08.04.14
Bill Gates Now Bribes NBC in Exchange for Favourable (and Profitable) Coverage
Summary: How the corporate media continues to accept payments from plutocrats such as Bill Gates and then promotes their agenda, for power and for profit
Bill Gates relies on buying the media. Without buying it people would sooner or later realise that he is no better — if not much worse — than the Koch Brothers (they are a tad late in buying the media, which they try to buy because they realise they have a public ‘perception’ problem). Bill Gates has bribed a lot of the media over the years. Here in this site we lost track and lost count of many blogs, local media, press outlets of moderate size and also very large networks Bill Gates had paid in exchange for propaganda (puff pieces, gagging of Gates’ critics, attacks on Gates’ opponents, competition, etc.), with examples ranging from private entities such as The Guardian to public ones like PBS, NPR, and the BBC.
On the one hand we have lobbying at the personal level, which is influenced not only by the media. Professor Ravitch recently explained how Bill Gates distorted the media and all sorts of groups, including politicians, to make a profit from the public education system in the US. Others cite her observations [1] that continue to come out.
On the other hand we have corporate media pushing the Gates line. Journalists do not seem to be doing their job. Well, a lot of them don’t even state who funded their so-called articles (it would embarrass them), but one media outlet does [2]. Yes, Bill Gates bribes the press to promote policy that grants him public funds and gets Microsoft more contracts. NBC finally admits being part of it. How long has this been going on for? A lot of trend-setting media coverage about Common Core turns out to be directly funded by Gates, who would gain from it through Microsoft and InBloom, a surveillance company that Rupert Murdoch too would gain from.
It should be seen as no coincidence that Murdoch is using his tabloid to attack Ravitch, the messenger, trying to label her a sexist. Murdoch, unlike Gates, does not need to buy the media as he already has a lot of media. Ravitch slams Common Core and InBloom (which makes Murdoch rich through spying on students), so Murdoch’s tabloid attacks her.
Media control has enabled Bill Gates to slam critics, which is why Melinda Gates was ousted from the Washington Post (she smeared critics/competition there). It’s often hard to say who’s behind the articles because the payments from Gates are discreet, whereas in the case of Murdoch it is quite clear who owns the news channels (News Corp.), acting as instruments as indoctrination, just like the education system that Gates and Murdoch pursue. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Replace Arne Duncan with Secretary of Education Bill Gates
As Ravitch reminds us, any replacement “would have to be acceptable to DFER, Stand on Children, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the other reformers.” And, that gets to the real reason why the Obama administration, which teachers and our unions helped elect and reelect, has spread the insanity to the point where schools are reduced to test prep factories. The Billionaires Boys Club in general, and Bill Gates in specific, are really in charge of our nation’s education policy. We’ve had a “barrage” of weird ideas, based solely on the hunches of elites, and Arne Duncan coerced states into making them the laws of most of the land.
-
Whoa: Look who’s being paid by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to cover Common Core
Wow. Here’s a link to the Gates-subsidized NBCNews.com article. There is no indication that it’s an advertisement or advertorial. It appears to be a bona fide news story written by a bona fide reporter (Nona Willis Aronowitz). Here it is featured along with NBC News’ other articles on its education page:
Content is available under CC-BY-SA