The chief executive of a leading Jewish policy organization is condemning Fox News president Roger Ailes for reportedly urging his hosts to push the false claim that Jewish philanthropist George Soros aided the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Alan van Capelle, CEO of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, criticized Ailes following a report today that Ailes had emailed Fox host Bill O’Reilly suggesting he promote the false claim about Soros. Van Cappelle said that those emails indicate “the hate at Fox starts at the top.”

[…]

O’Reilly’s producer Tabacoff replied to Ailes with a single word: “ugly.” Ailes responded by asking, “Do you think you guys will use it or should I give it to someone else?”

That someone else was likely Glenn Beck. The following evening during the 5 p.m. hour of his show, Beck promoted a special about Soros. Beck referred to the billionaire philanthropist as a “puppet master” and questioned his Jewish identity. Earlier that day on his radio show, Beck said Soros “saw people into gas chambers.”

Beck’s “special,” which was broadcast a week later, included the information Ailes forwarded to O’Reilly. Beck claimed Soros “had to help the government confiscate the lands of his fellow Jewish friends and neighbors.” On his radio show Beck went even further, saying that Soros helped “send the Jews” to “death camps.” His comments were widely condemned by Jewish leaders.

“It’s obvious that Glenn Beck could not have carried on his insane tirades against George Soros without the support of Roger Ailes, so these emails really just confirm what common sense tell us - the hate at Fox News starts at the top,” van Capelle told Media Matters in a statement Thursday.

“George Soros lost family members in the Holocaust. As a 13 year old boy he survived because his father arranged for him to be hidden with a non-Jewish family willing to take an enormous risk to do the right thing. Six decades later Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck exploited these circumstances to call Soros a Nazi-collaborator. It’s a characterization that speaks volumes about Ailes and Beck, and says nothing at all about George Soros.”

The protests were first formulated by writers at AdBusters magazine.

According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros’ Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups… disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

And that’s the connection. Soros has given grants to Tides, which gave $26,000 to AdBusters in the same period. Some perspective: AdBusters has a reported circulation of 120,000 and a cover price of $7.95. If an issue of AdBusters sells 1,090 copies, the gross profit is equivilent to a year of funding from Tides. More perspective: Americans for Prosperity, the umbrella Tea Party group founded and partly funded by David Koch, had a 2010 budget of $40 million.

Hey, I’m glad I know about this incredibly tenuous connection. Hats off. But this may be the reductio ad absurdum of follow-the-money reporting on protests.

shortformblog:

jayrosen:

Reuters vs. Reuters: News agency makes an ass of itself by trying to connect George Soros to Occupy Wall Street.

But some Reuters people realize it, and call their company out!

Reuters then backs down, changing the story line on its report.  Or does it? [more]

Jay Rosen has really shown his value as a media commentator in the past few weeks, and this piece is another example of that. We didn’t shout loudly about this story earlier, but we were confused as to why Reuters ran it. One person responded to our earlier piece, which asked aloud if it was worth Reuters’ time to report an in-depth investigation on this topic, by suggesting this: “Responsible journalism requires checking of ALL claims, not picking and choosing which to follow up on.” Maybe so, but in this case, perhaps there was a point where someone could’ve said after doing due diligence, “this isn’t a story, and it’s not worth our time.” Because, let’s face it, connecting tens of thousands of dollars indirectly donated by a billionaire a couple of years ago seems silly when you consider that two other billionaires notably give millions of dollars each year to a similar movement. It’s a revelation that puts this story in sharp relief — a sharp relief that isn’t even mentioned in the original article.