This is a podcast and this is a transcript.
Intro: This is Citations Needed with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.
Nima Shirazi: Welcome to Citations Needed a podcast on the media, power, PR and the history of bullshit. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam Johnson: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: You can follow us on Twitter @CitationsPod, Facebook, Citations Needed, support the show through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson. All your support is so helpful. Helps us keep going and growing. And we’ve been doing it for now over a year. So your support really has brought us here and hopefully will continue. So thanks everyone for listening.
Adam: Yeah, if you’ve thought about it but haven’t yet, please try to donate to Patreon. It does actually help. So Russia, as we all know, has sinister oligarchs whereas the United States we are told has philanthropists or job creators or industry titans who unlike the oligarchs, they got their wealth through moxie, hard work and dedication and pure merit. Whereas billionaires in other countries, whether it’s China or Russia or kind of batty countries, they got theirs through some form of crony capitalism or manipulation and aside from a few cartoonishly evil billionaires like say the Walton family or Peter Thiel, or increasingly Elon Musk and his and his Twitter meltdowns, or the Koch brothers, the average American, I think, I think it’s fair to say, Nima, has a pretty warm and fuzzy feeling about the super wealthy.
Nima: The most notable of these benevolent billionaires, the less cartoonishly evil ones, the kind of warm and fuzzy ones is Bill Gates, who’s philanthropic works through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation operate the largest overseas nonprofit regime on the planet. It is worth over $40 billion which is almost twice as much as the next biggest foundation. The Gates Foundation receives almost uniformly softball coverage from the media, most of whom from Vox to BBC to The Guardian to Al Jazeera to MTV to BET to NBC, all received funding from Gates in some way through various investment and donor arrangements, partnerships, collaborations, both from his personal coffers and the Gates Foundation itself. The foundation that bears his name and disperses part of his fortune.
Adam: So in this two part episode we’re going to ask how much Gates’ network of patronage effects his coverage in US media, which is broadly overwhelmingly positive and uncritical of Bill Gates. We want to figure out how you can be critical without sort of being too paranoid or too cynical and what the true nature of the capitalist ideology that animates Bill Gates, how it manifests, and how oftentimes it ends up harming the very people it ostensibly aims to help.
Nima: We will be joined this week by Dr. Linsey J. McGoey, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and author of the book No Such Thing As A Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy.
[Begin Clip]
Linsey J. McGoey: Having Mr. Gates, who’s, who’s seen as so intelligent and knowledgeable and I don’t doubt that he is in many areas, but in other areas his ignorance has been glaring but never called out by a media that seems to be either just bamboozled by his charisma and his authority or recognizes that there are some concerns with this one individual wielding so much influence over policy making, but they’re fearful of voicing their concerns because a taboo surrounding criticizing philanthropy is so profound in Western nations.
[End Clip]
Nima: Next week we will be joined by Miriam Mayet, Executive Director of the African Center for Biodiversity.
[Begin Clip]
Mariam Mayet: We’re kind of feeling like new technologies are being tested in Africa as if we’re treating Africans as guinea pigs for technologies that even the US military is interested in, which is the gene drive technologies, the US military’s funding this Target Malaria project to the tune of $100 million.
[End Clip]
Adam: Bill Gates, I think it’s fair to say, has probably some of the best public relations on earth. Polls show that he’s broadly liked. Most of the coverage, the vast, vast majority coverage is completely fluffy. What we’re going to sort of try to show on the show is that that is not solely based on the objective merits of his work, but as part of a broader media influence regime, which is pretty tremendous when you stop and take a look at it. So let’s begin by kind of establishing the stakes. The reach of Gates’ influences is not just on how much money he gives, but it’s the prospect inspector of getting the money in the future. The Gates Foundation in the past few years has given, this is solely to media outlets, has given $4 million to the BBC, $5.7 million to The Guardian. He funds the entire global development vertical at The Guardian. And by the way this is annual gifts. And he’s given $100,000 to Le Monde, to $1 million to Al Jazeera, $2.7 million to NPR and PRI, about a million dollars to the Canadian media giant Post Media Network, $800,000 to Univision, $300,000 to MTV, VH1 and BET, $1.3 million to Universal Media LLC and $2 million to the Participant Media Foundation, which is a shell foundation that was used to finance the film Waiting for Superman, which heavily featured Gates singing the praises of charter schools without of course noting he funded the film, so that’s just kind of a cursory review of the amount of money he gives media, which is not a ton of money, but when you look at how cash strapped a lot of media outlets are-
Nima: Right. It’s not a ton of money for Bill Gates or for the Gates Foundation —
Adam: But it’s a lot of money for press outlets.
It's really long so if you wanna read on go to the link, you can also listen to it. I wanted to include this bit though...
Billionaires, not even once.Adam: Sometimes it’s pretty benign. I think oftentimes if not most times it can be benign. Um, like for example, they partnered with MTV and BET to message television for people to stay in school. Right?
Nima: Right.
Adam: We can sort of all broadly think, ‘Okay, that’s good. People should stay in school.’ But around 2009, 2010 when there was, when there’s a real push by Gates and the Waltons and others to go after teachers unions, The New York Times reported that education themed shows, one of which was was Law and Order and Law and Order SVU. Now at this exact same time, there’s an episode of Law and Order, it’s actually the last episode of Law and Order, it aired in May of 2010. This was about three months before Gates’ other property Waiting for Superman hit theaters. It had premiered at Sundance that previous January and February and this is an episode called “Rubber Rooms.” I don’t know if you guys remember this, but the rubber rooms was this kind of moral panic around that time after a 2008 episode of This American Life aired this thing about teachers who can’t get fired, so they stay in these rubber rooms and then Law and Order contrived this episode that was built around it. I’m going to read you the show description from TV Guide, “After Van Buren discovers a blog site featuring a video of an alarming amount of explosives, Detectives Lupo and Bernard race against time to find the anonymous blogger before he can make good on his threat to blow up a school. The Department of Education’s refusal to take the threat seriously and resistance from teachers’ union further complicates the investigation.” And this episode has woven into it some pretty amazing anti teachers’ union propaganda. This is at the same time that NBCUniversal is getting millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to weave messages into shows. Let’s play that clip.
[Begin Clip]
[Law and Order “dun, dun”]
Fontova: Sorry, I can’t help you. The teacher in question was the subject of a proceeding, but it was resolved before it got to arbitration.
Detective #1: Resolved how? You fired the teacher?
Fontova: I really can’t discuss it. The unions would be all over us.
Detective #2: Well maybe we didn’t make ourselves clear Mr. Fontova, but there is a credible bomb threat against one of your schools.
Fontova: Bomb threats are a serious matter, but union lawyers are more serious.
Prelutsky: The file was sealed. I wouldn’t be doing my job protecting members of this union if I violated that seal.
Detective #2: Mr. Prelutsky, I assure you this unnamed teacher is not a target in our investigation, but he might have important information-
Prelutsky: I have a collective bargaining agreement to enforce.
[End Clip]
Adam: Okay, so here we have the major plot thrust is that there’s a bomb about to go off and the teachers’ union is preventing them-
Nima: Is blocking the investigation.
Adam: Right. And the Department of Education on the state level is also blocking the investigation because those are obviously a target for these kinds of reform movements.
Nima: You know what’s better than blowing up an entire school full of children? Organized labor!
Adam: No, really, it’s quite shocking actually. It’s, it’s there’s a bomb about to go off in a school and their investigation is being impeded by union lawyers and the evil union reps. But what the episode does somewhat interestingly well is the narrative was always, the whole Waiting for Superman narrative was that teachers were good and that they were pro-teacher, but unions were somehow holding them back, which of course is absurd, but that was the argument they take. So there’s actually parts in the episode when like the good teacher steps in or does the right thing.
Nima: Right.
Adam: So here is when the guy explains the rubber room, it’s of course it’s an African American male who explains why these teachers are getting paid to not work. And of course it’s also the evil unions.
[Begin Clip]
Detective #1: According the Department of Education, most of these teachers are in Queens. At something called a temporary reassignment center.
Detective #2: What is that?
Man: Welcome to the rubber room! This is where teachers accused of incompetence or misconduct or reassigned pending an arbitration hearing.
Detective #2: They’re not teaching?
Man: We don’t want them near the classroom, but we can’t fire them pending the arbitration. So they report here seven hours a day, five days a week.
Detective #1: And do what?
Man: Crossword puzzles, sort recipes. I have teachers here who have been waiting for their hearing for two years. That’s why they call it the rubber room. Two years.
Detective #1: What happens if they don’t show up?
Man: They don’t show up. They don’t get paid their full salary. Union rules right?
[End Clip]
Adam: Right. And so of course it isn’t union rules. It’s part of the contract the unions made with the city, but whatever. All right, so then there’s the very end. The teacher is (laughing) the teacher wants to tell the police who the person they’re looking for is, he’s a teacher who’s going to blow up the school and shoot everybody, which he ends up actually kind of doing. But guess what? She’s represented by a union lawyer who doesn’t want her to speak to the cops because he’s, I guess evil.
Nima: That’s what unions do, right? That’s, that’s the entire message of what unions exist to do. Protecting bad teachers.
Adam: Right. No, its brilliant. So here he is, they’re being interrogated by a district attorney and the police, and this is what he says:
[Begin Clip]
Lawyer: Maura, hold on. Who gets reassigned to a TRC is not a matter of public record. She doesn’t have to answer you.
DA: This god, this teacher, whoever he may be, presents an imminent danger, not just to himself but to hundreds-
Lawyer: Unless you have a subpoena, you can’t compel her to talk. Do you have a subpoena? I didn’t think so. Maura, let’s go.
[End Clip]
Adam: Yeah, there was a bomb, she’s like, there’s a bomb going to go off and he’s like, you don’t have a subpoena. Let’s go. And then he walks out and then the teacher ends up like crying and giving it away in spite of her lawyer. So the episode ends actually with the disgruntled teacher shooting three students and almost blowing it up and then they catch him at the eleventh hour.
Nima: Right. Made possible by nefarious teachers’ unions.
Adam: Now I want to clarify, I don’t know for 100 percent certainty that that was assisted by the partnership with the Gates Foundation. It was around that time and it’s a very sort of on the nose anti-union message, but I’m going to go and say that the millions of dollars the Gates Foundation gave NBC may have influenced their very weird anti-union stance. Call me crazy.
Nima: (Laughs.)
Adam: Another sort of interesting thing they astroturfed was, was Waiting for Superman, which again, we touched on in Episode 1, but I want to reiterate how kind of brilliant it was and how, how much of the liberal media sort of fell for it. So in 2009, that Gates Foundation entered into a five year multimillion dollar partnership with Viacom, and then in February of 2010 or January and February of 2010, uh, Waiting for Superman premiered at Sundance and was quote “picked up” by Paramount Vantage. Paramount Vantage is the artisanal branch of Paramount. It’s actually just Paramount it isn’t even a subsidiary. It’s the same company. And Paramount of course is owned by Viacom. They needed it to look like it was some organic like film festival, you know, it’d had buzz, but of course the whole thing was already mapped out. Gates entered into an education partnership with Viacom.
Nima: They were obviously going to release the film anyway.
Adam: Yeah they were going to release the, Paramount was going to release the film the whole time, but it needed to have sort of liberal street cred. So they, they totally just astroturfed this silly Sundance purchase.
Nima: Right.
Adam: And what was not known at the time, which we didn’t reveal later, which begin we also briefly discussed was that um, $2 million was given to the film by four major billionaires, two of whom were the Walton family and, uh, Eli Broad, who is the founder of GAP, and a huge charter school supporter. They gave money to something called Participant Media Foundation, which was used to fund the film, but in a nonpublic way and it wasn’t until years later where, you know, you go through their 990s and find it out. So again, there’s a lot of astroturfing going on because you have to look at it this way, right? Gates for fair or not legitimately thinks that teachers’ unions are a huge impediment to education. So his union message is no different. His anti-union message is no different than his stay in school message or his, you know, get tested for HIV message or his mosquito nets, right? It’s all part of the same worldview, which is that unions and those who get in the way of capitalism, technology entrepreneurship are a major problem.
