Reporter Tim Schwab just had a must-read piece
in the Columbia Journalism Review about how the Gates Foundation provides grants to news
outlets such as NPR, BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National
Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial
Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington
Monthly, Le Monde, the Seattle Times, and many others.
These outlets frequently provide favorable coverage of the Foundation and its
grantees, and potential conflicts of interest are too rarely admitted by these
outlets.
He tells a particularly disturbing
story about how two freelance journalists, Robert Fortner and Alex Park, investigated
Gates' outsize influence on international public health policy in 2017 for the Dutch
publication De
Correspondent and in the HuffPost. In both instances, the Foundation contacted their
editors to try to steer them away from doing stories on this issue and hinted
at a financial support if they did. As Schwab writes:
During Park and Fortner’s
investigation for De Correspondent, the head of Gates’s polio communications
team, Rachel Lonsdale, made an unusual offer to the duo’s editor, writing, “We
typically like to have a phone conversation with the editor of a publication
employing freelancers we are engaging with, both to fully understand how we can
help you with the specific project and to form a longer term relationship that
could transcend the freelance assignment.”
When asked about this, the
Foundation sent the following statement to CJR:
“As
with many organizations, the foundation has an in-house media relations team
that cultivates relationships with journalists and editors in order to serve as
a resource for information gathering and to help facilitate thorough and
accurate coverage of our issues.’ ”
One of the media organizations Schwab
discusses, Solutions Journalism, has received $7.6 million from the Gates Foundation since 2014 to write articles
suggesting practical solutions to social problems and train other reporters to
do so as well. Since then, as Schwab points out, SJ has repeatedly
produced stories praising projects and companies that are Foundation grantees
and/or have received personal investments from Bill Gates himself.
“Our mission is to
spread the practice of solutions journalism: rigorous reporting on responses to
social problems. We seek to rebalance the news, so that every day people are
exposed to stories that help them understand problems and challenges, and
stories that show potential ways to respond.”
Bornstein and Rosenberg also have a
regular column in the NY Times called "Fixes", which according to
Schwab has run at least 15 favorable stories promoting the work of the Gates
Foundation by name, without any mention that the columnists are funded by the
Foundation as well.
I previously
wrote about two pieces Tina Rosenberg wrote for the NY Times, one in May 2013 and again in June 2016, praising Bridge International Academies, a for-profit
company based in Cambridge Mass. that operates a controversial chain of private
schools in Africa and India. By most accounts, BIA 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. And as has been widely noted, Bill Gates has personally invested in this company.
In her 2016 article about BIA,
Rosenberg omitted any mention that the UN Special Rapporteur on the
Right to Education had
recently sent a letter to the Liberian president, stating that its plan to outsource
some of its public schools to this for-profit company represented 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.” The United Nations Committee on
the Rights of the Child had also opposed the expansion of these privately-run schools.
Nor did Rosenberg mention an event that
had been reported in
the Washington
Post on June 9 and Canadian
news on June 11, just days before: that when Education International, an NGO,
sent Curtis Riep, a Canadian academic, to Uganda to investigate the conditions in BIA
schools, Bridge had placed a ‘wanted ad’ in a Ugandan newspaper, falsely accusing Riep of
‘illegally’ impersonating one of its employees.
This caused him to be briefly arrested before all charges were dropped.
Subsequently, it was revealed that Bridge also had plans to use the personal
data of its students to market products to families, as
criticized by the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Rosenberg also authored a NY Times column in March 2015, praising New Classrooms, a much-hyped company that was spun off from a program in
the NYC public schools, where it was called “School of One.” This blended
learning math program has received more than $31 million from the Gates Foundation since 2011, and features students
receiving lessons and assessments from a computerized "playlist".
Bill Gates has repeatedly praised the value of this program, most recently in April 2016 in a
speech in which he called New Classrooms a
model that “represents the future not only of math, but a number of
subjects.”
While Rosenberg quoted from the sole
favorable study that supported this program, a December 2014 research study by Doug Ready of Columbia, she left out this disclaimer in
the study:
“It is important to stress again
that these findings cannot be attributed to TTO [Teach to One, another name for
the program] without the use of experimental or quasi-experimental designs. In
other words, we cannot state definitively that TTO caused the above-average
achievement gains noted above.”
Just months later, a more authoritative 2015
study was released– a
randomized experimental evaluation by Jonah Rockoff of Columbia, that concluded
that “School of One had no statistically significant effects on student
achievement—positive or negative–relative to traditional math instruction.”
In 2019, a three-year
federally-funded evaluation of the program’s implementation in Elizabeth NJ
schools, entitled “Final Impact Results from the i3 Implementation of Teach to
One: Math was released, also showing null results. Unsurprisingly,
neither of these studies have been featured in any follow-up piece in the NY
Times or by Rosenberg in her column, which after all, focuses on “solutions” no
matter how unreliable they may turn out to be.
Rosenberg also wrote not one but two columns
praising “Flipped Classrooms,” which has also been one of Bill Gates’ favorite concepts
– in which students watch video lessons at home such as those from the Khan
Academy and then do their homework in class. The Gates Foundation has given millions to flipped classrooms and to the Khan Academy,
despite little research to back up this method of instruction.
Since I wrote my blog on these Rosenberg’s
columns, I noted that Bornstein has written two other pieces for the NY Times, one in 2012
and another in 2018,
praising an ed tech software program called PowerMyLearning, which has received
more than $11 million
from the Gates Foundation since 2011.
Asked by Schwab if he could provide
examples of any SJ critical reporting about Gates or the projects they support,
David Bornstein responded, “Most of the stories that we fund are stories
that look at efforts to solve problems, so they tend to be not as critical as
traditional journalism."
Hmm. If someone is really interested in producing rigorous
reporting on potential solutions to important public problems, wouldn't they
want to cast an objective, analytic eye on whether these ideas really work? If
not, aren't their columns really PR in disguise?
But perhaps the most troubling
aspect of the “Fixes” columns in the NY Times is that they rarely mention that many
the programs they promote are funded by Gates -- and in none of their columns do they reveal that the authors themselves work for an organization that is dependent on Gates Foundation support. This glaring conflict of interest and lack of disclosure
appears to violate both the NY Times ethical standards, as I pointed out in my blog,
and the standards of Solutions Journalism itself.
The Times standards include
this statement:
"…it is essential that we preserve a
professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias... Scrupulous practice
requires that periodically we step back and take a hard look at whether we have
drifted too close to sources we deal with regularly... 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… In some cases, disclosure is enough. But if The Times considers the
problem serious, the staff member may have to withdraw from certain coverage.”
These
rules also pertain to reporters who are not formally on staff: “Our contracts with freelance contributors require them to
avoid conflicts of interest, real or apparent."
The lack of disclosure also appears to violate the standards
of Solutions Journalism itself. Here is the relevant passage on their webpage entitled Ethics:
“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….
SJN’s grant recipients, whether newsrooms or individual journalists,
should adhere to the highest standards of conduct as set forth in by bodies
such as the Society of Professional Journalists…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.”
In his CJR article, Tim Schwab asked
Tina Rosenberg about these apparent, ongoing conflicts of interest in which she
and Bornstein promote the work of Gates Foundation and its grantees. She
responded this way:
“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.”
Yet her response ignores that in
many of her columns, there is no mention of her connection to Solutions
Journalism, so that even the most interested reader would not be able to make
that inference. Only beginning in May 2016 did the NY Times even identify
her as a co-founder of SJ. Moreover, after
I raised
these same concerns about the lack of disclosure of conflicts of interest on
this blog over three years ago, I followed up by emailing the NYT ombudsperson twice,
in August and October 2016, without any response.
Even more troubling is how Rosenberg
and Bornstein argue that there is no reason to disclose any potential conflict
of interest in her columns praising Bridge International, since Bill Gates did
not donate to these schools through his foundation, but directly via his
personal wealth:
“The writers argue that SJN’s
ties are to the Gates Foundation, not to Bill Gates himself, so no disclosure
is needed. “This is a significant distinction,” Rosenberg and Bornstein stated
in an email.”
This claim represents an astonishing
lapse of judgement. So, reporters can continue to praise the “solutions”
provided by for-profit companies that Bill Gates has personally investments in,
while getting their salaries partly subsidized by his Foundation, without any responsibility
to admit to this potential conflict of interest? Meanwhile, his Foundation continues
to provide Gates with a hefty tax deduction, helping him to accumulate even
more wealth, which then he can invest in other, for-profit companies. Without
transparency, this lack of disclosure could be seen as a kind of money
laundering.
In any case, the NY Times does not
seem eager to do its part to provide the minimal amount of candor required.
As Schwab writes:
Months after Bornstein and Rosenberg
say they asked their editors to add financial disclosures to their columns,
those pieces remain uncorrected. 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? Seems
like a substantial, ongoing ethical failure to me.
