Article originally appeared on thefederalist.com.
In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, billionaire philanthropist Craig Newmark spent close to $200 million on news media projects to help fight “disinformation,” secure “voting integrity,” and defeat Donald Trump. More importantly, after a raft of multimillion-dollar gifts to New York’s leading journalism schools, he is poised to shape the future of journalism. However, after the recent dramatic collapse of one of his flagship investments at the Harvard Shorenstein Centre, Newmark’s low-profile news media meddling has been thrust into the spotlight.
Craig Newmark, in case you were wondering, is the Craig in Craigslist who, since leaving the company in 2000, has been spending his wealth on what he calls philanthropy.
In 2015, he established Craig Newmark Philanthropies, built, he claims, on Sunday School principles and the belief that “a trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy.” It’s a charming sentiment but hardly believable. In a 2022 TWiT Tech podcast, …
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