Pandemic Payoff: Bill Gates Injected $319 Million Into Mainstream Media

Last year 21WIRE reported on an investigation conducted by the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review which exposed how Bill Gates has been busy injecting hundreds millions into media outlets around the world and how in return, he has was not only given carte blanche access to many of those same media outlets to promote his own interests and projects – namely the global COVID-19 vaccine roll-out and select therapeutic drugs. It’s also not surprising why in return, Gates has received unanimous fawning coverage of his constant promotion of lockdowns, masks and experimental mRNA jabs. 

Additional information was revealed this week showing the full extent of Gates’ hold over the mainstream media based on over 30,000 individual grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s own website database.

The beneficiaries include the biggest names in media, including CNN, BBC, NBC, NPR, PBS, The Guardian, France’s Le Monde, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, Germany’s Der Spiegel, the Conversation, Education Week, the Education Post, the Financial Times, the Texas Tribune, Al-Jazeera, the Atlantic, and New York Public Radio.

The top winners include $24.6 million for Washington’s state-run media outlet NPR, $12.9 million for The Guardian, and $10.8 million for Seattle-based Cascade Public Media, which owns local station KCTS-TV.

Alan McLeod from Mint Press News writes…

While other billionaires’ media empires are relatively well known, the extent to which Gates’s cash underwrites the modern media landscape is not. After sorting through over 30,000 individual grants, MintPress can reveal that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has made over $300 million worth of donations to fund media projects.

Recipients of this cash include many of America’s most important news outlets, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS and The Atlantic. Gates also sponsors a myriad of influential foreign organizations, including the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom; prominent European newspapers such as Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain); as well as big global broadcasters like Al-Jazeera.

The Gates Foundation money going towards media programs has been split up into a number of sections, presented in descending numerical order, and includes a link to the relevant grant on the organization’s website.

Awards Directly to Media Outlets:

• NPR- $24,663,066
• The Guardian (including TheGuardian.org)- $12,951,391   
• Cascade Public Media – $10,895,016
• Public Radio International (PRI.org/TheWorld.org)- $7,719,113
• The Conversation- $6,664,271
• Univision- $5,924,043
• Der Spiegel (Germany)- $5,437,294       
• Project Syndicate- $5,280,186
• Education Week – $4,898,240
• WETA- $4,529,400
• NBCUniversal Media- $4,373,500
• Nation Media Group (Kenya) – $4,073,194
• Le Monde (France)- $4,014,512
• Bhekisisa (South Africa) – $3,990,182
• El País – $3,968,184
• BBC- $3,668,657
• CNN- $3,600,000   
• KCET- $3,520,703
• Population Communications International (population.org) – $3,500,000
• The Daily Telegraph – $3,446,801
• Chalkbeat – $2,672,491   
• The Education Post- $2,639,193
• Rockhopper Productions (U.K.) – $2,480,392
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting – $2,430,949
• UpWorthy – $2,339,023
• Financial Times – $2,309,845
• The 74 Media- $2,275,344
• Texas Tribune- $2,317,163
• Punch (Nigeria) – $2,175,675
• News Deeply – $1,612,122
• The Atlantic- $1,403,453
• Minnesota Public Radio- $1,290,898
• YR Media- $1,125,000
• The New Humanitarian- $1,046,457
• Sheger FM (Ethiopia) – $1,004,600
• Al-Jazeera- $1,000,000
• ProPublica- $1,000,000
• Crosscut Public Media – $810,000
• Grist Magazine- $750,000
• Kurzgesagt – $570,000
• Educational Broadcasting Corp – $506,504
• Classical 98.1 – $500,000
• PBS – $499,997
• Gannett – $499,651
• Mail and Guardian (South Africa)- $492,974
• Inside Higher Ed.- $439,910
• BusinessDay (Nigeria) – $416,900
• Medium.com – $412,000   
• Nutopia- $350,000
• Independent Television Broadcasting Inc. – $300,000
• Independent Television Service, Inc. – $300,000
• Caixin Media (China) – $250,000
• Pacific News Service – $225,000
• National Journal – $220,638
• Chronicle of Higher Education – $149,994
• Belle and Wissell, Co. $100,000
• Media Trust – $100,000
• New York Public Radio – $77,290
• KUOW – Puget Sound Public Radio – $5,310

Together, these donations total $166,216,526. The money is generally directed towards issues close to the Gateses hearts. For example, the $3.6 million CNN grant went towards “report[ing] on gender equality with a particular focus on least developed countries, producing journalism on the everyday inequalities endured by women and girls across the world,” while the Texas Tribune received millions to “to increase public awareness and engagement of education reform issues in Texas.” Given that Bill is one of the charter schools’ most fervent supporters, a cynic might interpret this as planting pro-corporate charter school propaganda into the media, disguised as objective news reporting.

The Gates Foundation has also given nearly $63 million to charities closely aligned with big media outlets, including nearly $53 million to BBC Media Action, over $9 million to MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, and $1 million to The New York Times Neediest Causes Fund. While not specifically funding journalism, donations to the philanthropic arm of a media player should still be noted.

Gates continues to underwrite a wide network of investigative journalism centers as well, totaling just over $38 million, more than half of which has gone to the D.C.-based International Center for Journalists to expand and develop African media.

These centers include:

• International Center for Journalists- $20,436,938
• Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (Nigeria) – $3,800,357
• The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting – $2,432,552
• Fondation EurActiv Politech – $2,368,300
• International Women’s Media Foundation – $1,500,000
• Center for Investigative Reporting – $1,446,639
• InterMedia Survey institute – $1,297,545
• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – $1,068,169
• Internews Network – $985,126
• Communications Consortium Media Center – $858,000
• Institute for Nonprofit News – $650,021
• The Poynter Institute for Media Studies- $382,997
• Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (Nigeria)  – $360,211
• Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies – $254,500
• Global Forum for Media Development (Belgium) – $124,823
• Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting – $100,000

In addition to this, the Gates Foundation also plies press and journalism associations with cash, to the tune of at least $12 million. For example, the National Newspaper Publishers Association — a group representing more than 200 outlets — has received $3.2 million.

The list of these organizations includes:

• Education Writers Association – $5,938,475
• National Newspaper Publishers Association – $3,249,176
• National Press Foundation- $1,916,172
• Washington News Council- $698,200
• American Society of News Editors Foundation – $250,000
• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press- $25,000

This brings our running total up to $216.4 million.

The foundation also puts up the money to directly train journalists all over the world, in the form of scholarships, courses and workshops. Today, it is possible for an individual to train as a reporter thanks to a Gates Foundation grant, find work at a Gates-funded outlet, and to belong to a press association funded by Gates. This is especially true of journalists working in the fields of health, education and global development, the ones Gates himself is most active in and where scrutiny of the billionaire’s actions and motives are most necessary.

Gates Foundation grants pertaining to the instruction of journalists include:

• Johns Hopkins University – $1,866,408
• Teachers College, Columbia University- $1,462,500
• University of California Berkeley- $767,800       
• Tsinghua University (China) – $450,000
• Seattle University – $414,524
• Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies – $254,500   
• Rhodes University (South Africa) – $189,000
• Montclair State University- $160,538
• Pan-Atlantic University Foundation – $130,718
• World Health Organization – $38,403
• The Aftermath Project- $15,435

The BMGF also pays for a wide range of specific media campaigns around the world. For example, since 2014 it has donated $5.7 million to the Population Foundation of India in order to create dramas that promote sexual and reproductive health, with the intent to increase family planning methods in South Asia. Meanwhile, it alloted over $3.5 million to a Senegalese organization to develop radio shows and online content that would feature health information. Supporters consider this to be helping critically underfunded media, while opponents might consider it a case of a billionaire using his money to plant his ideas and opinions into the press.

Media projects supported by the Gates Foundation:

• European Journalism Centre – $20,060,048
• World University Service of Canada – $12,127,622
• Well Told Story Limited – $9,870,333
• Solutions Journalism Inc.- $7,254,755   
• Entertainment Industry Foundation – $6,688,208   
• Population Foundation of India- $5,749,826 –
• Participant Media – $3,914,207
• Réseau Africain de l’Education pour la santé- $3,561,683
• New America – $3,405,859
• AllAfrica Foundation – $2,311,529
• Steps International – $2,208,265
• Center for Advocacy and Research – $2,200,630
• The Sesame Workshop – $2,030,307
• Panos Institute West Africa – $1,809,850        
• Open Cities Lab – $1,601,452   
• Harvard university – $1,190,527
• Learning Matters – $1,078,048
• The Aaron Diamond Aids Research Center- $981,631
• Thomson Media Foundation- $860,628
• Communications Consortium Media Center – $858,000
• StoryThings- $799,536
• Center for Rural Strategies – $749,945
• The New Venture Fund – $700,000   
• Helianthus Media – $575,064   
• University of Southern California- $550,000
• World Health Organization- $530,095
• Phi Delta Kappa International – $446,000
• Ikana Media – $425,000
• Seattle Foundation – $305,000
• EducationNC – $300,000
• Beijing Guokr Interactive – $300,000   
• Upswell- $246,918
• The African Academy of Sciences – $208,708   
• Seeking Modern Applications for Real Transformation (SMART) – $201,781
• Bay Area Video Coalition- $190,000
• PowHERful Foundation – $185,953
• PTA Florida Congress of Parents and Teachers – $150,000   
• ProSocial – $100,000   
• Boston University – $100,000
• National Center for Families Learning – $100,000   
• Development Media International – $100,000
• Ahmadu Bello University- $100,000
• Indonesian eHealth and Telemedicine Society – $100,000
• The Filmmakers Collaborative – $50,000
• Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Georgia Inc. – $25,000   
• SIFF – $13,000

Total: $97,315,408

$319.4 million and (a lot) more

Added together, these Gates-sponsored media projects come to a total of $319.4 million. However, there are clear shortcomings with this non-exhaustive list, meaning the true figure is undoubtedly far higher…

Continue this report at Mint Press News 

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