It’s rare indeed to read a critical article about how Bill & Melinda Gates use their vast wealth to burnish their image as the greatest benefactors of all time. This article by freelance journalist Tim Schwab, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, documents how the Gates have purchased a larger-than-life portrayal of themselves by strategic investments in the media.
With rare exceptions, the Gates’s have subsidized publications likely to write about them and guaranteed that they would be portrayed favorably. By doing so, they have undermined freedom of the press while assuring favorable treatment for themselves.
Schwab writes:
LAST AUGUST, NPR PROFILED A HARVARD-LED EXPERIMENT to help low-income families find housing in wealthier neighborhoods, giving their children access to better schools and an opportunity to “break the cycle of poverty.” According to researchers cited in the article, these children could see $183,000 greater earnings over their lifetimes—a striking forecast for a housing program still in its experimental stage.
If you squint as you read the story, you’ll notice that every quoted expert is connected to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund the project. And if you’re really paying attention, you’ll also see the editor’s note at the end of the story, which reveals that NPR itself receives funding from Gates.
NPR’s funding from Gates “was not a factor in why or how we did the story,” reporter Pam Fessler says, adding that her reporting went beyond the voices quoted in her article. The story, nevertheless, is one of hundreds NPR has reported about the Gates Foundation or the work it funds, including myriad favorable pieces written from the perspective of Gates or its grantees.
And that speaks to a larger trend—and ethical issue—with billionaire philanthropists’ bankrolling the news. The Broad Foundation, whose philanthropic agenda includes promoting charter schools, at one point funded part of the LA Times’ reporting on education. Charles Koch has made charitable donations to journalistic institutions such as the Poynter Institute, as well as to news outlets such as the Daily Caller, that support his conservative politics. And the Rockefeller Foundation funds Vox’s Future Perfect, a reporting project that examines the world “through the lens of effective altruism”—often looking at philanthropy.
As philanthropists increasingly fill in the funding gaps at news organizations—a role that is almost certain to expand in the media downturn following the coronavirus pandemic—an underexamined worry is how this will affect the ways newsrooms report on their benefactors. Nowhere does this concern loom larger than with the Gates Foundation, a leading donor to newsrooms and a frequent subject of favorable news coverage.
In Gates-funded articles, the rule seems to be: write whatever you want so long as you don’t criticize Bill or Melinda. Presenting them as saviors of society is good.
Strategic media investments pay off for Bill Gates.
Gates’s generosity appears to have helped foster an increasingly friendly media environment for the world’s most visible charity. Twenty years ago, journalists scrutinized Bill Gates’s initial foray into philanthropy as a vehicle to enrich his software company, or a PR exercise to salvage his battered reputation following Microsoft’s bruising antitrust battle with the Department of Justice. Today, the foundation is most often the subject of soft profiles and glowing editorials describing its good works.
During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covid—even though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundation’s website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVax.
In the same way that the news media has given Gates an outsize voice in the pandemic, the foundation has long used its charitable giving to shape the public discourse on everything from global health to education to agriculture—a level of influence that has landed Bill Gates on Forbes’s list of the most powerful people in the world. The Gates Foundation can point to important charitable accomplishments over the past two decades—like helping drive down polio and putting new funds into fighting malaria—but even these efforts have drawn expert detractors who say that Gates may actually be introducing harm, or distracting us from more important, lifesaving public health projects.
The PBS Newshour has received millions from Gates and reliably gushes over Bill and Melinda and their munificence.
In 2011, the Seattle Times published an article critical of the Gates Foundation, then two years later received a generous grant to pay for education coverage, and criticism stopped.
NPR receives Gates largesse, and regularly cites Gates as an authority on everything. The most delicious irony is NPR treating Gates—one of the richest men in the world—as an authority on income inequality and poverty. That’s a good one.
Those of us who concentrate on education are aware that everything Gates has funded in a large way has been an abject failure—from his absurd claim that he had knew how to produce and measure good teachers to his huge investment in the Common Core. We won’t hear about those failures in the Gates-funded media.
What I find most puzzling about the Bill and Melinda is their vanity. Their need to be recognized and praised is boundless. I guess no one ever told them that the highest form of philanthropy is to be completely anonymous: to give without knowing who will receive your gift and to give with no expectation of gratitude. The lowest form of giving is the gift where one expects recognition. Sadly, they use their philanthropy to exercise power, to win praise, and to stoke their needy egos.
This is an important report and also a warning that oddly reflects Trump’s insistence that anything critical of him is fake news.
I am among others who have done many analyses of who the B&M Gates Foundation funds and their often cryptic descriptions of grants for “messaging” about their projects. It is usually money to “build public support for…” and with grantees carefully selected to be grateful for the money from B&M Gates.
I am amazed at the high profile he is getting for “predicting” in a TED talk that a pandemic would be coming. Gates has no known personal expertise other than making money from computing but he is an avid reader and he has the wealth to hire experts. He has no problem in reprocessing and circulating the insights of others as if his own. Melinda Gates has a lower profile but both are receiving more attention as if experts simply because of their wealth. And then there is Betsy ten-yacht Devos, who thinks she is “doing God’s work” by privatizing education. Good to see she is facing a lawsuit for that.
Yup. They get an idea, find someone or some group to study it or try it, then fund others to sell it to the public. A huge closed loop of egotism.
so well said
Bill & Melinda Gates better hunker down in their bunker. The stuff that the QANON folks post is pretty scary. Bill Gates seems to be #1 on their list of people to hate (and why). Dr. Fauci isn’t far behind and then next up is HRC. We are living in a really dangerous and strange time.
How was it conceived to extend a grant 14 months before COVID became hot, impeccable timing?…
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants/2018/11/opp1199760
Date: NOVEMBER 2018
Committed amount: $499,944
Duration (months): 14
Grantee location: Wuhan, Hubei, China
Purpose
To establish international research networks and data sharing platforms as well as develop policy recommendations for improving the medical insurance system in China
Gates is well known for weaponizing his wealth against democratic institutions. Gates wants to be viewed as a philanthropist, but he and his tax avoidance foundations are more like villainthropists. In addition to buying positive reviews from the media, Gates and other like minded wealthy individuals buy political influence while simultaneously funding “stinktanks” (credit to Bob) that echo the message that Gates’ initiatives are terrific. The effect is a closed system of misinformation that Chiara calls the “echo chamber.”
Now that NPE has gained national attention on all the waste and fraud in the charter sector, Gates’ funded “stinktanks” are trying to undermine NPE’s reports and messaging. Clearly, billionaires are not happy that people are getting information that counters the billionaires’ narrative. They would rather choke democracy under a shroud than have a public light shine on their misdeeds and falsehoods.
Well said!
Stinktanks was not my coinage. Perhaps Senor Swacker. My formulation: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute–places where thinking tanks.
Stinktanks….my coinage! I live close to Stinktank land.
Thanks, LisaM!
The truly astonishing thing to me is that the Gates and Fordham organizations are staffed by some reasonably bright and educated people, but after DECADES of failed education “reforms,” they still don’t get it AT ALL about how and why the Common Core, standardized testing, VAM, school grading, etc., have failed so miserably or even that they have failed. These people are very slow learners. This has failed miserably, so let’s double down on it.
it is always overwhelming to find out that now, 18 years since NCLB first started to invade schools, the general populace still has little interest in the fact that charter/voucher schools and those pushing them are problematic
Bob, I think you mean, a$toni$hing.
It’s truly a$toni$hing that someone on Gates payroll could “fail” to see the obvious.
I’ve often thought, does someone like, say, Mike Petrilli actually believe his own BS, or at least some of it? Or is this pure meretriciousness? The case for the latter is, ofc, the obviousness of the Deform failures: the utter failure of high-stakes standardized testing to budge student achievement or to make a dent in the achievement gap, the breathtaking devolution of ELA curricula and pedagogy because of the Common Core, the prima facie absurdity of VAM and school grading, the shocking catalog of charter and virtual school scams and failures. On the other hand, Petrilli writes as though he has never actually read a current standardized test or looked at a current ELA textbook and hasn’t been inside a school in decades. So, perhaps this is just sheer ignorance with just a dash of willful blindness. One evidently doesn’t have to put much thought into being a thought leader.
Gate$tarnishing
Gate$tarnishing it is
That grovelers will grovel
For billionaires like this
Who pay them lot$ to shovel
Manure deep and wide
The facts to override
Another gem, SomeDAM!
I’ve noticed, as well, lately, the flood of propaganda attempting the apotheosis of Gates, and a lot of this sycophancy is carried out by people who call themselves journalists.
All news has become propaganda. This is not new. I use multiple outlets. A friend of mine in the military says that algezer (so?) is the most accurate. I am not sure. All media outlets are bought and paid for and all have a slant to them. Sometimes it is difficult to find the truth.
My son often reads news from Al Jazeera which he claims is more unbiased than some of the American news outlets. Although they have been scorned by anti-Muslim groups, they continue to be considered a legitimate source of information.
Current Affairs, Consortium News, Grayzone, TMI and Jacobin should be on everyone’s regular reading list. Most of those are entirely reader-funded. The Intercept also has some good content, but it’s a very mixed bag so read with care (they are owned by eBay mogul Pierre Omidyar). Whenever consuming mainstream media, keep in mind that they are all owned by the same six extremely lucrative multinational corporation whose agenda is to support power.
Al Jazeera.
Sad to read this. I wonder … how far back does Gates’ NPR connection go? Is it a result of the defunding of arts more broadly that NPR has had to seek such unsavory “outside the box” funding streams? I just hate to see a relatively venerable public institution fall to the wolves as billionaires take a $3 trillion bite out of the middle class.
Walton is as political as Gates. Walton funds NPR. That’s why NPR gives good treatments to charters, Walton’s big education bet. Gates too is a charter cheerleader. Can’t afford to offend the big donors.
My comment is a bit off topic as it does not relate specifically to Bill Gates. I was an avid watcher/listener of PBS and NPR. After watching PBS’ reporting of the Boeing Aircraft crisis I did some research and found a video by “Mentour Pilot” on youtube who is an airline captain and posts videos explaining various aspects of flying big jets and other issues in commercial aviation. He produced a video detailing the development of MCAS and how Boeing implemented this disastrous system with FAA approval in order to cut costs while trying to compete with newer more efficient designs from Airbus. The very short story is that Boeing mislead the FAA to gain approval that did not require retraining (costly) and didn’t even inform its pilots of the existence of MCAS on planes they were flying hence the pilots were completely unprepared to deal with a situation that could and did result in fatal crashes.
I suggest watching Mentour Pilot’s video and the video by PBS about the Boeing crashes. The differences are stark. The video by PBS completely ignores the conscious efforts by Boeing to mislead while trying to give the appearance of in-depth coverage. The very last comment on the PBS report is the fact Boeing withheld some information without any explanation of what that was, clearly a whitewash report.
Is Boeing a big contributor to PBS? I wonder.
I usually trust PBS but my trust was shaken when it accepted underwriting from a small number of rightwing libertarian foundations for a two-part show on the glories of privatizing public schools. The show attacked public schools, unions, teachers, and extolled for-profit schools. Before that, PBS accepted a few millions from the John Arnold Foundation on “The Pension Crisis,” meant to show that public employees were bankrupting the states. David Sirota exposed the funding, and PBS was shamed into returning the money.
About two or three weeks ago, perhaps longer as I am losing a sense of time due to civid, a PBS segment with Judy Woodruff reported that the Social Security System was on the verge of bankruptcy. I wonder how much money was promised for PBS to air such a blatantly false claim.
Hurt people hurt people. As were many millionaires and especially billionaires, William Gates III was punished for losing by his extremely wealthy parents, punished for everything from losing card games to swimming slowly. He was bullied as a child by practically everyone he knew. He was taught to fear coming in second, that winning is everything, and that it doesn’t matter how the winning is accomplished.
Anti-competitive practices have dominated his actions throughout his entire life. From Microsoft to Common Core to playing doctor during the pandemic like Trump, Gates hasn’t won by being the best; he’s won by hobbling the competition. He does away with the competition by whatever means are at his disposal. He has a hundred billion means at his disposal. Government services the world over are weakened. The response to pandemics was long ago diminished by his meddling in world health affairs. Hurt people hurt people. Fear Trump, fear crime organization bosses, fear Zuckerberg, fear Bezos, fear Koch… but Bill Gates is the world’s most dangerous man. Take his money at your peril. Take his money at everyone’s peril.
There was a time in America’s past when religion taught the importance of humility in giving. Not now- “charity’s” dual goals are to avoid taxes and to promote the oligarch agenda.
Scammers often find the wiling to front for their schemes.
Melinda Gates often references her Catholic faith related to her “giving”. Bill said in an interview that he participates in the church his wife attends. Then, there’s Charles Koch’s close relationship with Catholic University of America in D.C., where the Church walks in tandem with his plotiing.
Melinda Gates is publicly in favor of the ordination of Catholic women to the priesthood, so she has at least one selflessly beneficial thought!
Don’t believe what comes out of Melinda’s mouth. In the past couple of years she grabbed headlines for supposedly creating an initiative that would help women gain higher level jobs, The initiative reportedly excluded religion and education.
Melinda said she loses sleep over gender inequality. She’s married to a big fish from the notoriously unfriendly-to-women tech industry. Her religion discriminates with pride and successfully promotes legislation that undermines women’s reproductive health, so she understands there is grave reason to worry.
She is a major force behind the de-professionalizing of the career that has lifted the most women into financial security.
Melinda is sh_t.
I still recall the PBS interview of a few years back when Melinda confidently asserted, “We know how to create great teachers.” My jaw dropped. They do?
And, Melinda lives in the state with the most regressive tax system in the nation. In the colony of Washington, the poor pay up to 7 times the rate that the rich do. Bill spent $200,000 to defeat the re-election of judges who had rendered verdicts favorable to public schools. Bill spoke out in opposition to raising minimum wage. The Gates are libertarian leeches.
“She’s married to a big fish from the notoriously unfriendly-to-women tech industry.”
Yes, to the guy who hired a Microsoft CEO whose first major decision was effectively to tell women not to ask for a pay raise.
He claimed women with “good karma” don’t need to ask for a raise
Thank you for that last paragraph. That’s exactly the way I feel about them.
And “Bill Gates says Trump has the opportunity to be like JFK”
Gates said he recently spoke on the phone with Trump, and discussed the power of innovation. “Of course, my whole career has been along those lines. And he was interested in listening to that. And I’m sure there will be further conversation.”
Gates said it was the first time he had spoken with Trump, though he said they have mutual friends.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/after-talking-with-trump-bill-gates-likens-president-elect-to-jfk.html
Mutual friends like Jeffery Epstein.
I wonder if I will live long enough to read biographies of Bill Gates written by real authors and journalists, the type that actually does deep research from primary soruces, that will reveal Bill Gates’s dark side and all of its ugliness.
Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covid—even though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundation’s website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVax.
The Gates Foundation name was all over the NIH site before Covid. What did the American people get for the Gates’ tax avoided “charity”? Why isn’t he held accountable?
“if you’re really paying attention, you’ll also see the editor’s note at the end of the story, which reveals that NPR itself receives funding from Gates.”
In the past they have done what they call “stories” which are really just propaganda pieces for their advertisers (forgive me, “underwriters”).
A good example of this is when they did a glowing series on the wonders of natural gas and if not for all the comments from listeners who WERE paying attention, would probably never have mentioned the negatives
http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/2009/09/shilling-for-shale-fronting-for.html
Of course, NPR and it’s ombotsman always claim NPR sponsors (in the latter case, America’s Natural Gas Alliance) do not affect the NPR “stories”.
Yes, of course. Ignore that man behind the curtain, Dorothy!
One of NPR’s former heads was right (albeit not in the intended way) when they said “NPR stands for nothing”
At the time , NPR was trying to distance itself from the National Public Radio” name and rebrand itself as just N P R.
But to those who have listened to NPR from it’s inception, the statement had quite a humorous twist.
“Read between the radio waves”
Read between the radio waves
To fathom NPR
Gates Foundation pays their ways
And keeps them in a jar
“National Parrot Radio”
Parrotaganda epitomized
NPR has corporate ties
Makes reparroters squawk and squeak
Every time they go to speak
Incidentally, as a result of criticisms NPR was receiving under their stories posted on their website, they discontinued the comments.
They denied it had anything to do with censorship, of course.
Effectively claimed the commenters were mostly trolls.
NPR has become a deeply DISHONEST organization.
A friend gave me a subscription to Vanity Fair. I cancelled it after I read a page in the magazine that was nothing more than a puff piece about Melinda. An AARP publication ran the same type of praise bs for Bill Gates. iThe piece appeared in the same issue that the editors advocated for raising the minimum wage and other things libertarians like Bill oppose.
Vanity Fair—look at its name—specializes in fawning coverage of the superrich. Whether they are the Gateses, movie stars, or a bunch of people who live in Greenwich, CT, it’s the same thing—breathless credulity. The annual issue devoted to “royals,” which includes people who are not rulers, was a hoot, but not worth the subscription price. Every so often there is an interesting political article. Maybe the new editor will make changes, but the print media business is tough these days and they have to sell those full page ads.
The publications that are honest post a disclaimer- “paid content”.
Vanity Fair could have at least done the minimum, asked a question in the interview, “Critics find your charity to be____ . Do you care to respond?”
Our local newspaper ran a puff piece about Melinda. It even stated, in a non-sequitur that her fingertips were intelligent. No kidding.
I’d wager that everyone reading this has more formal education under their belt than Billy Gates.
Much higher standards too.
Common Core, like Microsoft software appeals to the lowest common denominator.
PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation”
NPRs current ombudsman (Kelly McBride) is a Poynter Sister (from Poynter Institute)
“We are family . I’ve got all my sisters with me.”
Sorry. I’ve got my sisters switched.
That was Sister Sledge.
The Poynter Sisters was
I’m so excited. I just can’t hide it. I know I know I know I want to”
Stopping by School on a Disruptive Afternoon | Bob Shepherd
after decades of test-driven education “reform”
Whose schools these are, I think I know.
His house is near Seattle though.
He will not see me stopping here
to watch what kids now undergo.
My better angels think it queer
to see a place so void of cheer
what with the tests and data chats,
the data walls with children’s stats.
Where are the joys of yesterday—
when kids would draw and sing and play?
The only sound I hear’s defeat
and pencils on the bubble sheets.
Disrupters say, unflappable,
“We’re building Human Capital!”
Such word goes out from their think tanks,
as they their profits build and bank.
“Music, stories, art, and play
won’t teach Prole children to obey
with servile, certain, gritful grace
and know their rightful, lowly place.”
The fog is heavy, dark and deep.
Where thinking tanks, Deformers creep
and from our children childhood steal
and grind them underneath the wheel.
Postscript:
Disruption of the Commonweal
is that in which Deformers deal
that they might thereby crises fake
as cover whereby they might take
(the smiling villains!) take and take
and take and take and take and take.