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Did Sam Bankman-Fried's Millions Buy the Media's Loyalty? 77

Posted by Slashdot Staff from the curious dept.
As the FTX fallout continues to unfold, Reason reports:
The mainstream coverage of SBF and FTX is more than a little blase... SBF was heavily involved in Democratic Party politics: In the 2022 election cycle, he was the second most prolific funder of Democratic candidates. But he wasn't just a funder of electoral efforts. He funded both progressive and mainstream media organizations... But SBF's own attitude toward his funding of these causes seems to be that it's all for show. When asked if ethics is "mostly a front", SBF replied "yeah, that's not all of it but it's a lot." If SBF considered his generous donations to be a "front" for something else, one wonders what about the else. Is it perhaps the case that SBF thought he was actually buying goodwill and favorable coverage? He was, as it happens, the beneficiary of countless gushing magazine profiles and was frequently hailed as the "white knight" of crypto. Indeed, SBF is still benefitting from some kinder-than-expected coverage from the mainstream media, even in the wake of the revelations about his fraudulent activities" and even from outlets that did not receive his largesse.
Read Reason's full article here.
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Did Sam Bankman-Fried's Millions Buy the Media's Loyalty? More

Did Sam Bankman-Fried's Millions Buy the Media's Loyalty?

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  • ..so not just dems. Finger in every pie, as they say.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by haunebu ( 16326 )

      What did he give, 10% to the GOP? $100? $10,000,000? It's not unusual for people to grease the wheels. But at what ratio between the parties?

      • He was heavily in the pocket of the democrats. Wise. It is obvious to any unbiased observer at this point, that democrats will get away with just about anything, including peddling influence in Ukraine and China; while Republicans are persecuted for such falsities as being peed on by Russian prostitutes. SBF is smart. He got his hundreds of millions, gave tens of millions to democrats to buy the political cover he needed, and will basically get away with it. Even if the GOP house subpoenas him and recommend

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by Joce640k ( 829181 )

          He was heavily in the pocket of the democrats.

          And he'd have been heavily in the pocket of the Republicans if they were in power.

          (shrug)

        • Wasn't it the other way around? How is he in their pocket if he's the one funding them?

        • To be fair, Republicans were the ones who got us the fake vaccine, even though it was Democrats who forced people to take it.

          Your average establishment republican is just a democrat enabler.

          So the question is, will my condemnation of both Rs and Ds get downvoted worse than you? :). Do they hate Rs enough to mod me up, or do they hate people who critique Ds even more? :)

          I guess it all depends on if the NPC program was updated with a better sarcasm detector.

      • Re:..and his 2IC funded the GOP - a little (Score:5, Informative)

        by cirby ( 2599 ) on Monday November 21, 2022 @10:12PM (#63070174)

        $262,000 for the GOP vs $40 million+ to the Democrats, plus whatever he gave to the press.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by geekmux ( 1040042 )

          $262,000 for the GOP vs $40 million+ to the Democrats, plus whatever he gave to the press.

          Thank you. This was about the only grossly understated fact in the GPs post. To clarify what position $40 million gets you, a crypto pimp running Fuck Club out of a Bahamian penthouse came second only to George Soros in DNC donations and essentially co-funded a middterm election for one of the most powerful political parties on the planet.

          Then promptly lit thirty-two fucking billion in market value on fire immediately after securing the final votes from every soon-to-be-unemployed liberal that was let go

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 )

        His business partner, FTX CEO Ryan Salame spent money on maga.

        Salame spent about $24M, and the largest single spend that either of them made was about $2.5M to mitch mcconnel's PAC, the senate leadership fund.

        It should not surprise anyone that Reason, a koch bros front, neglected to mention any of that. Nor that the so-called liberal media left Salame out of almost all their reporting too.

        https://popular.info/p/seven-p... [popular.info]

      • at what ratio between the parties?

        Let me guess: "Proportional to the amount of power/influence they're likely to have."

      • 15 million dollars, through a co-worker.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      He gave money the GOP candidates that were the furthest to the right. He was trying to get the Democrat matched up against the easiest-to-beat Republican.

    • Numerous Democrat groups supported Republicans in the 2022 election cycle. Care to guess why?

    • Well, of course. If you only need to grease two palms to cover all your bases, why not do it?

      Way harder to do in Europe, with their like 20 parties. Who the hell can keep them all paid off, how's that political system supposed to work?

  • "SBF was heavily involved in Democratic Party politics: In the 2022 election cycle, he was the second most prolific funder of Democratic candidates. But he wasn't just a funder of electoral efforts. He funded both progressive and mainstream media organizations"

    I'm not sure what the distinction is supposed to be between 'progressive' and 'mainstream' unless they mean something Colbert Report style like FOX. But lets be honest, love it or hate it there isn't much difference between Democratic Party press rele

  • Probably not (Score:5, Informative)

    by TuballoyThunder ( 534063 ) on Monday November 21, 2022 @09:48PM (#63070126)
    The media believes in access more than money. In general, a non-trivial percentage of reporters will write favorable stories in order to maintain access. If the subject's politics/viewpoint aligns with the reporter, critical reporting also suffers.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by youngone ( 975102 )
      Reporters don't write the stories, the PR company employed by people like Sam Whatever write the stories, and the media is happy to publish them because it saves them work and might generate some clicks.
      That is not even something new, its been how this stuff has worked since the photos were being printed in black and white.
      All the republican crybabies commenting here about how he paid lots of money to democrats are entirely missing the point which is no surprise. The people who pull their strings know e

      • > The people who pull their strings know exactly how to get them angry at the wrong people.

        Exactly.

        The best propaganda capitalizes on truthful grievance and
        directs low information people to the wrong conclusions.

      • Reporters don't write the stories, the PR company employed by people like Sam Whatever write the stories

        Out of mod points, but - yes - this is exactly how it works. Sure, once in a while a reporter will chase down a story. However, publications have pages to fill, so most of their content comes from the people and companies it is about. We used to run a little company, and when we wanted some publicity? We would write an article that pretended to be neutral, but was really very positive. Simultaneously, we would take out an advertisement in the same publication, and they would publish the article.

        That's not

        • I worked for newspapers for several years in the 1980's in 3 different countries and that was the business model in all three.

          You worked for a little company, so you did it on a small scale, but if you worked for a really big one, your CEO would have had the editor's direct dial number.
          Someone modded my comment flamebait for whatever reason though. Presumably thinks we're the good guys or something.

    • a non-trivial percentage of reporters will write favorable stories in order to maintain access.

      I have been wondering why Slashdot has posted approximately 30 FTX articles since 11/1 and yet not a single Twitter takeover article. I finally figured it out and it's an explicit demonstration of not offending the subject as described by the OP here.

      Elon Musk follows Slashdot on Twitter (see #30 on this list). [businessinsider.com]

      Periodically, Musk posts a comment to a Slashdot twitter post, [twitter.com] which undoubtedly raises Slashdot'

    • It's not just that, until FTX collapsed it was a non-story, just another nondescript cryptocurrency scam in the midst of a series of other nondescript cryptocurrency scams. That's not news, and it's not newsworthy. Even now that it's collapsed I think it's had far more news coverage than it deserved, mostly because of the over-the-top behaviour of its management. Without that, the story is just "Yet another cryptocurrency scam collapses". Yawn.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by coop247 ( 974899 )
      The entire crypto "industry" has essentially been given carte blanche by ALL MEDIA to tell their lies and sell their nonsense. Some combination of techno-jargon and individual empowerment libertarian bullshit that allowed people from any political persuasion to find meaning.

      The one thing crypto morons did well was branding. Web 3.0! I mean these blockchains are gonna replace everything! Google! Microsoft! The internet itself! And they just kept repeating the lie; repeat, repeat, repeat the lies until the
  • For once, a counter-example.

  • One would be hard pressed to find a time when American news media was actually truly neutral and interested in the truth and educating readers/viewers as its primary goal.

    Go back a hundred+ years and the papers were literally propaganda/marketing noise for their powerful rich owners.

    Unlike today were we, uh, we see that... oh, never mind.

  • If they want the media's loyalty. Figuring out ways to throw a conference with free food for the attendees doesn't hurt either.

    • Honestly just by advertisements. The media stopped calling out the absolute Insanity of the Republican Party because the Republican party has large ad buys. Right wing in general does the same. Steven Crowder caused a bomb threat against children's hospitals by falsely claiming they were conducting surgery on trans kids and he's still on youtube. He spent several hundred thousand dollars a year on YouTube ads. I'm going to say that's not a coincidence

  • This is Theranos level fraud.

    The fact that he's not in jail and living on an island is Jeffrey Epstein like. Does he have the goods on other, powerful people?

    • FTX isn't an American corporation. That makes things rather complicated.

      • 18 U.S. Code  3042 - Extraterritorial jurisdiction (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3042) provides the Executive branch with the legal authority to arrest him. Incidentally, other countries (e.g. France) also exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction of their citizens.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cirby ( 2599 )

          That sort of thing takes a bit more than a few days.

          Investigation, charges, subpoenas, warrants, etc.

          • True; however, I'm not sure arresting him is a high priority goal. The Machiavellian voice in my head tells me that having SBF free is beneficial to the goal of regulating cryptocurrency. It is easier to highlight the need for global regulation by pointing at a seam then using existing legal authorizations.

        • Arrest him for what?

    • This is Theranos level fraud.

      The fact that he's not in jail and living on an island is Jeffrey Epstein like. Does he have the goods on other, powerful people?

      He probably should end up in jail. But Theranos was a very deliberate fraud in the healthcare system, SBF might actually think he didn't do anything terribly wrong aside from declare bankruptcy (he seems to think he could have raised money to replace the shortfall without it).

      They're both bad, but Homes was much much worse.

      • I don't think there's a huge difference between dying from a wrong diagnosis or dying from poverty, a stroke or heart attack, or suicide. And the last four are quite common when people lose everything.

        This guy belongs in jail, together with the rest of the gang. There is still about 1 billion dollar in crypto "hacked" and converted into Ethereum (37th largest holding right now), being very closely watched.

        • I don't think there's a huge difference between dying from a wrong diagnosis or dying from poverty, a stroke or heart attack, or suicide. And the last four are quite common when people lose everything.

          This guy belongs in jail, together with the rest of the gang. There is still about 1 billion dollar in crypto "hacked" and converted into Ethereum (37th largest holding right now), being very closely watched.

          For healthcare vs poverty most people do consider the immediacy of the harm when looking at the moral impact.

          But more importantly, there's a real possibility that the underlying cause was that SBF was an idiot, a dishonest one true, but that it failed not because he was trying to steal money or fundamentally mislead people, but he had no idea what he was doing.

          That's one of the reasons you need regulation, it's not just to protect against dishonest actors, but also to protect against incompetent actors who

          • Oh, the whole bunch of them were idiots. The problem is: they were also reckless, and outright lying against investors. At that point it went beyond and above simple incompetence.

    • Elizabeth Holmes is in jail since, what, last week? Theranos went under around 2018, with big problems since at least 2016. Maybe you are just too impatient to declare conspiracy? But I will agree with you if he's not in jail, say, by 2025...

    • We still don't know all of the names in Jeffrey Epstein's black book...even though the airplane passenger manifests might be incriminating to some degree.
    • Was there fraud? Most likely. Has anyone handed evidence to the police for an arrest? Not yet. At this point most of the complaints are civil matters. While there are possible criminal investigations, they have not concluded yet.
  • Yes, but nobody cares. The collapse of Bank-Fraud's ponzi scheme needed media cooperation for a short term and got it. The FTX-Ukraine-Dems laundromat worked as intended.

  • Nope (Score:2, Insightful)

    by quantaman ( 517394 )

    Maybe he thought he was doing that but it clearly didn't work. As the article points out one of the beneficiaries was Vox Media, but one of his big legal problems right now comes from the fact he started DM'ing a Vox reporter so the reporter put it in an article [vox.com].

    It's true he's not being criticized as harshly as Enron might have been, but I think there's a good explanation for that. Enron involved a lot of really experienced and informed people perpetrating a very deliberate fraud. SBF was certainly engaged

    • "SBF was certainly engaged in a bit of fraud...." And I hear Hitler was certainly engaed in a bit of nationalism.

      • This article, which nitpicks other media outlets for not covering FTX in a harsher light, doesn't even say that.

        IDK what the point is of claiming media is casting this guy in too favorable a light if nobody's got enough dirt on him yet to call him an outright fraud. Are they supposed to be meaner? There's nothing in this article we don't know, and we're all waiting for the first report that actually calls him a fraud and this Reason article didn't do it.

    • The cash didn't disappear because he stole it

      I can only speak for how it would have been had FTX been a UK company but under UK law they most definitely did steal it.

      There are many situations where somebody has the legal title to something but has no beneficial interest. The simplest way that occurs in UK law is something called a "bare trust" which, in most cases[1], can be created automatically without any paperwork at all (under UK law at least)

      When you buy a house you transfer the money to buy it to you

  • What is the point of this article? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sonoronos ( 610381 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @05:06AM (#63070610)

    Is it to vilify this guy? Or give him the penalty he deserves?

    Or is it to inflame political disagreement amongst readers? To make people feel some kind of anger and outrage?

  • I feel like this is the "We're The Millers" Meme. SBF -> 'Liberal' media -> Respectable Media (pro Publica) -> 'Conservative' media. I'm guessing the conservative side wrote puff pieces as well, but were convinced to do it to 'own the libs'. Now they are finding out others got donations, and they are pissed. "look at how soft the reporting has been!"

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