George Soros Image by Getty Images

The head of a U.S. government agency apologized to financier George Soros and his foundation after airing a program that upheld conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tropes, the Washington Post reported.

John Lansing, chief executive and director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an agency that shares news abroad, sent letters to Soros and Open Society Foundation president Patrick Gaspard, extending his apologies for the segment — a 15-minute, Spanish-language package that called Soros a “non-practicing Jew of flexible morals.”

“It was based on extremely poor and unprofessional journalism, and it was utterly offensive in its anti-Semitism and clear bias,” Lansing wrote in the letter to Soros, which was obtained by the Post. “I take this breach in our fundamental obligation to provide accurate, balanced, and objective reporting very seriously.”

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The program, by USAGM’s Radio and Television Martí, for audiences in Cuba, also asserted the liberal megadonor was involved in “clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union” and described him as “the architect of the financial collapse of 2008,” according to the Post. In addition, it repeated the false theory that Soros was funding the caravan of migrants traveling from Mexico to the United States.

The piece is no longer online.

Lansing acknowledged the inadequate sourcing in his letter to Gaspard — Judicial Watch, a conservative group that launched an “Expose Soros” fundraising campaign, was mentioned often.

He said the program “should never have been produced in the first place.”

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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