Bonum Certa Men Certa

Bill Gates Pays National Television (This Time PBS) for Self-Serving Propaganda

PBS logo



Summary: Public Broadcasting Service (US) becomes another instrument with which Bill Gates is advancing his personal goals after a large sum payment

IS THERE any major television channel left which was not paid by Gates for some timely bias? Any list of such channels sure is running short. It's not only a US issue by the way. In Britain too Gates pays The Guardian, for example, to do this. As for Microsoft UK staff, let us not forget what they did in the national broadcasting company. The MSBBC keeps getting more Microsoft-biased and Channel 4 too becomes captive. In the US, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is the latest victim of Gates' PR offensive, which got covered in a lot of sites including this one which calls it "Gates Foundation Grant" rather than what it actually is. Some critics call it a bribe and since Gates also paid NPR (public radio) for similar work, trust is voided even in the national media.



PBS has received a nearly $500,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create new, educational multiplatform digital content to advance math achievement in partnership with New York City Department of Education’s experimental School of One (So1). New content will be created specifically for the personalized classroom instruction platform pioneered by So1 and distributed through the PBS Digital Learning Library (DLL).


Here is a site which calls it an investment:

Government budget-cutters may be hungrily eyeing funds for noncommercial TV and radio, but Bill Gates is investing in the service.


There is growing "[u]nease about the Gates Foundation support of media" and Paulson does it again, as we mentioned in the previous post:

Tom Paulson 'gets it'. And a few others in Seattle 'get it'. The development-philanthropy complex was not mentioned by Ike in his farewell address. How could he have imagined it? But now that it is a reality, there are a few critical and dissenting voices. Here is one.


Paulson's writeup about the PBS funding was noted in the previous post and later on he discussed ABC News in a separate new post about old news. "Gates-funded ABC series raises concerns about global health … and media" says the headline and to quote parts of his article:

But what may trouble others more were all the many references on the ABC web site to the Gates Foundation — including numerous video clips of Bill and Melinda Gates. Also, much of this series actually sounds like — and is — a pitch for donations to numerous charitable causes.

You may well ask: So Mr. Cranky, why are either of these a problem?

Well, for starters, not everyone agrees with Bill and Melinda when it comes to identifying either the primary problems or the best solutions in global health. That’s inevitable, and fine, but journalists have an obligation to remain independent of anyone’s agenda.

[...]

The Gates Foundation steers clear of such hot-button political issues and we’ll see if ABC News does as well. Another example of a potential “blind spot” is the Seattle philanthropy’s tendency to favor technological solutions — such as vaccines or fortified foods — as opposed to messier issues involving governance, industry and economics.

Will these messier issues get covered and, if so, will the Gates Foundation’s critics believe they are being represented fairly and adequately by independent observers?


When a "Public Broadcasting Service" becomes a Gates-funded service it's easier to explain who runs the country.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025