Has RI gone MAGA?

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Karmamatterz » Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:55 pm

You mean the cost benefit ratio that has been presented by the FDA, CDC, president, Fauci and others? That cost to benefit ratio? You don't read Greenwald do you? One of the few respectable journalists out there wrote a bit about your unicorn cost to benefit ratio.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-bi ... apply-cost

90% of doctors eh? Was that percent pulled out of thin air? Or is it sourced?

This doctor had something to say about the vaccines. The quote is right at the beginning so it won't take long to hear what she says.



My vascular doctor told me that smoking marijuana was perfectly okay and actually encouraged it, along with red wine.
My family GP strongly discourages weed.

Tell me, which doctor's orders should I follow?

The thing is, if someone wants to get a vaccine I don't care. What you and others who want to be paternalistic collectivists don't get is that it should be a personal decision. Maybe if it weren't for the MASSIVE propaganda where people have been shaming others and using the most pathetic "logic" to try and convince us to all get vaxxed then I would think a bit differently. Anyone with even the most basic discernment for the media and that has critical thinking skills can observe, read and listen and know that there are some awfully crazy things going on and it makes no rational sense. You don't need reams of data to realize that this particular virus doesn't warrant a mandatory vaccine.

Do you know what a "chilling effect" means? Read what Stick just posted. Do you personally know very many doctors? I know plenty, personal friends, neighbors and docs I've met through work. I'm pretty sure few if any are willing to risk losing their cushy six figure incomes to speak out about the vaccines. The medical business does not like dissenting voices, especially when it comes to public policy. Were you even around in the late 80s and early 90s when AIDS hysteria was rampant?[background=][/background]

I almost never argue or debate with MAGA supporters. I only know a few personally and it's not worth my time to engage with them. Apparently you do, so maybe you can teach us all exactly how a MAGA supporter debates.
User avatar
Karmamatterz
 
Posts: 828
Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2012 10:58 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Elvis » Wed Sep 22, 2021 8:06 pm

Karmamatterz wrote:This doctor had something to say about the vaccines. The quote is right at the beginning so it won't take long to hear what she says.





Project Veritas is an American far-right[28] activist group founded by James O'Keefe in 2010.[32] The group produces deceptively edited videos[15] of its undercover operations,[6] which use secret recordings[7] in an effort to discredit mainstream media organizations and progressive groups.[41][42]
...
As a non-governmental organization, Project Veritas is financed by conservative fund Donors Trust[3] (which provided over $6.6 million from 2011 to 2019)[41][53][54] and other supporters including the Donald J. Trump Foundation.[55] In 2020, The New York Times published an exposé detailing Project Veritas' use of spies recruited by Erik Prince, to infiltrate "Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda". The Times piece notes O'Keefe's and Prince's close links to the Trump administration, and details contributions such as a $1 million transfer of funds from an undisclosed source to support their work. The findings were based in part on discovery documents in a case brought by the American Federation of Teachers, Michigan, which had been infiltrated by Project Veritas.[56]


I personally don't think RI has gone MAGA, but James O'Keefe and Erik Prince are MAGA personified.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7413
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Thu Sep 23, 2021 1:08 am

stickdog99 » 22 Sep 2021 02:13 wrote:
Joe Hillshoist » 21 Sep 2021 13:01 wrote:
stickdog99 » 21 Sep 2021 20:44 wrote:I don't know what to call it, but it definitely includes those who think that Jeff and I have turned MAGA and whose deepest wish is to see us both die of COVID-19 ASAP to stop us from continuing to defile their sacred mRNA vaccines with our infuriatingly unanswerable facts, data, and rational arguments.


Your data isn't all that but its your life so think what you like.


What mRNA therapy worshippers willfully "forget" is that this is all anyone is asking.


I don't worship mRNA technology.

You're the one flinging shit at anyone who disagrees on here like we're the ones coming into your life and personally fucking with it.
Joe Hillshoist
 
Posts: 10594
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:45 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby stickdog99 » Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:45 am

Disagrees with what?

I am flinging shit only at those of you who actually favor immediately implementing a nightmare dystopia in which one's right to medical care, travel, employment, and/or routine building entry is contingent on one's ability to produce a fully verified and updated Big Tech/Big Pharma/Big Brother QR code. You know, just to force people who don't want to get vaccinated with new, shitty, leaky mRNA vaccines to do so.

And my own best (former?) friends are literally demanding this only because they so fear COVID-19 and/or they so hate Donald Trump and/or they so worship all vaccines (and thus by transitivity all mRNA vaccines). For most of the people I know, it is all three. If these aren't also your reasons for supporting your own increasingly sickeningly authoritarian government, what are your reasons?
stickdog99
 
Posts: 6303
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:42 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Thu Sep 23, 2021 5:04 am

stickdog99 » 23 Sep 2021 17:45 wrote:Disagrees with what?

I am flinging shit only at those of you who actually favor immediately implementing a nightmare dystopia in which one's right to medical care, travel, employment, and/or routine building entry is contingent on one's ability to produce a fully verified and updated Big Tech/Big Pharma/Big Brother QR code. You know, just to force people who don't want to get vaccinated with new, shitty, leaky mRNA vaccines to do so.

And my own best (former?) friends are literally demanding this only because they so fear COVID-19 and/or they so hate Donald Trump and/or they so worship all vaccines (and thus by transitivity all mRNA vaccines). For most of the people I know, it is all three. If these aren't also your reasons for supporting your own increasingly sickeningly authoritarian government, what are your reasons?


Firstly you said I was in favour of having people at the beach arrested, now you're accusing me of supporting my "own increasingly sickeningly authoritarian government".

Even tho you have little idea how I feel about it.

My increasingly authoritarian state government sicced the fixated persons unit onto a comedian with ties to their political opponents for questioning the deputy premier (equiv of dep. state governor I spose) recently.

Meanwhile fuckwits overseas who reckon the place is under military rule on the basis of ... i dunno sniffing their own arsecracks i guess ... haven't even noticed that. I've been fighting with cops for alot of my life meanwhile in Melbourne right now with one or two exceptions the cops are the best behaved they've been at public protests and rallies that I have ever seen.

Big difference between pointing out something is hysterically (and hysterically) wrong and supporting the government where I come from.

Maybe you should stop the transference and take out your frustration with your (former) friends on them instead of me.

Cheers.
Joe Hillshoist
 
Posts: 10594
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:45 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby drstrangelove » Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:43 am

Melbourne is getting pretty hectic Joey. I wasn't around for what it used to be like, so have nothing to compare it to. But yesterday I was marching in the CBD with a group peacefully, and an armoured truck came up the road behind us and started popping off rubber rounds and stinger grenades without warning.

Not complaining, because if they say they are going to do something about the protests, they actually need to or they lose their authority. Though it was not police firing projectiles at us, but an anti terror unit.

It worked. Broke up the crowd into groups small enough to target for arrest. I went home because I didnt have goggles.

Going to get a pair and get back out there though, because I fucking hate that cunt dan Andrews with a passion.

It was this thing:
Https://mobile.twitter.com/Craig9764080 ... 78/photo/1
User avatar
drstrangelove
 
Posts: 981
Joined: Sat May 22, 2021 10:43 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:13 am

Its ridiculous the coppers have those things.
Joe Hillshoist
 
Posts: 10594
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:45 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Karmamatterz » Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:48 pm

I personally don't think RI has gone MAGA, but James O'Keefe and Erik Prince are MAGA personified.


Definitely they appear to be supporters of Trump, and were supported by Trump. Aside from that did you listen and watch the clip?

In the video the doctor says the vaccines are shit. "The government doesn't want to show that the darn vaccine is full of shit."
That was in support of my comment to Dr. Evil that it's rare to get docs to admit the vaccines are well, shit.

Now, do I agree with all of Project Veritas methods? No. They appear to use some shady methods and at times have crossed the line with ethics. Do I have a problem with airing any truths or comments from doctors or health professionals about the covid scam? No. We are at war over the autonomy of our bodies and exposing this stuff needs to happen. O'Keefe is more of a sensationalist muckraker, but he has a purpose, whether you like his politics or not. Could care less that he is conservative. I differentiate between conservative and red had MAGA mouthpieces. He seems to be a bit of both.

Project Veritas has funding and support from some awful people. Prince is dirty slim and nothing further needs to be said about Trump. Like all the presidents since I an remember, they are ALL slime.
Let's dig just a bit into funding of "journalism." The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) did an excellent article that went deep into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation giving $250 million to various "journalism" efforts.

https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-fou ... unding.php

I'm copying the full article as it's a worthy read. Some of this I had already heard about, but the CJR writer really surprised me and named obscure "journalism" groups and orgs that I had no idea got funding from that super slimeball. Elvis, do you consider Bill Gates to be up there with Erik Prince? Or is he not on your naughty list? Curious if when anybody on RI quotes or uses info from these sources if you call out the source and make reference to Kill Gates? Or do you only do that for right wing special creeps like Prince? Gates certainly doesn't support or like Trump. So he wouldn't be considered MAGA. I think there is a special place in hell for Gates if hell does exist. One doesn't need to be a red hat wearing MAGA douche to be evil. Please share with us Elvis, what do you think of Bill Gates?

Here is what the CJR uncovered as having received funding from the Gates Foundation. I suspect there are more but are as the article states, under contract and not required to be disclosed like charitable donations are. An example of the paid for and not charitable funding the Gates Foundation does is called native advertising. Looks much like editorial content, but often the public doesn't differentiate if the publisher goes too far in making it look like normal editorial content.

Recipients included news operations like the:

BBC
NBC
Al Jazeera
ProPublica
National Journal
The Guardian
Univision
Medium
Financial Times
The Atlantic
Texas Tribune
Gannett
Washington Monthly
Le Monde
Center for Investigative Reporting
BBC Media Action
New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund
Participant
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
National Press Foundation
International Center for Journalists
NPR
Vox
Seattle Times
Poynter Institute
Solutions Journalism Network
New York Times via Solutions Journalism Network


Full article:

Journalism’s Gates keepers

https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-fou ... unding.php




LAST AUGUST, NPR PROFILED A HARVARD-LED EXPERIMENT to help low-income families find housing in wealthier neighborhoods, giving their children access to better schools and an opportunity to “break the cycle of poverty.” According to researchers cited in the article, these children could see $183,000 greater earnings over their lifetimes—a striking forecast for a housing program still in its experimental stage.
If you squint as you read the story, you’ll notice that every quoted expert is connected to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund the project. And if you’re really paying attention, you’ll also see the editor’s note at the end of the story, which reveals that NPR itself receives funding from Gates.
NPR’s funding from Gates “was not a factor in why or how we did the story,” reporter Pam Fessler says, adding that her reporting went beyond the voices quoted in her article. The story, nevertheless, is one of hundreds NPR has reported about the Gates Foundation or the work it funds, including myriad favorable pieces written from the perspective of Gates or its grantees.
And that speaks to a larger trend—and ethical issue—with billionaire philanthropists’ bankrolling the news. The Broad Foundation, whose philanthropic agenda includes promoting charter schools, at one point funded part of the LA Times’ reporting on education. Charles Koch has made charitable donations to journalistic institutions such as the Poynter Institute, as well as to news organizations such as the Daily Caller News Foundation, that support his conservative politics. And the Rockefeller Foundation funds Vox’s Future Perfect, a reporting project that examines the world “through the lens of effective altruism”—often looking at philanthropy.
As philanthropists increasingly fill in the funding gaps at news organizations—a role that is almost certain to expand in the media downturn following the coronavirus pandemic—an underexamined worry is how this will affect the ways newsrooms report on their benefactors. Nowhere does this concern loom larger than with the Gates Foundation, a leading donor to newsrooms and a frequent subject of favorable news coverage.
I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. Recipients included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund; media companies such as Participant, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’s agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as subgrants to other journalistic organizations—which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates’s funding into the fourth estate. 

The foundation even helped fund a 2016 report from the American Press Institute that was used to develop guidelines on how newsrooms can maintain editorial independence from philanthropic funders. A top-level finding: “There is little evidence that funders insist on or have any editorial review.” Notably, the study’s underlying survey data showed that nearly a third of funders reported having seen at least some content they funded before publication.
RELATED: ‘When money is offered, we listen’
Gates’s generosity appears to have helped foster an increasingly friendly media environment for the world’s most visible charity. Twenty years ago, journalists scrutinized Bill Gates’s initial foray into philanthropy as a vehicle to enrich his software company, or a PR exercise to salvage his battered reputation following Microsoft’s bruising antitrust battle with the Department of Justice. Today, the foundation is most often the subject of soft profiles and glowing editorials describing its good works. 
During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covid—even though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundation’s website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVac. 
In the same way that the news media has given Gates an outsize voice in the pandemic, the foundation has long used its charitable giving to shape the public discourse on everything from global health to education to agriculture—a level of influence that has landed Bill Gates on Forbes’s list of the most powerful people in the world. The Gates Foundation can point to important charitable accomplishments over the past two decades—like helping drive down polio and putting new funds into fighting malaria—but even these efforts have drawn expert detractors who say that Gates may actually be introducing harm, or distracting us from more important, lifesaving public health projects.
From virtually any of Gates’s good deeds, reporters can also find problems with the foundation’s outsize power, if they choose to look. But readers don’t hear these critical voices in the news as often or as loudly as Bill and Melinda’s. News about Gates these days is often filtered through the perspectives of the many academics, nonprofits, and think tanks that Gates funds. Sometimes it is delivered to readers by newsrooms with financial ties to the foundation.
The Gates Foundation declined multiple interview requests for this story and would not provide its own accounting of how much money it has put toward journalism. 
In response to questions sent via email, a spokesperson for the foundation said that a “guiding principle” of its journalism funding is “ensuring creative and editorial independence.” The spokesperson also noted that, because of financial pressures in journalism, many of the issues the foundation works on “do not get the in-depth, consistent media coverage they once did.… When well-respected media outlets have an opportunity to produce coverage of under-researched and under-reported issues, they have the power to educate the public and encourage the adoption and implementation of evidence-based policies in both the public and private sectors.”
As CJR was finalizing its fact check of this article, the Gates Foundation offered a more pointed response: “Recipients of foundation journalism grants have been and continue to be some of the most respected journalism outlets in the world.… The line of questioning for this story implies that these organizations have compromised their integrity and independence by reporting on global health, development, and education with foundation funding. We strongly dispute this notion.”
The foundation’s response also volunteered other ties it has to the news media, including “participating in dozens of conferences, such as the Perugia Journalism Festival, the Global Editors Network, or the World Conference of Science Journalism,” as well as “help[ing] build capacity through the likes of the Innovation in Development Reporting fund.”
The full scope of Gates’s giving to the news media remains unknown because the foundation only publicly discloses money awarded through charitable grants, not through contracts. In response to questions, Gates only disclosed one contract—Vox’s—but did describe how some of this contract money is spent: producing sponsored content, and occasionally funding “non-media nonprofit entities to support efforts such as journalist trainings, media convenings, and attendance at events.”
In the same way that the news media has given Gates an outsize voice in the pandemic, the foundation has long used its charitable giving to shape the public discourse on everything from global health to education to agriculture.
Over the years, reporters have investigated the apparent blind spots in how the news media covers the Gates Foundation, though such reflective reporting has waned in recent years. In 2015, Vox ran an article examining the widespread uncritical journalistic coverage surrounding the foundation—coverage that comes even as many experts and scholars raise red flags. Vox didn’t cite Gates’s charitable giving to newsrooms as a contributing factor, nor did it address Bill Gates’s month-long stint as guest editor for The Verge, a Vox subsidiary, earlier that year. Still, the news outlet did raise critical questions about journalists’ tendency to cover the Gates Foundation as a dispassionate charity instead of a structure of power. 
Five years earlier, in 2010, CJR published a two-part series that examined, in part, the millions of dollars going toward PBS NewsHour, which it found to reliably avoid critical reporting on Gates. 
In 2011, the Seattle Times detailed concerns over the ways in which Gates Foundation funding might hamper independent reporting: 
To garner attention for the issues it cares about, the foundation has invested millions in training programs for journalists. It funds research on the most effective ways to craft media messages. Gates-backed think tanks turn out media fact sheets and newspaper opinion pieces. Magazines and scientific journals get Gates money to publish research and articles. Experts coached in Gates-funded programs write columns that appear in media outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post, while digital portals blur the line between journalism and spin.
Two years after the story appeared, the Seattle Times accepted substantial funding from the Gates Foundation for an education reporting project.
These stories offered compelling evidence of Gates’s editorial influence, but they didn’t attempt to investigate the full scope of the foundation’s financial reach into the fourth estate. (For perspective, $250 million is the same amount that Jeff Bezos paid for the Washington Post.)
When Gates gives money to newsrooms, it restricts how the money is used—often for topics, like global health and education, on which the foundation works—which can help elevate its agenda in the news media. 
For example, in 2015 Gates gave $383,000 to the Poynter Institute, a widely cited authority on journalism ethics (and an occasional partner of CJR’s), earmarking the funds “to improve the accuracy in worldwide media of claims related to global health and development.”
Poynter senior vice president Kelly McBride said Gates’s money was passed on to media fact-checking sites, including Africa Check, and noted that she is “absolutely confident” that no bias or blind spots emerged from the work, though she acknowledged that she has not reviewed it herself. 
I found sixteen examples of Africa Check examining media claims related to Gates. This body of work overwhelmingly seems to support or defend Bill and Melinda Gates and their foundation, which has spent billions of dollars on development efforts in Africa. The only example I found of Africa Check even remotely challenging its patron was when a foundation employee tweeted an incorrect statistic—that a child dies of malaria every 60 seconds, instead of every 108. 
Africa Check says it went on to receive an additional $1.5 million from Gates in 2017 and 2019. 
“Our funders or supporters have no influence over the claims we fact-check…and the conclusions we reach in our reports,” said Noko Makgato, executive director of Africa Check, in a statement to CJR. “With all fact-checks involving our funders, we include a disclosure note to inform the reader.” 

Earlier this year, McBride added NPR public editor to her list of duties, as part of a contract between NPR and Poynter. Since 2000, the Gates Foundation has given NPR $17.5 million through ten charitable grants—all of them earmarked for coverage of global health and education, specific issues on which Gates works.
NPR covers the Gates Foundation extensively. By the end of 2019, a spokesperson said, NPR had mentioned the foundation more than 560 times in its reporting, including 95 times on Goats and Soda, the outlet’s “global health and development blog,” which Gates helps fund. “Funding from corporate sponsors and philanthropic donors is separate from the editorial decision-making process in NPR’s newsroom,” the spokesperson noted.
NPR does occasionally hold a critical lens to the Gates Foundation. Last September, it covered a decision by the foundation to give a humanitarian award to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, despite Modi’s dismal record on human rights and freedom of expression. (That story was widely covered by news outlets—a rare bad news cycle for Gates.)
On the same day, the foundation appeared in another NPR headline: “Gates Foundation Says World Not on Track to Meet Goal of Ending Poverty by 2030.” That story cites only two sources: the Gates Foundation and a representative from the Center for Global Development, a Gates-funded NGO. The lack of independent perspectives is hard to miss. Bill Gates is the second-richest man in the world and might reasonably be viewed as a totem of economic inequality, but NPR has transformed him into a moral authority on poverty. 
Given Gates’s large funding role at NPR, one could imagine editors insisting that reporters seek out financially independent voices or include sources who can offer critical perspectives. (Many NPR stories on Gates don’t: here, here, here, here, here, here.) Likewise, NPR could seek a measure of independence from Gates by rejecting donations that are earmarked for reporting on Gates’s favored topics.
Even when NPR publishes critical reporting on Gates, it can feel scripted. In February 2018, NPR ran a story headlined “Bill Gates Addresses ‘Tough Questions’ on Poverty and Power.” The “tough questions” NPR posed in this Q&A were mostly based on a list curated by Gates himself, which he previously answered in a letter posted to his foundation’s website. With no irony at all, reporter Ari Shapiro asked, “How do you…encourage people to be frank with you, even at risk of perhaps alienating their funder?”
In the interview, Gates said that critics are voicing their concerns and the foundation is listening.
In 2007, the LA Times published one of the only critical investigative series on the Gates Foundation, part of which examined the foundation’s endowment holdings in companies that hurt those people the foundation claimed to help, like chocolate companies linked to child labor. Charles Piller, the lead reporter on the series, says he made strenuous efforts to get responses from the Gates Foundation during the investigation. 
“For the most part they were unwilling to engage with me. They were unwilling to answer questions and pretty much refused to respond in any sort of way, except in the most minimal way, for most of my stories,” Piller said.“That’s very, very typical of big companies, government agencies—to try to hope that whatever controversial issues have been raised in reporting will have limited shelf life, and they’ll be able to go back to business as usual.”
Asked about the dearth of hard reporting on Gates, Piller says the foundation’s funding may prompt newsrooms to find other targets.
“I think they would be kidding themselves to suggest that those donations to their organizations have no impact on editorial decisions,” he says. “It’s just the way of the world.”
Two journalists who have investigated Gates more recently cite what appear to be more explicit efforts by the foundation to exercise editorial influence. 
Writing in De Correspondent, freelance journalists Robert Fortner and Alex Park examined the limitations and inadvertent consequences of the Gates Foundation’s relentless efforts to eradicate polio. In HuffPost, the two journalists showed how Gates’s outsize funding of global health initiatives has steered the world’s aid agenda toward the foundation’s own goals (like polio eradication) and away from issues such as emergency preparedness to respond to disease outbreaks, like the Ebola crisis. (This narrative has been lost in the current covid-19 news cycle, as outlets from the LA Times to PBS to STAT have portrayed Gates as a visionary leader on pandemics.)
During the course of Fortner and Park’s reporting these two stories, the foundation went over their heads to seek an audience with their editors. Editors at both publications say this raised questions about Gates attempting to influence editorial direction on the stories.
“They’ve dodged our questions and sought to undermine our coverage,” says Park.
During Park and Fortner’s investigation for De Correspondent, the head of Gates’s polio communications team, Rachel Lonsdale, made an unusual offer to the duo’s editor, writing, “We typically like to have a phone conversation with the editor of a publication employing freelancers we are engaging with, both to fully understand how we can help you with the specific project and to form a longer term relationship that could transcend the freelance assignment.”
The news outlet said it rejected the proposition because of its potential to compromise the independence and integrity of its journalistic work.
In a statement, the foundation said Lonsdale “was conducting normal media relations work as part of her role as a senior program officer. As we wrote to Tim in December 2019, ‘As with many organizations, the foundation has an in-house media relations team that cultivates relationships with journalists and editors in order to serve as a resource for information gathering and to help facilitate thorough and accurate coverage of our issues.’ ”
Park says his editors stood behind his work on both stories, but he doesn’t discount the foundation’s efforts to put “a wedge between us and the publication…if not to assert influence outright, to give themselves a channel through which they could assert influence later.”
Fortner, meanwhile, says he mostly avoids pitching articles to Gates-funded news outlets because of the conflict of interest this presents. “Gates funding, for me, makes a good-faith pitching process impossible,” he says.
Fortner, who authored CJR’s 2010 story on Gates’s journalism funding, self-published a follow-up in 2016 that examined how Gates funding is not always disclosed in news articles, including fifty-nine news stories the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting funded in part with Gates’s money. The center also declined to tell Fortner which fifty-nine articles had Gates’s funding. 
If critical reporting about the Gates Foundation is rare, it is largely beside the point in “solutions journalism,” a new-ish brand of reporting that focuses on solutions to problems, not just the problems themselves. That more upbeat orientation has drawn the patronage of the Gates Foundation, which directed $6.3 million to the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) to train journalists and fund reporting projects. Gates is the largest donor to SJN—supplying around one-fifth of the organization’s lifetime funding. SJN says more than half of this money has been distributed as subgrants, including to Education Lab, its partnership with the Seattle Times.
SJN acknowledges on its website “that there are potential conflicts of interest inherent” in taking philanthropic funding to produce solutions journalism, which SJN cofounder David Bornstein elaborated on in an interview. “If you are covering global health or education and you are writing about interesting models,” Bornstein said, “the chances that an organization [you are covering] is getting money from the Gates Foundation are very high because they basically blanket the whole world with their funding, and they’re the major funder in those two areas.” Asked if he could provide examples of any critical reporting about Gates emerging from SJN, Bornstein took issue with the question. “Most of the stories that we fund are stories that look at efforts to solve problems, so they tend to be not as critical as traditional journalism,” he said. 
That is also the case for the journalism Bornstein and fellow SJN cofounder Tina Rosenberg produce for the New York Times. As contract writers for the “Fixes” opinion column, the two have favorably profiled Gates-funded education, agriculture, and global health programs over the years—without disclosing that they work for an organization that receives millions of dollars from Gates. Twice in 2019, for example, Rosenberg’s columns exalted the World Mosquito Project, whose sponsor page lands on a picture of Bill Gates.
“We do disclose our relationship with SJN in every column, and SJN’s funders are listed on our website. But you are correct that when we write about projects that get Gates funding, we should specifically say that SJN receives Gates funding as well,” Rosenberg noted in an email. “Our policy going forward with the NY Times will be clearer and will ensure disclosures.”
My cursory review of the Fixes column turned up fifteen installments where the writers explicitly mention Bill and Melinda Gates, their foundation, or Gates-funded organizations. Bornstein and Rosenberg said they asked their editors at the Times to belatedly add financial disclosures to several of these columns, but they also cited six they thought did not need disclosure. Rosenberg’s 2016 profile of Bridge International Academies, for example, notes that Bill Gates personally helps fund the project. The writers argue that SJN’s ties are to the Gates Foundation, not to Bill Gates himself, so no disclosure is needed.
“This is a significant distinction,” Rosenberg and Bornstein stated in an email.
Months after Bornstein and Rosenberg say they asked their editors to add financial disclosures to their columns, those pieces remain uncorrected. Marc Charney, a senior editor at the Times, said he wasn’t sure if or when the paper would add the disclosures, citing technical difficulties and other newsroom priorities. 
Likewise, NPR said it would add a financial disclosure to a 2012 story it published on the Gates Foundation, but did not follow through. (In the vast majority of articles about Gates, NPR makes disclosures.)
Even perfect disclosure of Gates funding doesn’t mean the money can’t still introduce bias. At the same time, Gates funding, alone, doesn’t fully explain why so much of the news about the foundation is positive. Even news outlets with no obvious financial ties to Gates—the foundation isn’t required to publicly report all of the money it gives to journalism, making the full extent of its giving unknown—tend to report favorably on the foundation. That may be because Gates’s expansive giving over the decades has helped influence a larger media narrative about its work. And it may also be because the news media is always, and especially right now, looking for heroes.
A larger worry is the precedent the prevailing coverage of Gates sets for how we report on the next generation of tech billionaires–turned-philanthropists, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates has shown how seamlessly the most controversial industry captain can transform his public image from tech villain to benevolent philanthropist. Insofar as journalists are supposed to scrutinize wealth and power, Gates should probably be one of the most investigated people on earth—not the most admired.
Reporting for this piece was supported by a fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation.
ICYMI: Portland’s independent journalists team up to cover the front lines
Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to an investment the foundation had made in a company, CureVax. It is, in fact, CureVac. 
User avatar
Karmamatterz
 
Posts: 828
Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2012 10:58 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Karmamatterz » Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:59 pm

The New York Times published an exposé detailing Project Veritas'


One additional note. The "expose" by the NY Times was written by Adam Goldman. You may recall he was the sham Pulitzer Prize winner for the muh Russia Russia Russia "expose" on muh Russia 2016 election meddling. Goldman is really a great and ironic comparison to the mucky O'Keefe.
User avatar
Karmamatterz
 
Posts: 828
Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2012 10:58 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby BenDhyan » Thu Sep 23, 2021 5:30 pm

And Joe, another example of Melbourne police not behaving with restraint.

Ben D
User avatar
BenDhyan
 
Posts: 867
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby Marionumber1 » Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:48 am

Karmamatterz » Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:48 pm wrote:Gates certainly doesn't support or like Trump.


I would say this is anything but certain. Most of the divisions in US politics are, in my view, an illusion; and Trump is one of the best examples, dutifully carrying out TPTB's agenda while both he and the more well-recognized corners of the deep state wage phony war on each other.
Marionumber1
 
Posts: 374
Joined: Sat Jul 08, 2017 12:42 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:37 am

It's weird how someone asked if RI is MAGA and unrelated to that question the thread somehow became a referendum on the covid vaccine.

Just another one of those odd RI synchronicities I guess.
"When I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian government that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched. That's why I drink Orange Drink!"
User avatar
mentalgongfu2
 
Posts: 1966
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:02 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby 8bitagent » Fri Sep 24, 2021 6:29 am

stickdog99 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:14 am wrote:
RocketMan » 21 Sep 2021 09:22 wrote:This is an interesting question. I have been away for a while, but it seems to me that indeed more "conservative" or "rightist" points have been raised here. It's difficult to properly formulate what the phenomenon is about, as talk of just "left" and "right" is too crude in this instance, due to the extreme heterogeneity of thought here. But it's partly due to the nature of the beast/board, I guess. The status quo can be challenged from all sorts of directions.

Clearly basic issues like attitude towards the State are extremely hard to grapple with when one is anti-authoritarian to the extreme, as I suspect most of us identify themselves as being. There certainly has been a very strong "conservative/traditionalist" bent to discussions regarding identity/gender issues here for some time.

The fact remains, though, that Jeff Wells originally staked out a quite "traditional" leftist/socialist position on worldview/politics. No doubt he himself has undergone quite a transmogrification there.


LOL. It's the "left" that has transmogrified into a vile, infinitely smug and self-righteous, totally authoritarian, censor-happy, Big Tech, Big Pharma, military-intelligence, security state, and especially biosecurity state loving monstrosity, while Jeff and I have stayed exactly where we always have been since our days of righteous railing against the Reagan-Bush Evil Empire.


Hey if you don't like the Biden Border horseback riding patrol whipping Haitians in Texas or Biden drone striking children in Afghanistan as part of his calamitous retreat, you might as well be a Jan 6 insurrectionist! :p Maybe I've been blackpilled by too much Jimmy Dore, Tim Dillon and Sagaar Enjetti; but the idea of MSNBCNN viewers obsessing over January 6 and Russian conspiracy theories on social media all day reminds me of the Republicans who wouldn't shut up about "Benghazi" and Obama birth certificate theories.

The fact that the twitter/academia left has completely turned into the 1990s culture warrior conservative Republicans wanting to censor everything or 1960s Mccarthyites with Russia is kind of hilarious. I feel the Covid era has just sped up the inevitable.
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
User avatar
8bitagent
 
Posts: 12243
Joined: Fri Aug 24, 2007 6:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby stickdog99 » Fri Sep 24, 2021 6:36 am

mentalgongfu2 » 24 Sep 2021 05:37 wrote:It's weird how someone asked if RI is MAGA and unrelated to that question the thread somehow became a referendum on the covid vaccine.

Just another one of those odd RI synchronicities I guess.


https://www.onepoll.us/vaccinated-ameri ... d-19-shot/
stickdog99
 
Posts: 6303
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:42 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Has RI gone MAGA?

Postby 8bitagent » Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:04 am

I like this thread as it's getting people uncomfortable and coming back to post. Since the 90s Yahoo/Geocities/AOL era I've frequented a lot of "conspiracy forums". The 2004-2010's RI forum was by far the smartest al-Gonquin roundtable online in the realpolitik sphere. A LOT of the things we predicted right here over a decade ago came true, but I don't think anyone predicted a pandemic changing everything single aspect of humanity. We're truly living in a meta Stephen King novel. The linear timeline from the Bush Cheney post 9/11 era to now feels more complicated than ever. While it does feel like the "left" have in some ways become the very patron saints of censorship and groupthink that would have once seemed anathema, the right wing/Republican/convervative side in America has gone straight fucking retarded in recent years.

Covid-19, which I 99.9% believe leaked from a lab(and the juries out if it was an oopsy whpopsy gain-of-function or intentionally leaked), has changed everything. Covid-19 did in a few months what 9/11 failed to do in two decades. Almost every fundamental and subtle aspect of humanity worldwide, relationships, friendships, jobs, etc has been turned upside down because of Covid. 9/11 didn't do shit compared to that when it comes to fundamental massive societal shifts. And yet to even question ANYTHING related to Covid is to be scarlet lettered. Remember back in May when President Biden and CDC officials were on tv saying you were basically free from the pandemic if you got the vaccine? No more masks, no more anxiety, the pandemic was over if you got the vaccine. This is why I can't hate on the vaccine skeptics when I see what a hall of mirrors everything has become.

I mean I hate to say it, but it truly feels like we're in a bizarro simulation where everyone will be pitted against everyone.
RI hasn't gone "MAGA" because RI doesn't even exist. We're in a hall of mirrors that makes even less sense. If you've made it this far reading this, you already know the 2020's decade seems almost poised to deliver a hellscape that would have seemed out of a feverish Alex Jones rant. It doesn't even matter what political bullshit people side with, as Climate c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶ Collapse will wipe us all out and none of these stupid debates will even matter. 20 fucking years since the big wedding at Vessey and Church Street, and society has collapsed more onto its own footprint under Covid than it ever did with 9/11.
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
User avatar
8bitagent
 
Posts: 12243
Joined: Fri Aug 24, 2007 6:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 53 guests