Are billionaire-backed philanthropies making the world a better place or are they pernicious sleeper cells? The answer may be one of those "both/and" situations rather than an "either/or." This week on Sea Change Radio, we examine philanthropic giving with journalist Tim Schwab who investigates high-profile entities like the Gates Foundation, that are working for positive impact but funded by the billionaire class. We peel back the layers on these types of organizations with a particular eye toward their funding of independent media, and explore the question, "Are foundations vestiges of a colonialist mindset offering scraps from the master’s table or are actually important vessels for change?"

Narrator 0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Tim Schwab 0:17  I think it's really hard for someone to make an argument that Bill Gates needs the kind of wealth that he has.

Narrator  0:28  Are billionaire-backed philanthropies making the world a better place or are they pernicious sleeper cells? The answer may be one of those "both/and" situations rather than an "either/or." This week on Sea Change Radio, we examine philanthropic giving with journalist Tim Schwab who investigates high-profile entities like the Gates Foundation, that are working for positive impact but funded by the billionaire class. We peel back the layers on these types of organizations with a particular eye toward their funding of independent media, and explore the question, "Are foundations vestiges of a colonialist mindset offering scraps from the master’s table or are actually important vessels for change?"

Alex Wise  1:22  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Tim Schwab. He's a journalist and author. And his upcoming book is entitled The Good Billionaire. Tim, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Tim Schwab 1:32  Thanks for having me, Alex.

Alex Wise 1:34  Why don't we first dive into how some of the bigger philanthropists have injected themselves into the media business in maybe not such a innocent way? You wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review recently entitled journalism's gatekeepers?

Tim Schwab 1:53  Yeah. So um, this is a kind of perennial problem or paradox with the Gates Foundation, which has been the subject of a lot of my reporting. Almost all of my reporting on philanthropy is looking at the Gates Foundation because it is this the sort of height or the zenith of big philanthropy, it's the largest philanthropy the most influential philanthropy. Everybody knows Bill Gates, he's widely lionized for his good deeds. And for the billions of dollars he's given away. But yeah, this perennial problem with the Gates Foundation, and a lot of other philanthropies, I imagine is that they fund so many groups, that it's hard to get an independent assessment or analysis of, you know, what they're doing and what the impacts are. And that's also the case in the journalism surrounding the Gates Foundation, because part of its philanthropic giving is going into the fourth estate into newsrooms. And one of the things I've done in my reporting to the Foundation is to look back at all the charitable grants they've given, you know, we're at the two decade mark, it's definitely long overdue that we start to look back at what the foundation has really done and accomplished. There's been so much forward looking journalism about its plans, its ambitions, its goals, the money it's given away. But there has to be some accountability reporting the back end to look back. And in going through all the foundation's grants, you can't help but notice as a journalist as I am, how much money gates is putting into journalism. And so I tracked a quarter billion dollars, that's $250 million. The foundation is given to, you know, not every single newsroom, but a lot of newsrooms,