Wednesday, August 25, 2021

NY Times columnists still financially benefitting from Bill Gates largesse -without acknowledgement from the Times


8/27/21: I've updated this with more recommendation for what Solutions Journalism should do to avoid these conflicts of interest in the future.

Timothy Schwab has written a series of must-read pieces about the overriding influence of the Gates Foundation on public policy, and how the Foundation influences the reporting of the issues they are involved in, in part by helping to bankroll the media .

His latest analysis, published in Columbia Journalism Review, recounts how in 2016, I emailed the NY Times twice to ask why several “Fixes” columns written by their reporters Tina Rosenberg and David Bornstein hyping various Gates Foundation education projects and investments had no acknowledgements that they themselves received salaries from the non-profit they co-founded called Solutions Journalism Network, which is heavily subsidized by the Foundation.  

My second email to the Times, quoted by Schwab, pointed out how “Having a NYT columnist who is funded by Gates who regularly hypes controversial Gates-funded projects without any disclosure of conflict of interest could be compared to running columns on the environment by someone who runs an organization funded by Exxon/Mobil.”

Yet I received no response of any kind. The 2016 blog post that I linked to in my emails pointed out how the columns by Rosenberg and Bornstein on Gates grantees were biased, with few if any quotes from critics, nor any mention of readily available studies showing that the Gates-funded programs they were promoting had been shown to be ineffective or had a negative impact on educational quality.  

The Gates Foundation provides millions of dollars to many journalistic enterprises, which Schwab argued in an earlier 2020 piece helps to explain the kid glove treatment the Foundation has received over the last twenty years. The media outlets that get funding from Gates and regularly cover his education projects and investments include Chalkbeat, Hechinger Report, The 74, and Education Post, as well as K12 school reporting by NPR, Seattle Times, and others.  The Foundation also helps to fund the Education Writers Association, which frequently features speakers friendly to various policies favored by Gates.

Gates' support of Solutions Journalism Network started in 2011, when Bornstein and Rosenberg  won a $100,000 Gates Foundation “challenge” competition  to build the first Wiki-style platform that packages solutions-journalism (specifically NYTimes Fixes columns) into mini-case-studies for educators around the world to embed in, and across, the curriculum,” in collaboration with Marquette University. 

In 2012, Tom Paulson, a former Seattle Times reporter with called Humanosphere questioned this arrangement.  As explained by a colleague, “Paulson’s fear was that Solutions Journalism was just a fancy way to disguise the desire (by donors, NGOs and others) for success stories, for promoting particular products or agendas.”

In response, Bornstein insisted to Paulson that neither he nor Rosenberg had received any financial benefit from this grant, as “NY Times prohibits them from accepting grant money (for work done at NYTimes) and they are unpaid collaborators with Marquette, allowing them to repurpose their columns and to help them think through the process."

Yet whatever reservations the NY Times may have had about allowing them to receive money from Gates seems to have quickly disappeared. In 2013, Bornstein and Rosenberg incorporated Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), and the next year, the organization received $600,000 from the Gates Foundation, from which they paid themselves  salaries of $75,000 each.  At the same time, they continued their regular "Fixes" columns for the NY Times/

The SJN 990 for that year reports that Bornstein worked 55 hours per week for the organization as its Chair, Treasurer and CEO, and Rosenberg 40 hours a week as its Vice President, which one would think left them little time to work as  NY Times reporters, though together they published at least twelve NY Times “Fixes” columns that year.

Since that time, the organization has raised $7.3 million in total from Gates Foundation.  Their most recent Gates grant was $1.7 million in August 2020, and Bornstein and Rosenberg now receive six-figure salaries from the organization, according to its latest 990.  

In an  August 2020 piece, Tim Schwab noted that he found at least 15  NY Times columns where  Bornstein or Rosenberg had written about  Bill and Melinda Gates, the Gates Foundation, or Gates-funded organizations, without any mention they were being paid on the side by the Foundation through SJN.  He recounted how he contacted Bornstein, Rosenberg, and their NYT editors, to inquire why there were no conflict-of- interest disclosures attached to these pieces.  

Tina Rosenberg responded that We do disclose our relationship with SJN in every column, and SJN’s funders are listed on our website. But you are correct that when we write about projects that get Gates funding, we should specifically say that SJN receives Gates funding as well…Our policy going forward with the NY Times will be clearer and will ensure disclosures.”

Though Bornstein and Rosenberg told Schwab they had asked their editors at the Times to add disclosures to their columns, their editors apparently felt less reason to do so.

Months went by without any such acknowledgements, and when Schwab asked the Times why nothing had happened,   Marc Charney, a senior editor at the Times, said he wasn’t sure if or when the paper would add the disclosures, citing technical difficulties and other newsroom priorities.”

Technical difficulties to update the Times website?  Really?

Tina Rosenberg also told Schwab that there were six columns that related to Gates-connected projects that in her mind did not need any disclosure, including her 2016 profile of Bridge International Academies, as “Bill Gates personally helps fund the project”  and “ SJN’s ties are to the Gates Foundation, not to Bill Gates himself, so no disclosure is needed.”

Bridge International is a for-profit chain of private schools in India and Africa, run by two Harvard graduates. Rosenberg praised the chain in a column in May 2013 and again in June 2016.  I have previously written how their schools feature shoddy facilities, a scripted curriculum, large classes, uncertified teachers, and tuition that is relatively expensive, especially considering the income levels in the developing countries in which they are located. 

Rosenberg’s second column, published in June 14, 2016,  came at an opportune time for the company – when the Liberian government was considering whether to hire BIA to run many of its public schools.  It also closely followed news that BIA had asked the Uganda government to arrest an independent journalist on trumped up charges who was investigating the quality of their schools .  This incident was covered extensively in the media including in the Washington Post just eight days before Rosenberg published her piece in the NY Times, though she left it out of her laudatory column. 

Absent from Rosenberg’s second piece was also any mention of the January 2016 letter by Kishore Singh, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education  to the Liberian president, stating that if the government  outsourced its educational system to a for-profit company, the country would be committing a “gross violation” of its education obligations under the Sustainable Development Goal number four, which holds that by 2030, the nation would “ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes.”

However, Rosenberg did make sure to add that among several reasons that the Liberian government should go ahead with their plans to hire BIA, she argued, was that the company had garnered substantial  financial resources from investors who included “Bill Gates (personally), Khosla Ventures, the Omidyar Network, the Zuckerberg Education Venture and Learn Capital, which counts Pearson as a limited partner.” 

Her subsequent claim to Schwab that her favorable reporting on BIA did not involve a conflict of interest because she was receiving funding from the Gates Foundation rather than Bill Gates himself is bizarre, in my view.

As  Bill Gates’ personal investments in companies are largely secret it would be difficult to assess what other columns these two may have written that might have benefitted his business interests.  The Gates Foundation also uses several pass through organizations such as New Profit, the New Schools Venture Fund, the Silicon Valley Education Foundation,  and the New Venture Fund to support their favored educational enterprises, without disclosing where the funding is actually going. Together these organizations have received an astonishing $553 million from Gates since 2007.

Contrary to the editors' apparent laissez faire attitude to Rosenberg, Bornstein, and SJN, Schwab relates how this past July, the NY Times had suspended a sports reporter when it was revealed that she was co-authoring a book with former Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps while covering Phelps for the paper. And after BuzzFeed News reported in March that NY Times columnist David Brooks had received a salary from the Aspen Institute, the Times added disclosures to six of his columns  about the work of the Institute, and made him resign his paid position with the Institute.  

After that occurred, Tim once more went back to the NY Times, to ask them why they hadn’t at the very least added any disclosures to the columns by Bornstein and Rosenberg that hyped Gates grantees:

I contacted Kathleen Kingsbury, the editor of the opinion section. I had previously contacted Kingsbury in 2019 and got no response. Kingsbury told me that the Times was finally adding belated financial disclosures to Bornstein and Rosenberg’s previously published columns. She noted in March that new disclosures had been appended to four columns, and the Times was working through a technical hurdle to correct two additional columns.

Again, the notion that “technical hurdles” prevented them to adding disclosures to their website is literally incredible.  

In March 2021, the NY Times did add a disclosure to a 2018 Bornstein column that praised the online program, PowerMyLearning, which has received $11.3M from the Gates Foundation.  The column now ends with the following note:

Editors’ Notes: March 18, 2021

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds some of the work profiled in this article. The foundation is also one of the funders of the Solutions Journalism Network, which employs Mr. Bornstein. The story selection process for Fixes is independent and is not influenced by S.J.N. funding

But strangely, there is no such disclosure on  another column Bornstein wrote about PowerMyLearning in 2012, even though the company had received $5M from the Gates Foundation the year before. 

Nor are there any disclosures on two different columns by Tina Rosenberg in 2013, both in support of “flipped classrooms,” in which students are assigned to watch instructional videos at home and then spend class time doing problem solving.

Rosenberg’s second column focused specifically on the videos of the Khan Academy, which received $5.5 million from the Gates Foundation in 2010 & 2011. “Flipped classrooms” at the time was Bill Gates’ favorite education reform; in the same year, he gave a speech calling it the “biggest untold story of education technology”.  

Moreover, there is still no acknowledgement of any kind in a 2015 Rosenberg column praising the online/hybrid math program called School of One, now run by a company called New Classrooms and first developed in New York City schools,  even though the company had raised $11 million from the Gates Foundation by that point.  Nor is there any mention in her column of several published research studies showing that its program had yielded null or negative results.

Yet even so, mere disclosures should not be enough.  No journalist who has a regular column in the NY Times should be allowed to report on the investments of either Bill Gates or his Foundation, while continuing to benefit financially from his wealth. This should be true for the other billionaire venture philanthropists who help finance Solutions Journalism as well, including Chan Zuckerberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, and others. 

Another red flag is how even as the organization has expanded, its reliance on a very few donors has appeared to worsen over time.  According to Solutions Journalism’ audited financial statements, in 2017, 55% of their grant revenue was provided by three donors.  By 2019, one donor was responsible for  53% of their grants. Who this donor is remains a secret.

If Solutions Journalism reporters are going to continue hyping the projects of their funders, to avoid the appearance and reality of conflicts of interest in the future as much as possible, they should do the following: 

1- Disclose how much funding they receive from each of their donors on their website.

2- When writing about the investments or favorite policies of their donors, disclose this within the text of their columns, and explain why this does not represent an insuperable conflict of interest.  

3- Make sure that they include in their reporting any of the contradictory pieces of evidence that exist which suggest that these policies or companies do not work as well as their promoters/investors claim.

4-Write up a guide to other journalists, including those they train, on how to avoid such conflicts of interest in the future, or at the least, maintain maximum transparency by disclosing them in the text of their articles and ensure that their reporting is as clear-headed and bias-free as possible.

In any case, it is quite astonishing that the NY Times has continued to refuse to address the conflicted issues of Bornstein’s and Rosenberg’s columns, given how they so quickly made David Brooks resign his position at the Aspen Institute.  Indeed, their  own published  ethical standards  say the following:  

"… it is essential that we preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias. …Staff members may not accept gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other inducements from any individuals or organizations covered by The Times or likely to be covered by The Times. …staff members may not accept employment or compensation of any sort from individuals or organizations who figure or are likely to figure in coverage they provide, edit, package or supervise….”

Solutions Journalism also needs to adhere to its own principles –especially as it is engaged in “training”  reporters throughout the country in how to write about social and educational policies in a credible and objective fashion.  As I pointed out in 2016, the following claim is posted on their website:

The Solutions Journalism Network is a nonpartisan organization committed to transparency and editorial independence. We do not support or advocate for any particular idea, model, organization, or agenda….

We believe that it would be a disservice to society to exclude critical reporting on social innovations funded by these sources. On the other hand, it is critically important that such relationships not conflict with the principles of independent journalism. ..We require that our grant recipients remain completely transparent about any potential conflicts of interest that could arise in the context of reporting on an issue of interest to a Solutions Journalism Network funder. 

A separate page on their website, called Ethics code,  proclaims:  Journalists should… Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts. 

Independent, transparent, unbiased reporting is especially important in this time of growing skepticism towards the mainstream media and attacks on reporters as purveying “fake news.” As Lita Tirak, “Knowledge Curator” of Solutions Journalism proclaimed in a recent blog post, “Trust between the public and the news media is an indispensable part of a healthy democracy”. 

Send in your comments by Sept. 3 concerning DOE's inadequate Contracts for Excellence plan!

The DOE has proposed a Contracts for Excellence spending plan that is completely inadequate to provide an equitable or adequate education to NYC kids -- contrary to the intent of the law, which was passed to fulfill the goals of the CFE lawsuit. 

Please make your voice heard by sending your own letter to DOE, with a copy to the Commissioner and your legislators, by clicking here. Deadline is Sept. 3. Or you can email your comments to ContractsForExcellence@schools.nyc.gov  

The DOE claims that the state has allocated no more funding to the program, though NYC is getting $538 million more in Foundation aid as a result of CFE. No funds in the plan are specifically targeted towards lowering class size, though this was a central issue that led the state's highest court to find NYC kids were deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education. If principals choose to use some of these funds to hire teachers for that purpose, they have to pay 40% more than they do for other teachers, because they have to cover the costs of their pension and benefits from their own school budgets, whereas DOE usually covers these costs  centrally.

The following memo was sent by Class Size Matters, Education Law Center and Alliance for Quality Education to the Commissioner and the Regents Chancellor, explaining our deep concerns and profound objections to the DOE's totally inadequate proposal. Please send your own letter today!

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

New info from DOE on the NYC student data breach — with some critical follow-up questions

 

 

Update: 8/25/21 - Another data leak from NYC schools was revealed - in which a Upguard, a security company, found that the personal information of thousands of students stored on an unencrypted Microsoft Power Apps portal exposed, along with other government and company data:

The portal belonging to the NYC Department of Education had a list called “contacts” with 412,220 records containing full names and district borough numbers, and a list called “Studentaccounts” with 291,955 records containing full names, usernames, district borough numbers, and email addresses for the “nycstudents.net” mail domain– likely the school-assigned email addresses for students, though it is difficult to verify the identities of minors with publicly available data.

More on this story here.

___

 Recently,  Chalkbeat reported on a data breach that affected over 1000 NYC students and teachers. The reporter followed up with another story that suggested this breach was caused by an insecure storage of student and teacher data on a Google drive, first discovered in January 2021 by high school students at Brooklyn Tech. Though these students reported this insecure situation to an administrator at their school immediately, it was ignored until they found in March 2021 that the problem had grown worse, when they emailed three DOE officials to alert them. I was asked to see if I could find out more  by a NYC parent leader, and followed up with an email to Joe Baranello, the chief privacy officer of DOE. 

I asked him for copies of the letters sent to parents and staff whose data was breached, and for more information about how these breaches occurred and what data elements were accessed. To his credit, he responded within a few days with more details and provided four breach notification letters as attachments.

All four letters were dated July 30, 2021. Letters #1 and #2 were addressed to parents about an unspecified March 2021 breach; the second letter included reference to specific data elements that were accessed, with that information redacted. Letter #3 was addressed to parents whose children's data was breached in an earlier August 2020 incident. Letter #4 was addressed to teachers about the March 2021 breach. 

In all cases, these letters inexplicably claim that this data was seen by only a single NYC student. Joe's email, which follows, included more information about the specific data elements that were breached. Below his message are several follow-up questions I asked him, including the fact that the data stored in Google drive appears to have been unencrypted, and the long delay in notifying parents aboutt these breaches, both of which appear to violate the state student privacy law. 

If and when I get more information from DOE or elsewhere, I will update this post. Meanwhile, if you or your child were affected, please let us know at info@studentprivacymatters.org . Thanks!

 ___  

From: Baranello Joseph <JBaranello3@schools.nyc.gov> Sent: Monday, August 16, 2021 11:15 AM To: leoniehaimson@gmail.com Cc: Siciliano Lauren <LSiciliano2@schools.nyc.gov>; Sharma Anuraag <ASharma6@schools.nyc.gov>; Nathan Judy <JNathan@schools.nyc.gov>; Gantz Toni <TGantz@schools.nyc.gov>   

Subject: RE: Data leak affects about 3,000 NYC students and 100 employees, officials confirm - Chalkbeat New York 

 Hello Leonie, Thank you for your inquiry. We have attached the template letters that were used for these notifications, which provide additional information on what occurred and what was viewed. Impacted individuals would have received the letter applicable to them. The information implicated varied by individual. To that end, the templates include variable fields that were populated based on the specific information implicated for each person. 

Approximately 3,000 students and 100 staff were impacted. The variable fields are listed below, and which were involved varied widely from student to student. No social security numbers of students or parents were involved to our knowledge (the DOE does not collect parent or student SSNs for routine inclusion in its databases). For 5 employees, full SSNs were included. We are committed to protecting the privacy of our staff and school communities, and a DOE student should not have been able to view these files. We have no indication that anyone's information was further shared or misused at this time, and the DOE implemented aggressive measures to prevent this from happening again. Out of an abundance of caution we are offering free credit monitoring service to impacted individuals. Student data:

  • Student Academic
  • Student Biographic
  • Student Health
  • Student Name
  • Student ID
  • Student Date of Birth
  • Special Education
  • Parent Information
Employee data:
  • Name
  • Social Security Number
  • Social Security Number (Last 4 digits only)
  • Date of Birth
  • Employee ID
The following specific documents were viewed for fewer than ten students per document type:
  • Individualized Education Program
  • Emergency Contact Card
  • Government ID
  • Special Education Remote Learning Plan
  • Section 504 Plan
  • Birth Certificate

Sincerely, Joseph A. Baranello Deputy Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer New York City Department of Education 

 ____  

From: leoniehaimson@gmail.com <leoniehaimson@gmail.com> 

Sent: Monday, August 16, 2021 5:06 PM  

To: 'Baranello Joseph' <JBaranello3@schools.nyc.gov> Cc: 'Siciliano Lauren' <LSiciliano2@schools.nyc.gov>; 'Sharma Anuraag' <ASharma6@schools.nyc.gov>; 'Nathan Judy' <JNathan@schools.nyc.gov>; 'Gantz Toni' <TGantz@schools.nyc.gov>; Leonie Haimson <leoniehaimson@gmail.com> 

Subject: RE: Data leak affects about 3,000 NYC students and 100 employees 

Dear Joe: Thank you for sharing the letters that were sent to parents and school staff about these breaches. I have several follow-up questions:  

Question 1: In letter #3, dated July 30, 2021, DOE informed parents of the following: “In August 2020, a DOE student reported that they viewed various electronic files that contained education records and personal information about you and/or your child. The DOE immediately took steps to address it.” Why such a long delay in notification for this breach, especially as the NY State regulations for NYS Ed Law 2-d specifically require breach notification as early as possible and in no case more than 60 calendar days after its discovery? “  

Question 2 – This Chalkbeat article reports that a group of Brooklyn Tech students accessed personal data in January 2021 and March 2021; why is there no notification to parents of the January 2021 breach? “The students unintentionally discovered they had access to these documents in January. They noticed that the Google Drive folder where they uploaded their class assignments during remote learning contained documents uploaded by students and staff at schools across the city. Those documents included second graders’ classwork, a parent-teacher conference sign up sheet, and college recommendation letters, said a Brooklyn Tech High School student who asked to remain anonymous.”  

Question 3 – Why the delay in notification for the March 2021 breach referenced above, in letters #1 and #2, especially as DOE learned about it shortly thereafter, according to the Chalkbeat article? Again, the July 30 letter is more than 60 calendar days after the date of discovery, despite the notification requirements in the regs.  

Question 4 – Why do all four letters refer to only one student accessing this data, when the Chalkbeat article refers to a group of students accessing much personal data in January and March? 

Question 5- Has the DOE looked into the possibility that not only this group of high school students, but other individuals as well may have accessed personal data for thousands more students/teachers, given how easily this data was found? What further investigations are being done?  

Question 6 – Clearly the data was not encrypted if students were so easily able to access it. Are you aware that the State privacy law and regs require that the sharing of personal data with any third party such as Google requires the encryption of all personal data in motion and in rest? Does DOE intend to comply with this requirement of the law in the future?  

Question 7 – Why is the New York City Department of Education sending letters to parents from a P.O. Box in Suwanee, GA? 

 Question 8 - Why does the DOE tell parents in these letters that if they “want to discuss this matter or have any questions” about these breaches, they need to create an account with a private company called IDX, rather than the contact someone at DOE itself – especially the law required districts to appoint a Chief Privacy Officer to be the contact person for parents’ questions and concerns regarding privacy?

Moreover, the link provided in the letter requires parents to create an account with this company that that in turn obligates them to accept onerous Terms of Service that “will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless IDX, our subsidiaries and affiliates, and each of our respective officers, directors, agents, partners and employees (individually and collectively, the “IDX Parties”) from and against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, expenses or costs ("Claims") arising out of or related to (a) your access to or use of our Services or Website”? 

Moreover, IDX also limits any claims of damages to binding arbitration, and in its Privacy Policy, claims it can use their customers’ information for many purposes, including sharing with credit bureaus and/or “With vendors, consultants, and other service providers who need access to such information to carry out work on our behalf, including marketing our products and services.” Again, thank you for your work for NYC children, and for providing these letters to me. 

Hoping for a timely response, 

Leonie Haimson
Co-chair, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
www.studentprivacymatters.org
info@studentprivacymatters.org

Friday, August 6, 2021

Parents, did your children's personal data get breached? Can you help us find out more about what happened?

 1.      Chalkbeat reported today on a data breach on a google drive that exposed the personal information of 3,000 students and about 100 school employees  Though the article just mentioned some District 28 students were affected, we know that students in other districts were affected as well. What is still unknown is how many schools experienced breaches, what personal student data elements were affected, and when this breach occurred. 

      The regulations for the NY student privacy law requires that all this  information be included in notifications to affected families:

       Notifications required by this section shall be clear, concise, use language that is plain and easy to understand, and to the extent available, include: a brief description of the breach or unauthorized release, the dates of the incident and the date of discovery, if known; a description of the types of personally identifiable information affected; an estimate of the number of records affected; a brief description of the educational agency’s investigation or plan to investigate; and contact information for representatives who can assist parents or eligible students that have additional questions.

      Parents, please ask your principals if any of the students in your children's school was affected, and if so, ask them for a copy of the letter that was sent to families.  And let us know if you get any answers and/or the copy of the letter by emailing info@studentprivacymatters.org  thanks!