Liberal group grants over 5x as much as Koch Brothers but goes largely unnoticed by the media

Liberal group grants over 5x as much as Koch Brothers but goes largely unnoticed by the media

By: John Hayward
3/11/2013 10:08 AM

This week has been been declared “Sunshine Week” by a coalition including the American Society of News Editors, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Bloomberg LP, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundations......In the spirit of Sunshine Week, Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner offers an interesting observation about the ostensibly corrupting influence of money in politics, and how this scourge is covered by the media: the Right-leaning Koch Brothers receive far more media attention than the deliberately “obscure” left-wing Tides Foundation – 1,130 hits on the New York Times website for the Kochs, versus only 64 for Tides – but the Tides Foundation actually donates over five and a half times as much money to activist causes……

Three Koch foundations made a total of 181 grants worth $25,405,525 in 2010 (most recent available records). The one Tides Foundation made a total of 2,627 grants worth $143,529,590 in 2010…….

What’s more, as Watchdog.org notes, the Tides Foundation also scoops up gigantic amounts of taxpayer money - $28 million between 2009 and 2011.  Emissaries of this foundation visited the Obama White House 92 times last year, and they are noted for employing some very heavy-duty lobbyists.  They’re just the kind of secretive big-spending power broker the media would love to investigate to pieces… if reporters didn’t personally agree with its ideology....To Read More.....