All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 24, 2022 - Epoch Times
23:26
Bombshell Documents: Bill Gates Gave $319 Million To Hundreds of Media Outlets | Facts Matter
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good evening.
According to newly released documents, it was recently revealed that Bill Gates, as well as his foundation, has given over $319 million to hundreds of media outlets, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS, as well as The Atlantic.
Meanwhile, just yesterday, the European Union equivalent to our FDA, they expressed serious concerns over the effect that repeated booster shots have on a person's immune system.
And lastly, according to new emails which have just surfaced, they suggest that the Biden administration's Department of Education, they might have actually played a very important role in the creation of that National School Board letter, which compared parents to domestic terrorists.
Let's go through it all together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion by talking about Bill Gates.
And to start with, you might not know this, but right now in America, there are a total of six corporations which control approximately 90% of the media outlets in this country.
Those companies, just for your reference, they're Comcast, Disney, CBS, Viacom, News Corp, as well as AT&T. And what this means is that when you dig into the ownership structure of many of the mainstream news outlets in this country, you find that almost all of them are owned by at least one of these six corporations.
However, some members of the ultra-wealthy in this country, they have been using various strategies to either buy news outlets outright or to And so in terms of an example of someone who bought a media company outright, well, there's of course Jeff Bezos, who purchased the Washington Post back in 2013.
And ever since he did, well, we've had many interesting little episodes, like this one here, where the Washington Post published what can easily be described as a hit piece against Elon Musk.
Here's part of what that Washington Post article said.
Quote, Elon Musk says he is stretched too thin.
Twice in a matter of days recently, the 49-year-old complained of what he called an insane work schedule, juggling responsibilities with his car company and aerospace firm and taking in torrents of information in wall-to-wall meetings.
Musk, they say, is drowning in outside commitments like his aerospace company and other endeavors while letting quality and strategy at Tesla fall victim.
And there are familiar concerns.
However, what's interesting to note here is that the Washington Post wrote that article just a month after Elon Musk briefly surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world's richest man with a net worth of about $185 billion.
In fact, when the Washington Post was reaching out to Elon Musk to give them a comment for that article, Elon Musk simply wrote back saying this, Give my regards to your puppet master, meaning Jeff Bezos.
Now, there's many ways to look at this type of incident, but the silver lining in all of them is that most people know that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, and so it's all kind of done in the open, it's a matter of public record, and so people can take that into consideration when reading stories like this.
However, this is where we get to the story of Bill Gates.
Because unlike Jeff Bezos, who purchased his media outlet outright, Bill Gates has taken a much different route.
That's right.
According to a phenomenal research project that was conducted by Mint Press News, they sifted through over 30,000 grant applications, and they found that the Gates Foundation has bankrolled hundreds of media outlets to the tune of at least $319 million.
In fact, sorting through the money that was granted towards these media programs, here are some notable recipients.
NPR got the most money of any outlet with over $24 million.
And then The Guardian, which includes Guardian.org, they received the second most, which is almost $13 million.
And by the way, just as a super quick aside, The Guardian, they once unironically dubbed Bill Gates as Saint Bill due to his work in Africa.
I'm sure that did not hurt their efforts at fundraising from his foundation.
Regardless, if we get back to this list of media outlets, you'll find NBCUniversal, which received $4.3 million, CNN, which received $3.6 million, The Texas Tribune, which received $2.3 million, The Atlantic, which received $1.4 million, Al Jazeera, which received $1 million, and so on and so forth.
There are definitely too many media outlets to actually list through.
However, what's really cool about the way that this article is formulated is that if you click on any of the dollar amounts next to the name of the outlet, it will actually take you to the Gates Foundation grant, which authorized the payment.
And when you actually go through those grants, when you sift through them for yourself, you find that generally this money was directed towards issues that, at least publicly, Bill Gates has expressed an interest in.
For example, the $3.6 million grant that went to CNN went towards, And likewise, the Texas Tribune, they received millions of dollars to, And so what happened in Texas is actually a great microcosm of the issues at play here.
Because Bill Gates, he's a fervent supporter of charter schools.
And so a cynic might look at this and interpret this as him essentially planting pro-corporate charter school propaganda into the media, which is disguised as objective news reporting.
Furthermore, besides these donations to the media outlets themselves, the Gates Foundation has also given almost $63 million to charities which closely aligned with big media outlets.
These include about $53 million that went to the BBC Media Action, over $9 million that went to MTV's Stay Alive Foundation, and $1 million that went to the New York Times' Neediest Causes Fund.
And so, while these grants did not specifically fund the journalism itself, I believe that these donations to the philanthropic arms of media outlets should still be noted because it almost goes without saying that such donations very likely influence how these various media outlets cover Bill Gates.
I mean, just think about it for a moment from just a critical perspective.
How would you cover someone who just donated $53 million to your foundation?
Furthermore, Bill Gates has continued to underwrite a wide network of investigative journalism centers here in America as well.
These are centers like the International Center for Journalists, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, as well as the Center for Investigative Reporting.
And additionally to all that, the Gates Foundation has also given a lot of cash to press and journalism associations, such as the National Newspaper Publishers Association, Which is a group that represents about 200 news outlets in the country, and they received about $3.2 million in cash.
And the list goes on and on and on and on.
And the reason that this matters, even though it might be self-evident, I believe it's still worth discussing.
Here is, for instance, what the Seattle Times wrote back in 2011 in an article titled, Does Gates Funding of Media Taint Objectivity?
They wrote, quote, The foundation's grants to media organizations raise obvious conflicts of interest questions.
How can reporting be unbiased when a major player holds the purse strings?
Now, ironically, that article was, of course, written before the Seattle Times themselves accepted Bill Gates' money to fund their education lab section.
Another example of what this conflict of interest actually looks like can be found within the pages of the New York Times.
Here's how Mint Press described the situation over there.
Two New York Times columnists have been writing glowingly about the Gates Foundation for years without disclosing that they also work for a group, the Solutions Journalism Network, that, as shown above, has received over $7 million from the tech billionaires charity.
And then, as another example, an article that was recently published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, it discussed how COVAX, which is the WHO's initiative at getting vaccines to poor countries, they wrote an article about how this initiative has actually been failing.
And within that article, the authors, they repeated the assertion that Bill Gates had little to do with Kovacs' failure, which mirrored the stance that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism took on this issue.
However, only when you get to the very, very, very end of this long article, this 5,000-word-long article, only at the very bottom does the publication reveal that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation actually pays for the wages of their staff.
Here's what it says all the way at the bottom of the page against a gray background.
This article is part of our Global Health Project, which has a number of funders, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
None of our funders have any influence over the Bureau's editorial decisions or output.
And it's exactly conflicts of interest like this which led Mr.
Tim Schwab, who's one of the few investigative journalists who actually scrutinizes Bill Gates, to write this.
I don't believe Gates told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism what to write.
I think the Bureau implicitly, if subconsciously, knew they had to find a way to tell the story that didn't target their funder.
The biasing effects of financial conflicts are complex but very real and reliable.
It's a case study in the perils of Gates-funded journalism.
Regardless, though, if you look through the list of all the media outlets that have received money from Bill Gates, well, what you won't find is the Epoch Times.
We are still waiting for that sweet, sweet Bill Gates money to come through.
Maybe it'll hit us any day now.
Until then, though, if you'd like to read the full list of publications which have been receiving this funding, I'll throw that list into the description box below this video for you to check out, and I'll ask in return is that you take a super quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now let's move on over and talk about booster shots.
Just yesterday, the European Union's drug regulator, he expressed serious concerns over the effect that repeated booster shots have on a person's immune system.
Specifically, his comments came at a time where, right now, there is a serious debate in Europe, and frankly around the world, as to whether or not to introduce a second booster shot into the mix.
And amidst this debate, here's what Dr.
Dr. Marco Cavallari, who is the head of the vaccine strategy for the European Medicines Agency, here's what he told news outlets.
There is an emergency discussion around the possibility of giving a second booster dose with the same vaccine currently in use.
Data has not yet been generated to support this approach.
We would like to see this data before we can make any recommendation, but at the same time, we are rather concerned about a strategy that involves repeated vaccinations within a short term.
He then further added that adding additional booster doses, like what is being currently considered, should only be seen as a contingency plan and not a long-term strategy.
Here's specifically what he said.
Now, you might ask, what exactly is his specific concern?
Well, when he was asked to further expand on his comments, Dr.
Cavallari gave a hypothetical example.
For instance, if we go with an approach of giving booster shots to people frequently, such as every four months, he said that, quote,"...we will end up potentially having problems with immune response, and immune response may end up not being as good as we would like it to be.
So we should be careful in not overloading the immune system with repeated immunization." He further added that...
And then he added this...
It will be much better to start thinking about an administration of boosters that is more spaced in time.
And then furthermore, he said that in his opinion, if society wants to move from being in a pandemic to an endemic, then giving out boosters several months in is not a good way to go.
Instead, he suggests treating these booster shots more like how we've been treating seasonal flu shots in the past.
Here's what he said.
So we should not forget we are still in a pandemic.
With increase of immunity in the population and with Omicron, there will be a lot of natural immunity taking place on top of vaccination, we will be vastly moving toward a scenario that will be closer to endemicity.
Ideally, if you want to move toward a scenario of endemicity, then such boosters should be synchronized with the arrival of the cold seasons in each of the hemispheres.
And what's interesting to me, at least, is that in that last statement from him that we just read, he mentioned natural immunity.
And the reason that I find that interesting is because natural immunity is a much more common topic of discussion over in Europe, whereas here in America, well, when was the last time that you actually heard the FDA talking about natural immunity openly?
It's oddly become somewhat of a taboo subject.
Regardless though, the European medicine agency's desire to not introduce too many booster shots too rapidly, well, that will soon meet with Pfizer and Moderna's push to get an Omicron booster out by as early as March.
And so, only time will tell what the European Union, as well as for that matter what America, will decide to do.
Until then, if you'd like to read more about the comments that he made, or the data surrounding the comments that were made by Dr.
Cavallari, I'll throw those links into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And again, all I ask in return is that if you haven't already, Take a quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, let's move on over and discuss the newly released emails which shed more light on the potential collusion between the Biden administration and the National School Board Association in labeling American parents as domestic terrorists.
What happened there was...
Sorry.
What's this?
What's this?
Well, that's a great question, Roman.
And it is today's sponsor, which is an awesome messaging and email service provider called Secure.
And it's awesome if you're the type of person that actually cares about their privacy.
Because, I mean, it's no big secret that these big tech companies are mining and remining our data all the time.
In fact, in the year 2020, it was found that over 155 million Americans, likely including you and me, have suffered some form of data breach.
And by the way, that's only what's publicly known.
However, what's happened in the past?
Well, that can stay in the past because with Secure, Your data and your messages can remain private.
And that's because Secure has all of their data centers located over in Switzerland rather than in the US or in China.
And the reason that's so important is that Switzerland has some of the strictest data privacy laws in the entire world, and they are not subject to the intrusive Cloud Act.
And if you want to know what the Cloud Act is, head on over to Secure.com and watch their video on the homepage or on the video tutorials page, which is under their support section.
Now, the thing that I personally love the most about the Secure app is the privacy aspect of it.
They don't mine my data.
They don't mine my phone number.
They don't mine the phone numbers or data of my friends and family who I chat with.
But best of all is that if your friends and family don't actually use the secure app themselves, it doesn't matter.
Because the way that it works is that when you use their secure send email technology, All of your emails and your messages route to Switzerland, and then the recipient can reply using their secure reply technology, and so everything remains private no matter what.
And the same actually goes for their messaging app as well.
And they're always coming up with new features.
In fact, the most recent one they told me about, they sent me an email here, was that they're coming up with a new feature called Text to Chat by Invite.
So they're an innovative company, and they really do care about your privacy, and so what they're doing doesn't work with your existing big tech email account.
So check them out.
You can head on over to secure.com.
I'll throw the link into the description box below.
And when you use promo code Roman, you can get 25% off.
And the rates are not even that expensive to start with, by the way.
It's only $5 for the messenger and $10 for the email and messenger combo.
And they even offer a seven-day free trial.
So head on over to their website.
Again, it'll be linked in the description box below.
Use promo code Roman to save some money.
And now Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now let's move on over and talk about domestic terrorists, or as some people refer to them, concerned parents.
So, according to new emails which have just surfaced, they suggest that the U.S. Department of Education might have actually played a much, much more important role than previously thought in the creation of that controversial letter which likened concerned parents to domestic terrorists.
Now, You might remember that letter.
We discussed it back in October of last year.
It was written by the National School Board Association, which represents over 90,000 school board members in the U.S., and they addressed the letter to the Biden administration.
And within the letter, they called on the federal government to treat these angry mobs of parents as domestic terrorism.
Let me just repeat that.
In October of last year, the National School Board Association wrote a letter to the federal government.
It was addressed to Joe Biden asking the Biden administration to protect school boards from angry mobs of parents, and they characterized these parents as being a form of domestic terrorism.
Here's what they wrote as a part of that letter.
As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.
And just five days after that letter was received, Mr.
Merrick Garland, who is the U.S. Attorney General, he issued a memo directing the federal law enforcement throughout the entire country to help address an alleged disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against teachers as well as school leaders.
And what's interesting to note is that the National School Board Association, they received so much public criticism for that letter that they actually had to apologize and rescind it.
However, even though the National School Board Association rescinded that letter, the memo from the Department of Justice still remains in effect to this day.
However, according to newly surfaced emails which just came out a few days ago, they have given much clarity about what was happening behind the scenes during this time, as well as what actually led the National School Board Association to write such an inflammatory document.
Specifically, a parent advocacy group called Parents Defending Education, they obtained these internal documents which show that the letter from the National School Board Association appears to have actually been given as a response to a request for information by the U.S. Secretary of Education.
Let's go through some of these email exchanges together.
So on October the 5th, a National School Board member named Marty Maldonado, she sent an email to a fellow board member named Christy Sweat, Asking her whether the National School Board Association had gone through all of the correct procedures before sending the letter to Joe Biden.
Here's what she wrote.
She also added in this email that she wanted the National School Board Association to focus on civility.
And in response, Ms.
Christy Sweat, she sent an email back in which she mentioned that the school board letter had actually been sent as a response to a request from Mr.
Miguel Cardano, who is the Biden administration's Secretary of Education.
Here's specifically what she wrote in her email.
Quote, And just to be frank with you,
And just to be frank with you, I always find it rather amazing how when these types of leaked documents come out, when either it's these leaked emails or declassified emails, they can have just a single sentence within them, and that sentence can change the entire picture of what we actually know was happening behind the scenes.
I always find it rather amazing how when these types of leaked documents come out, when either it's these leaked emails or declassified emails, they can have just a single sentence within them, and that sentence can change the entire picture of what we actually know was happening behind the scenes.
In fact, here's how the president of Parents Defending Education, which is the organization which received these emails, here's how she described her group's findings during an interview over on Fox News.
Should this allegation be true, it would reveal that this administration's protection war on parents came from the highest levels.
Attorney General Merrick Garland unequivocally stated that he based his memo on the NSBA's letter, which in turn mobilized the FBI and U.S. attorneys.
If Secretary Cardona was truly involved in this ugly episode, it is a significant breach of public trust, and he should be held accountable.
And really consider the context of what's happening for a quick moment.
Merrick Garland, at the Department of Justice, he issued a memo which directed the DOJ, the Department of Justice, to target parents in various ways.
That memo, it was based on a letter from the National School Board Association, and apparently now, at least according to these emails, that letter itself might have actually been instigated by Mr.
Miguel Cardano, who is the Biden administration's Secretary of Education.
And so what that would mean is that one agency within the Biden administration, it potentially created a situation where another agency within the administration can come in and assert their control.
And assert their control they did.
Because according to these leaked documents, which were leaked to Congressman Jim Jordan, who is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, the Department of Justice mobilized their counterterrorism division in order to target these parents.
Here's specifically what this leaked document said in part.
Quote, we share an obligation to ensure all individuals are able to do their jobs without threats of violence or fear for their safety.
This can only be accomplished with the effective coordination internally between relevant divisions and through effective coordination and engagement with our law enforcement partners and United States attorney officers.
As a result, the counterterrorism and criminal divisions created a threat tag called EDU Officials to track instances of related threats.
We ask that your offices apply the threat tag to investigations and assessments of these threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers and staff.
The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement partners at all levels.
It's kind of amazing, if you think about it, that now the Department of Justice is using their counterterrorism division, a division that was, for the longest time, engaged in things like fighting jihad terrorists.
It is now being used to target American parents with their very own tag, EDU officials.
It's kind of amazing if you think about it, but it really does make sense, because the National School Board Association, they did refer to these concerned parents as domestic terrorists, or rather, their protests as an act of domestic terrorism.
And so the Department of Justice, they responded accordingly.
And even though the National School Board, they retracted their letter, well, it appears that nothing has changed within the Department of Justice, which is still very likely continuing to target the parents via their counterterrorism division.
Here's, in fact, how Congressman Jim Jordan summed up the situation in a letter that he wrote to Mr.
Mr. Merrick Garland.
This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents.
The FBI's actions were an entirely foreseeable and perhaps intended result of your October 4th memorandum.
If you'd like to read more about these newly released emails, or if you'd like to read about this leaked internal DOJ document here, which shows that the counter-terrorism division has actually been mobilized against American parents, well, I'll throw all that into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And I'll ask in return that if you haven't already, take a quick moment to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And since you've completed this episode of Facts Matter, I would highly recommend that you go on over to Epic TV and check out an awesome episode of Truth Over News, where Jeff and Han explore how the government is violating our First Amendment rights by colluding with Big Tech, and then furthermore, why no one is doing anything about it.
Here's the trailer for that episode.
Big Tech recently banned two additional prominent social media accounts, those of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and of inventor of mRNA technology, Robert Malone.
What is less clear is why their accounts were banned.
A year ago, President Trump was thrown off Twitter, again, without any cogent explanation as to what he had done wrong.
The official excuse that he was banned because he tweeted that he would not attend the January 20th inauguration never passed the smell test.
If it's not anything specific they said, why are so many prominent accounts being banned by Big Tech?
And at whose behest?
If you want to check out that awesome episode, as well as all the other phenomenal content over on Epic TV, I'll throw a link to it.
It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honors journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
And lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while YouTube still allows it.
Also, consider hitting that notification bell so you can actually be notified of any new videos as we release them.
And lastly, if you happen to have a Telegram account, consider following us at FactsMatter underscore Roman.
We publish all the links there to all of our episodes, so in case anything ever does happen here on YouTube, you can always find the links to our episodes on Telegram.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
▲
Export Selection