Journalism’s Gates Keepers

I recently examined nearly 20,000 charitable grants the Gates Foundation has made through the end of June and found more than $250 million dollars going toward journalism. Recipients include news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and The Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund; media companies including Participant Media, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’ agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as sub-grants to other journalistic organizations—which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates’ funding into the fourth estate.