Reuters Serves Up Today's Drudge Bait Trying To Prove That Soros Bankrolled Occupy Wall Street

Reuters is accusing financier and philanthropist George Soros of bankrolling the Occupy Wall Street movement, pointing to “indirect financial links” between Soros and Adbusters, an organization that has claimed credit for the protests. Reuters is being rewarded for its efforts to scapegoat the right wing's favorite bogeyman with Drudge links and Fox Nation love.

Reuters reported:

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. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

That's it. Over a two-year span at least two years before the Occupy Wall Street protests broke out, OSI granted $3.5 million to the Tides Foundation, which granted a whopping $26,000 to Adbusters, which tells Reuters it is almost entirely funded through magazine subscriptions. Officials for Soros told Reuters that he has never heard of Adbusters. Adbusters officials told Reuters that they have never received funding from Soros.

As Salon's Alex Pareene pointed out, the article could have come straight from an episode of Glenn Beck's canceled Fox News show.