Ben Smith’s Semafor Partners with CCP-Linked Think Tank

Ben Smith Partners with CCP National Congress of Chinese Communist Party
Li Xueren/Xinhua via Getty Images, CBS/YouTube
Robert Kraychik

Semafor, a news media outlet co-founded by BuzzFeed founder Ben Smith, announced a partnership with the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a think tank essentially operated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Semafor markets itself as providing “a news source you can trust” providing “unparalleled levels of journalistic transparency” in order to “rebuild trust” with news media consumers skeptical of the industry’s veracity. Its mission statement lists “climate change” as one of the “biggest stories” and “greatest crises” facing humanity.

The CCG markets itself as a “non-governmental think tank,” despite its existence as a project of the Western Returned Scholars Association (WRSA), which itself is an operation of the CCP’s United Front Work Department.

The Washington Post‘s Josh Rogin noted the CCG’s status as a tool of the CCP’s “foreign influence operations” via Twitter:

Semafor’s partnership announcement with the CCG listed “climate change” as an “opportunity” for multistate cooperation between the U.S. and China to “rebuild trust” between the two countries’ governments:

How can the world’s two largest economies rebuild trust? How do companies and CEOs from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, caught in the middle of this Great Power rivalry, navigate this complex world order? And as trans-Pacific business ties fray, where are the new corridors of growth and opportunity? And in a world of, at best, intense and sometimes bitter competition, where are the opportunities for cooperation on issues like climate change?

Semafor did not disclose any financial compensation from the CCG in its announcement of its partnership with the CCP subsidiary.

Semafor’s largest single investor was Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the now defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Of a total $25 million raised ahead of the news media outlet’s launch in 2022, $10 came from Bankman-Fried.

The New York Times listed some of Semafor’s left-wing and partisan Democrat benefactors:

The money to get started comes from a variety of wealthy people, including the crypto-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and his brother Gabe; Jessica Lessin, the founder of The Information; David G. Bradley, chairman emeritus of The Atlantic; and John Thornton, co-founder of the American Journalism Project and The Texas Tribune. Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg L.P., was pitched but decided not to invest.

The Federalist’s Emily Jashinsky noted Smith’s role as the initial publisher of the “dossier” central to the “Russian collusion” narrative framing former President Donald Trump as an agent of Russian state influence.

Ben Smith has repeatedly characterized himself as politically objective and non-partisan in his professional conduct in the news media industry.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.

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