It aims to unite strident ideology with publishing technology, cryptography, and aggressive legal defense. Omidyar’s organization operates a little like WikiLeaks, except it is staffed by well-salaried journalists and backed by Silicon Valley money. Headed by the polemical magazine writer Matt Taibbi, it was going to offer scabrous satire of the financial industry and politics. ![]() “We’re thinking about how to do journalism structurally differently.” At the time of Omidyar’s visit, a second site, Racket, was also revving up for its launch. “We have the luxury of doing something different because we have this kind of infinite-resource backer,” Greenwald told me on the phone from Brazil, where he is based. It is meant to be the prototype for a fleet of publications funded by Omidyar’s flagship company, First Look Media, to which Omidyar has initially committed $250 million. More quietly, Omidyar has become the movement’s prime benefactor, financing an operation to disseminate government secrets.Įarlier this year, Greenwald, Poitras, and a third comrade in arms - former Nation writer Jeremy Scahill - launched a website called the Intercept. Since that story broke, Snowden, Greenwald, and Poitras have become heroes of a crypto-insurgency. intelligence apparatus, and its marquee voice is Glenn Greenwald, the columnist who shared a Pulitzer Prize this year with documentarian Laura Poitras and others for obtaining and publishing Edward Snowden’s leaks about NSA surveillance. Down in the Flatiron District, he has been building a digital-media organization dedicated to a scorching brand of “fearless, adversarial journalism.” Its prime target is the U.S. Omidyar was late to the party, however - he’d spent much of his day hatching plans with some of Obama’s most uncivil opponents. The announcement was timed to coincide with President Obama’s speech to the conference that afternoon on nurturing civil society. Omidyar’s foundation had just unveiled a $200 million Global Innovation Fund, established in partnership with the U.S. His guests, sipping wine inside a vaulted glass atrium, represented foundations and banks, governments and NGOs, tech start-ups and McKinsey. ![]() He is on collegial terms with the Clintons and has been a partner in their charity work. Omidyar, the programmer who created eBay, is one of America’s richest men, a 47-year-old philanthropist intent on giving away the fortune he made when he was 31. One evening, in conjunction with CGI, Pierre Omidyar threw a reception across the street. This year’s edition, co-sponsored by, among others, a Greek shipping magnate’s wife and a Ukrainian oligarch, took place inside the barricaded Times Square Sheraton, where the Clintons made evangelical “calls to action” on issues like water scarcity and women’s empowerment. The U.N.’s annual General Assembly brings in the foreign excellencies and tin-pot dictators, but it’s Bill Clinton’s event that attracts the billionaires. Every September, for a siren-snarled week, much of midtown Manhattan surrenders to a pair of occupying powers: the United Nations and the Clinton Global Initiative.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |