The foundation has also invested millions in journalism training and in researching effective ways of crafting media narratives to support Gates’s global ambitions. Gates, for example, gave grants totaling nearly $1.5 million from 2015 through 2019205 to the Center for Investigative Reporting—apparently to discourage investigative reporting. According to the Seattle Times, “Experts coached in Gates-funded programs write columns that appear in media outlets from the New York Times to the Huffington Post, while digital portals blur the line between journalism and spin.”206
The Gates Foundation frequently hosts “strategic media partners” meetings at its headquarters in Seattle. Representatives from the New York Times, The Guardian, NBC, NPR, and the Seattle Times all attended a 2013 convocation. The aim of the event, wrote Tom Paulson, a Seattle-based reporter, was to “improve the narrative” of media coverage of global aid and development, highlighting good news stories rather than tales of waste or corruption.207 That same year, the BMGF gave marketing colossus Ogilvy & Mather, a global public relations firm, a $100,000 grant for a project titled “Aid is Working: Tell the World.”208
Subsequent articles in The Nation reported that Gates had invested in a retinue of companies positioned to mint windfall profits from the COVID crisis and documented the reluctance of players in the philanthropic donor community and key charities to criticize their self-serving arrangements. Fearful of his prowess and reputation for vendetta, leading charities keep their mouths shut about Gates’s recipe for leavening his altruism with profiteering. They call this omertà “the Bill Chill.”209
Gates has also made large strategic investments in Poynter and the International Network of Fact Checking Organizations, which dutifully “debunks” virtually every public statement that seems critical of Gates, whether accurate or not.210
In 2008, the communications chief for PBS NewsHour, Rob Flynn, explained that “there are not a heck of a lot of things you could touch in global health these days that would not have some kind of Gates tentacle.” This was around the time when the foundation gave NewsHour $3.5 million to establish a dedicated production unit to report on important global health issues.211
That kind of moolah purchased a lot of goodwill from the Fourth Estate. Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post called Gates the “champion of science-backed solutions.”212 The New York Times gushes that he is “the most interesting man in the world.”213 Time Magazine dubbed him “Master of the Universe.”214 Forbes calls Gates “savior of the world” who “set the standard for a billionaire good citizen.”215 Looking on admiringly, editors of fashion magazine Vogue wondered, “Why Isn’t Bill Gates Running the Coronavirus Task Force?”216
Ignoring the fact that Gates never graduated from college, much less medical school, mainstream media outlets unanimously parrot BBC’s assessment that Gates is a “public health expert” and ridicule those who question whether the whole world should take his self-serving advice on lockdowns, masks, and vaccines. In just the month of April 2020, while the virus and lockdowns were severely impacting the United States, Gates and Fauci did tag-team appearances on CNN, CNBC, Fox, PBS, BBC, CBS, MSNBC, the Daily Show, and the Ellen DeGeneres Show, reinforcing their self-serving messages about lockdowns and vaccines. None of those reporters mentioned the fact that the quarantines that Gates was cheerleading on their networks have increased Gates’s wealth by $22 billion over twelve months.
And Gates’s efforts to promote his contrary narrative claims only exacerbate their limitations. Gates’s emphasis on conditional lending, corporate partnerships, top-down control, high-tech cookie-cutter solutions, and patent privileges tends to favor wealthy nations and multinational corporations: “These are just a few of the ways in which current development policies are failing the global south.”217
“If aid flows are working well,” asks McGoey, “why do they need a masterful PR campaign to convey that message effectively? Many observers on the left and right suggest that the problem isn’t a marketing failure; it’s a failure with the underlying ‘product.’ Aid, they argue, is not working.”218
Endnotes
1 Anthony Fauci, AIDS (Fauci), 55:24 NIH (1984), YouTube, youtube.com/watch?v=pzK3dg59TuY
2 Robert Bazell, “Finding the Way Again After Failed AIDS Vaccine,” NBC News (Nov. 20, 2007, 3:22 AM), nbcnews.com/id/wbna21889662
3 HIV VACCINE AWARENESS DAY; Congressional Record Vol. 156, No. 75 (Senate, May 18, 2010), childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/03-26-20-Congressional-Record--Congress.gov--Library-of-Congress.pdf
4 Donald G. McNeil Jr., “AIDS Vaccine Trial Shows Only Slight Protection,” New York Times (Oct. 20, 2009), nytimes.com/2009/10/21/health/research/21vaccine.html
5 John Crewdson, “3 Dead in AIDS Vaccine Tests,” Chicago Tribune (Apr. 14, 1991), chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1991-04-14-9102030245-story.html
6 Robert C. Gallo et al., “AIDS Vaccine Therapy: Phase I Trial, The Lancet (1990), sci-hub.se/ https://doi.org/10.1016/0140-6736(90)91699-B
7 Crewdson.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Methods of Inducing Immune Responses to the AIDS Virus, U.S. patent application (Jan. 7, 1991). patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO1992000098
12 Craig W. Hendrix, Maj, USAF, MC, and R. Neal Boswell, Col, USAF, MC, GP160 phase I Immunotherapy Data Presentation, Department of the Air Force (Oct. 21, 1992), CHD, childrenshealthdefense.org/uncategorized/hendricks-burke-letter-re-misleading-or-possibly-deceptive-presentations-by-dr-redfield-in-the-gp160-phase-i-data/
13 Robert R. Redfield, MD, Deborah L. Birx, MD, et al., ”A Phase I Evaluation of the Safety and Immunogenicity of Vaccination with Recombinant gp160 in Patients with Early Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection,” N Engl J Med 1991; 324:1677–1684 (Jun. 13, 1991), nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199106133242401#article_references
14 Peter Lurie, MD, MPH, and Sidney M. Wolfe, MD, Letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, Public Citizen’s Health Research Group (Jun. 7, 1994), CHD, childrenshealthdefense.org/uncategorized/public-citizen-letter-to-rep-henry-waxman/
15 SGS (Mrs. Whitaker), Minutes of the Institutional Review Committee (IRC) Subcommittee on Potential Scientific Misconduct in GP160 Phase I Immunotherapy Study, Department of the Air Force Wilford Hall USAF Medical Center (ATC) Lackland AFB, TX (Oct. 23, 1992), CHD, childrenshealthdefense.org/uncategorized/minutes-of-the-irc-subcommittee-on-potential-scientific-misconduct-in-gp160-phase-1-immunotherapy-study/
16 Hendrix and Boswell
17 Ibid.
18 Peter Lurie and Sidney M. Wolfe, Public Citizen Letter to U.S. Representative Henry Waxman (Jun. 7, 1994), https://khn.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/940607plswtowaxman.pdf
19 Laurie Garrett, Meet Trump’s New, Homophobic Public Health Quack, FOREIGN POLICY (Mar. 23, 2018), https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/23/meet-trumps-new-homophobic-public-health-quack/
20 Lurie and Wolfe
21 Institute of Human Virology, Annual Report, 2017, ihv.org/media/SOM/Microsites/IHV/documents/Annual-Report/2017-IHV-annual-report_singlepg-final-standard_Res.pdf