This webinar was recorded on Dec. 1, 2023.
Does Bill Gates get a free pass from journalists because many have so completely internalized the idea of him as “the good billionaire”? Or is Gates truly influencing news content through the grants he makes to news organizations?
Maybe it’s both. At least that’s the argument that investigative reporter Tim Schwab makes in his new book, “The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire.” Schwab spent years reporting on billionaire Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation and has produced a counter-narrative about Gates’s activities around the world.
In this webinar, Schwab and Mary Chris Jaklevic, AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for patient safety, examine how Gates funding influences journalism, the challenges of critically reporting on foundation activities, and the role of philanthropy in health care.
Mary Chris Jaklevic is AHCJ’s health beat leader for patient safety based in Chicago. She’s an independent journalist who has covered health care finance, clinical care and medical research for a variety of professional and consumer publications. Her interest in patient safety issues and the potential harms of medical interventions was honed by her experience as a contributor to HealthNewsReview.org, a project that aimed to improve health care journalism by critiquing the accuracy and balance of media messages about medical treatments and tests. She’s a longtime AHCJ member and served on the board for two terms.
Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist based in Washington, D.C. His groundbreaking reporting on the Gates Foundation for The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, and The British Medical Journal has been honored with an Izzy Award and a Deadline Club Award. “The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire” is his first book.
