The field of journalism will be receiving a pretty nice check from what would seem like an unlikely donor. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar will be contributing 100 million dollars in support of investigative journalism. He also wants the money to go towards "fighting misinformation and counteracting hate speech."
The Washington Post stated that they weren't able to get a comment from Pierre Omidyar himself, but were able to get Stephen King. King is a partner at the Omidyar Network and commented on the founder's behalf. "We think it's really important to act now to keep dangerous trends from becoming the norm..".
Keep in mind that the money won't be going all to one place. Below is a mini breakdown of the big bucks:
4.5 million - the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
2.9 million - the Latin American Alliance for Civic Technology
Not all recipients have been released but organizations such as the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) will be receiving some of the funds.
Yet Pierre Omidyar is not a newbie to philanthropy so there should be no surprises here. Omidyar ranked in at number 8 on a list the country's top 50 philanthropists. He was apart of creating the civil-liberty focused site 'The Intercept'. And to end off this excerpt, he financed and was executive producer of Academy award winning movie "Spotlight" (Which was a GREAT movie by the way).
So this is nothing new to billionaire philanthropist Pierre Omidyar. Just another addition to many other acts of giving back.