The one-year anniversary of “The Bill Gates Problem”

My book exposed the contours of Gates's power—-but we have a long ways to go reining in our 'good billionaire'

One year after publishing my debut book, “The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire,” the Gates Foundation has been rocked by a series of extraordinary developments. Melinda Gates stepped down from the foundation (as I predicted) and Warren Buffett essentially reneged on a planned $100 billion donation to the foundation (an eventuality that I examined in the book).

Not only have Bill Gates’s longest-standing partners and allies abandoned him, but his intended beneficiaries are now publicly demanding he end his charitable crusade. Across the African continent, for example, many organizations are now calling on the foundation to pay reparations for all the damage it has caused. And the news media is starting to pay attention.

These are major problems for the foundation, and they clearly show Gates’s fading moral authority on the global stage. What I wrote in my book (and still believe to be true) is that Gates reached the absolute zenith of his philanthropic career during the first year of pandemic, and has, since that time, been a falling star. His grotesque mismanagement of the Covid response, his messy divorce from Melinda, and news of his alleged misconduct toward women——these scandals have made the world start to finally rethink Gates as our “good billionaire.”

Gates, of course, still remains incredibly powerful. He controls a $100-billion private fortune¹ and a $75 billion private foundation. And he will continue to use this obscene wealth to make the world pay attention to him, to follow his directives, and to worship him as a philanthropist. This effort will be less easy in the years ahead because Gates faces growing enmity from the political right, and, as Donald Trump’s election signals, the political right is on the move.

While Gates today faces sharp criticism from both the political left and the right, he still holds a powerful base among centrists—including the biggest names in the Democratic party, like Kamala Harris, to whom Bill Gates made a $50-million dark-money campaign donation. The Democrats have long partnered with Gates on political projects and policy reforms, and long refused to see him for what he is: a super-rich guy skillfully turning his great wealth into undemocratic, destructive political influence.

That is Bill Gates’s story in a nutshell: oligarchy. Beyond massive dark-money political campaign donations, Gates also buys political power through charitable donations——putting tens of billions of dollars into journalism, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, professional consultants and even governments. It is very, very difficult to overstate the power and influence this buys, including the propaganda power. For much of the last 25 years, Gates has been able to write his own narrative, shaping what we know about his foundation and how we think about it. This created significant challenges for my book.

It is widely observed and documented at this point that Gates’s expansive funding has made his many dependents terrified to bite the hand that feeds them. Nevertheless, many eaters insist that their diet doesn’t affect their health. As Upton Sinclair famously wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

And as Ṣẹ̀yẹ Abímbọ́lá writes today in “The Lancet,” reflecting on the 100-year anniversary of writer James Baldwin’s birth, “Strategic ignorance—or motivated unawareness—requires the ability to protect oneself from knowing, an ability that is available to people with the power to reject, without care, viewpoints, worldviews, and experiences that are not their own…Defenders of the status quo…discount your credibility, trivialise your experience, or marginalise your interpretations. They may accuse you of having crossed the line or ask you to disavow people whom, in their view, have crossed the line. You then focus on the line at the expense of making your case against injustice. You are distracted.”

These words resonate deeply as I reflect on the one-year anniversary of “The Bill Gates Problem.” The best way I can explain this is by looking at the New York Times’s demoralizing review of my book, which seemed designed to take me down a notch, not to thoughtfully engage with my findings or arguments.

The Times tone policed me for using language it deemed to have crossed a line, and the paper presented me to its readers as “long-time critic” of Gates, not an investigative reporter who has won several awards for exposing problems with the foundation. The review repeatedly sought to undermine my findings, like describing my reporting into media bias around Gates as unfounded, “smears” and “especially distasteful.” But the newspaper was less honest or clear about what I actually showed in the book, that the Times, itself, had been publishing favorable content about Gates—for years—without disclosing that its authors had very significant outside financial ties to the foundation. My investigation, a year earlier, had even compelled the Times to issue myriad formal corrections—a major, public embarrassment for the paper of record.

Glossing over its own extraordinary history of financial conflicts and bias, the Times review ended by, essentially, refuting the title of my book—-openly wishing that more billionaires were ‘good billionaires’ like Bill Gates.

This was an unfortunate—and leading—accomplishment of my book, exposing the contours of Gates’s vast influence: how far his power extends and how many high-profile actors are constitutionally unable or unwilling to see how undemocratic and destructive Gates’s influence is.

But my book also exposed fault lines around Gates’s power.

A month after the Times’s review, the newspaper did a 180, giving my book an “Editor’s Choice” recommendation. The New York Times is a big place, and I’d guess that many people working there understand the job of journalism is “to afflict the comforted”—to challenge power, not defend or exalt it.

I also remember vividly an early interview I did with the German news outlet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which I’m told is the equivalent of the Wall Street Journal in Germany—a large, mainstream, business-focused news outlet. Before the interview, I looked into FAZ’s history of reporting on Gates, which was fairly typical—-soft-ball interviews with Bill Gates and soft profiles of his foundation’s philanthropic work. I went into the interview mentally prepared for combat—-ready to face another insecure journalist eager to take me down a notch. It was a thrill to find something different: an open-minded reporter with no axe to grind, a journalist who simply wanted to give his audience the other side of the story. This made me understand the great potential we have to create a new era of honest, independent journalism on Gates.

Even more thrilling has been seeing writers and researchers engage with my book by building on my findings. There is no higher compliment than to see others cite your work and expand on it. A few examples:

—The Giving Review wrote a stinging critique of how the Gates Foundation uses Big Tobacco’s playbook of dirty tricks to advance its agenda, distorting public debate of important issues—like the need to regulate philanthropy. My book has an entire chapter explaining how the foundation uses dark money and front groups to advance its priorities, foil follow-the-money investigations, and confuse the public.

—The Wire published a long investigation profiling the large sums of money the Gates Foundation has put into counterproductive educational initiatives in India. The story’s headline, “How Rich Donors Have Caused More Harm Than Good to India's Education,” reflects one of my book’s primary conclusions—that the Gates Foundation, on the whole, is doing more harm than good.

—Forbes, which has a long history of friendly reporting on Gates, changed directions recently with a big story about calls on the foundation to pay reparations. And the author thoughtfully engaged with my reporting on how Gates’s funding influences journalism—-and acknowledged her own previous funding from the Gates Foundation through intermediaries like the United Nations Foundation, European Journalism Centre, and Solutions Journalism Network. As a related example, a Dutch journalist, reporting in De Groene Amsterdammer, wrote a long piece explaining why he had taken the ethical decision to avoid taking Gates’s funding going forward: “I have decided that I will no longer apply for these types of specific grants that are so linked to a lobby” (according to Google translate). This speaks to a larger movement of people and institutions, across many different fields, that are starting to say ‘no’ to funding from Gates—a vitally important remedy to our Bill Gates problem.

—”Nature,” one of the most prestigious academic journals in the world, used its review of my book to raise questions about how the foundation may be “skewing global health research.” Getting a glowing book review in “Nature” (alongside invited book talks I’ve done at places like Harvard University) means that my findings and arguments have a level of credibility that the Gates Foundation—-and its defenders and apologists—cannot easily dismiss.

It has been humbling to see my book become part of a larger conversation, or debate, and to see the book generate more than 100 media hits internationally. But it’s also been puzzling to see so many colleagues in the news media turn their backs. For example, not a single news outlet in Seattle—-home to Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation—-covered my book, even as local media always seem to (favorably) review books that Bill and Melinda Gates write. Ditto for NPR—-recipient of $25 million from the Gates Foundation—-and many other legacy, mainstream outlets.

One of the bigger surprises I had with the book was seeing it receive far better attention abroad as it did at home, in the United States. One prominent, legacy, American news outlet, in the weeks leading up to my book’s publication, engaged me in an extensive back and forth for an author Q&A, then never published it. When I followed up, the outlet told me they were afraid of being sued by Gates. I then learned that one of the outlet’s top editors also sits on the board of directors of a charitable organization that receives extremely large sums of money from the Gates Foundation.

Whatever the real reason for the outlet killing the piece, the takeaway is the same: much of the news media—-including much of the powerful, liberal-centrist mainstream news media in the United States—appears unable or unwilling to confront Gates. This bias, or chilling effect, doesn’t just hurt the visibility and success of my book. It also hurts democracy. It diminishes what should be a vibrant public debate about the unaccountable power of the billionaire class.

Recently, South African journalist Simon Allison, offered his own take on this issue:“One of the most difficult subjects for African journalists to write about is the work of Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Africa. The foundation pumps a huge amount of money into the continent, especially in healthcare and agriculture, and as such requires close journalistic scrutiny. But that doesn't happen very often.”

Allison’s observations follow many, many, many, many other reports raising questions about how the Gates Foundation's financial giving appears to be restricting press freedom----the ability of journalists to fully, freely and fairly put a critical lens on Gates. Here again we find a grim survey marker of Gates’s power: I recently learned that one of the world’s foremost advocates and champions of press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists, has been taking funding from the Gates Foundation for years. How does CPJ square its high-minded mission—-it “promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal. CPJ protects the free flow of news and commentary by taking action wherever journalists are under threat”—with its funding from a foundation that many see as limiting press freedom?

I asked that question of the CPJ last month. The organization refused to engage. This silence will, and should, leave any journalist wanting to investigate the Gates Foundation feeling very, very alone.

Again and again, it is easy to get demoralized by Bill Gates’s awesome power, which co-opts and distorts every field he funds, from public health to public education to journalism to democracy, itself. One remedy for me has been vigilance—-trying not be distracted by “the line” Ṣẹ̀yẹ Abímbọ́lá talks about and, instead, directing my attention to all the incredible people and organizations that are choosing a different path, that insist on integrity and dignity, that seek to challenge abuses of power, not legitimize them.

I tried to profile this courageous honesty in my book, and in writing “The Bill Gates Problem,” I was certainly standing on the shoulders of giants—the activists, writers and scholars who have, for decades, been doing the hard and often unpopular work of making the world pay attention. After the publication of my book, many new insiders and whistleblowers have reached out to me with extraordinary stories about the Gates Foundation’s incredible abuses of power. Many of these sources, like those who helped me to write my book, face very serious potential consequences in speaking out—and they will never get the kind of credit that I do as a public-facing writer with a byline.

I hope that I can eventually help bring these stories to light in one way or the other, but I’m still trying to figure out how. Even after writing a fairly successful book, my writing career bears little resemblance to a normal job in terms of stability, security, or remuneration. And, to put things mildly, trying to do good, honest journalism in an ethically compromised and financially conflicted media landscape is not easy, and often not fun.

Challenging injustice and abuses of power, of course, takes more than books or investigative journalism. It takes political power, and there’s a role for all of us to play. If my book can help to energize and inform the political struggle, it’s doing its job.

1. As I write this, Forbes pegs Bill Gates’s wealth at $104 billion while Bloomberg says it is $161 billion.