Soros-funded pressure on Fox News worked: Glenn Beck out, Sally Kohn in

Special to WorldTribune.com

Based on an article by Cliff Kincaid for Accuracy in Media

Sally Kohn, a former senior strategist at the George Soros-funded Center for Community Change, has been hired as a Fox News Contributor.

Soros is the controversial hedge fund billionaire, convicted of insider trading in France, who finances the “progressive” movement in the U.S.

It is significant that Kohn is now a regular paid commentator on Fox News, while Glenn Beck, the one-time archenemy of George Soros, was ousted from the channel last year and now hosts an Internet TV show.

Sally Kohn on "The O'Reilly Factor".

An open lesbian who shuns feminine attire and frequently wears a suit jacket, Kohn is joining Fox News after being a regular on such programs as “The Ed Show” on liberal rival MSNBC. She is now officially part of the “Fox News Family,” as she puts it, and has been making appearances on the channel for several days.

The selection of Kohn raises disturbing questions about the direction of Fox News in a critical election year.

Kohn worked at the Center for Community Change, one of the leading Soros-funded groups, for six years, from 2004—2010. During this period, the group received $5.8 million from Soros’s main vehicle, the Open Society Institute (OSI).

The former chair of the board of the Center for Community Change, Cecilia Munoz, was recently named the Director of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House, a position that makes her one of Obama’s top aides. She had been serving as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. A White House press release about her appointment notes that she previously served on the U.S. Programs Board of the OSI and was Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza.

Kohn has a history of her own, having worked for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a group that tries to keep criticism of the homosexual agenda out of the mainstream media.
Significantly, GLAAD has relentlessly attacked Fox News, with one of the latest examples being an occasion during which correspondent Shannon Bream interviewed guests critical of a transgendered person, a man dressed as a woman, who had used a woman’s changing room at a department store.

Not only is Kohn’s hiring by Fox News a victory for GLAAD, where she worked for two years, but the Soros-funded and gay-run Media Matters organization is extremely happy with the selection.

“Fox News Hires Gay Rights Activist Sally Kohn As Contributor” declared “Equality Matters,” a division of Media Matters. “Aside from her history of progressive activism, Kohn has also been an outspoken proponent of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] equality,” it said. Still, Media Matters wonders if Kohn is going to be aggressive enough on the air.

Soros had given Media Matters $1 million for a campaign to neutralize the conservative message of Fox News.

“Media Matters is one of the few groups that attempts to hold Fox News accountable for the false and misleading information they so often broadcast,” said Soros. “I am supporting Media Matters in an effort to more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.”

Subsequently, Fox News fired Beck, even while calling it a mutual decision and promising collaboration on “a slate of projects for Fox News Channel and Fox News’ digital properties” that have yet to materialize.

Kohn herself narrated a video making fun of Beck, insisting that he was spouting misinformation about fascism and communism being extreme left-wing ideas and implying that he was the real fascist. She said that liberals like President Obama and herself favor “democratic capitalism,” not any kind of state control of the economy.

The reality, however, is quite different.

“Sally Kohn makes the world safe for radical ideas,” her website says. In fact, Kohn is a far-left radical who attended the 2003 World Social Forum in Brazil, a meeting place for groups which say they are opposed to capitalism and U.S. imperialism. The 2011-2012 “Calendar of Struggles” for the World Social Forum includes:

  • Global week of actions in support to the freedom of the Gaza Flotilla II.
  • International Conference on the impact of the North American invasion in Iraq.
  • International Solidarity Day for the Palestinian and African peoples.

Not only is Kohn now on Fox News, where she can demonstrate the channel’s “fair and balanced” commitment by championing radical Arab and pro-Marxist causes, she is being given open access to the influential FoxNews.com website, where she writes articles praising the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Kohn has a three-year old daughter, Willa Hansen-Kohn, with her “partner,” Sarah Hansen, a community organizer with involvement in such groups as the Soros-funded Tides Center.

The relationship is newsworthy because Kohn reportedly met Hansen at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2003. The World Social Forum is a gathering of groups “opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.”

Kohn also regularly attends the U.S. Social Forum, the American affiliate of the World Social Forum, which has assembled in the past under the banner of “Another U.S. Is Necessary!”

Its National Planning Committee includes such groups as:

  • Freedom Road Socialist Organization, an openly communist organization with foreign links now under FBI investigation.
  • The League of Revolutionaries for a New America, a group opposing “global capitalism.”
  • The Ruckus Society, an anarchist group.
  • United for Peace & Justice, a group opposed to American military intervention abroad.

Both Kohn and Rashad Robinson, executive director of a group called Color of Change, have attended the Soros-funded event known as the “Creative Change Retreat,” described as a place where “arts and social justice” come together.

Color of Change was co-founded by Van Jones, the former Obama official who lost his job after Beck, then on Fox News, highlighted his radical communist connections by drawing on material from anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon and others.

Jones had the last laugh, noting during an appearance at the Campaign for America’s Future conference that Beck had lost his job at Fox.

Soros’s Open Society Institute had provided $300,000 to Color of Change and its parent entity called the Citizen Engagement Laboratory. Executive director Robinson had previously worked as Senior Director of Media Programs for GLAAD, where he apparently learned the techniques of protesting the presence of conservative voices in the media.

It was in response to Beck’s attacks on Soros and Obama that Color of Change organized an advertiser boycott of Beck’s show, while other Soros-funded organizations such as the Jewish Funds for Justice and Media Matters accused Beck of anti-Semitism for criticizing Soros.

Despite the phony nature of the charge against Beck — Soros is an atheist with no love for Israel — Fox News buckled under the pressure. “Beck’s lack of advertisers made him a financial liability for Fox, and it’s clear that this was a driving factor in his departure from Fox,” Robinson said. “This is an incredible and unprecedented victory.”

But Beck was not and is not the only target. Color of Change has also demanded that Eric Bolling, now a regular on “The Five” Fox News program that replaced Beck’s show, be fired for “race-baiting and fear-mongering.”

Bill O’Reilly, host of “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News, has been a target as well. But Kohn’s former employer GLAAD has been his nemesis. O’Reilly is now featuring Kohn as a liberal guest on his show, apparently hoping to stave off the criticism of his program.