How Bill Gates spent over $319 million to Shape the Media
Bill Gates
was born on October 28, 1955, is an American business magnate, software
developer, investor, author, and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft,
along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at
Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO),
president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual
shareholder until May 2014. He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer
revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
Gates is
worth $114 billion, according to Bloomberg, and is one of only eight moguls
worth over $100 billion.
Unlike Jeff
Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates took a different route. Instead of
buying a media outlet outright, Gates chose to spread his sphere of influence
to tens of media outlets by donating millions of dollars in grants and awards
to promote his global agenda and get many favorable pieces written about him
and his foundation.
According to
the analysis conducted by MintPress News, a left-leaning online news website
founded and edited by Mnar Adley, MintPress found that the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation has made over $300 million worth of donations to fund media
projects. After sifting through over 30,000 grants in the Foundation’s
database, MintPress found that “Gates Foundation has bankrolled hundreds of
media outlets and ventures, to the tune of at least $319 million.”
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The
recipients of Gates Foundation donations and grants include many of America’s
most important news outlets, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS, and The Atlantic.
That’s not all. “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.
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
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The role of philanthropy in Bill Gates’s global empire is well known. But the Gates Foundation’s contributions to media organizations are huge, under examined, and a significant part of how one of the world’s wealthiest men has built and protected his image.
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