. history (detailed later in this investigation) was
exposed on the Maui Pineapple farm in which Omidyar had invested.
Ostensibly formed to combat slavery, Humanity United
has also been used to fund The Guardian, a
liberal British newspaper that has provided positive coverage to and
collaborated with numerous Omidyar-backed initiatives.
Hopelab:
An initiative that focuses on encouraging a “behavioral change”
and “mindshift” in teen and young-adult cancer survivors
through “positive psychology skills” like “practicing
gratitude,” “mindfulness,” and “random acts of
kindness.” The group’s mission reflects the New Age
sensibility of Omidyar and his wife, Pam, as well as the
billionaire’s interest in potentially profitable data-gathering
ventures. (Medical data is at the center of an ongoing debate about
the use of artificial intelligence in various industries.)
Luminate:
Luminate has doled out $314 million to 236 organizations around the
world. As outlined earlier, this organization is run by Ben Scott, a
former Obama administration official who also served in Hillary
Clinton’s state department. Scott led the previously noted
“semi-secret” January 26 workshop where Canadian news
“stakeholders” discussed the government’s plan for a
“news industry bailout” of $645 million in subsidies. A
day earlier, the Bureau of Investigative Journalists announced
a $1 million contribution from Luminate over the next two
years. Luminate is Omidyar’s central hub for funding a
cartel of fact-checking outlets around the globe. It continues to
fund the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League after the Omidyar Network
provided seed money for the group’s Silicon Valley internet
monitoring center.
Omidyar
Network: With offices in Washington, Silicon Valley, and six
foreign countries, the Omidyar Network
propagates the neoliberal ideology of its billionaire namesake
through “impact investing” and a “property
rights” initiative. Outside the U.S., the Omidyar
Network funds an array of foreign media outlets, like
Ukraine’s Hromadske and the Philippines-based
Rappler, that have participated in pro-Western
information warfare-style campaigns against rogue governments. In
Zimbabwe, where the Omidyar Network supports a series of
anti-government youth organizing initiatives through the Magambe
Network, an Omidyar employee was arrested, accused of attempting
to stir up a revolt through online organizing, and ultimately
released (the incident is detailed later in this article). This
February 12, Rappler editor-in-chief Maria Ressa was arrested
as well, accused of “cyber-libel” by the Filipino government for
a 2012 article. The Omidyar Network and the Omidyar-funded
Committee to Protect Journalists have set up a $500,000 legal
defense fund for Ressa.
First
Look Media: This organization is the main arm for
supporting the cutting-edge media projects produced under Omidyar’s
watch. Besides The Intercept, First
Look funds a documentary division called Field
of Vision that has overseen films about high profile
journalists. Past productions include Risk, a
negative portrayal of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange that prompted
Wikileaks lawyers to accuse its director, Laura Poitras, of
“undermin[ing] WikiLeaks just as the Trump administration
has announced that it intends to prosecute its journalists, editors
and associates.” A Field of Vision
documentary on the Panama Papers functioned as a PR vehicle for the
Omidyar-funded International Consortium of Investigative
Journalism that holds the documents, and features
journalist Luke Harding in its trailer. Harding is the
Russia-obsessed Guardian correspondent who
recently fabricated a report on meetings between Assange and former
Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. First Look
also sponsors the for-profit studio Topic, which
is producing another film on the Panama Papers, The
Laundromat, starring Meryl Streep and Antonio Banderas.
Democracy
Fund: The main arm of Omidyar-backed activist media initiatives,
this group funds a collection of groups like the Center for Public
Integrity that advocate transparency in politics. At the same
time, the Democracy Fund backs Bill Kristol’s
neoconservative mini-empire, providing support to his new Cold War
vehicle, the Alliance for Securing Democracy,
and providing what appears to be the seed money for The
Bulwark.
This
investigation will peel back the image Omidyar has cultivated as an
altruistic innovator advancing public accountability and media
integrity, revealing the unsettling reality of a corporate machine
fueled by his free-market ideology and raw imperial might. It all
begins with a curious story about his wife’s Pez dispensers.
Source,
links, further info:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/ebay-founder-pierre-omidyar-is-funding-a-global-media-information-war/255199/
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