Felix Salmon of Reuters wonders aloud about Reuters hit piece on Occupy Wall Street

Propaganda's a bitch

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Occupy Wall Street — the soi-disant “99%” — were being secretly funded by billionaire Davos Man George Soros, exemplar of the 1%? Well, no, it wouldn’t, actually. As Noreen Malone points out, lots of the 1% have, like Soros, expressed sympathy with OWS, including Bill Clinton, Ben Bernanke, and at least one member of the Buffett family. And when you’re sympathetic to a cause, and have lots of money, often you donate money to that cause.

But in this case it looks very much as though there’s no connection at all between Soros and OWS. That makes sense: for one thing, Soros is a creature of Wall Street himself, and for another, he tends to fund well-organized groups with specific goals. Which, clearly, OWS isn’t.

Which is why today’s Reuters story about the connection between Soros and OWS has elicited so much derision around the blogosphere. Beyond allowing us to shoehorn the #ows and #soros hashtags into a single tweet, there’s no real substance to it at all:

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