An announcement is due later today from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving WETA, co-producer of The NewsHour, a $3.5 million grant over the next three years to cover global health issues. Foundation-funding of publicly funded news programs like The NewsHour is becoming more and more important as other sources of money, like corporate-funding, dry up.
Other recent investments in global health news coverage by the Gates Foundation include:
1. A nearly $1 million, three-year grant for National Public Radio in 2006.
2. A $5 million, three-year grant for Public Radio International in 2007.
This latest move suggests the Gates Foundation has made a strategic decision to fund news-coverage directly, as opposed to, say, training for journalists in global health issues. In 2007, the Gates Foundation gave the Knight Foundation $1.7 million over three years for health fellowships for journalists in sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier this year, however, the Gates Foundation chose not to renew its three-year grant to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
The Nieman Foundation is continuing its global health program—although it will award two fellowships next year instead of three.
I’m very interested to see how the Gates-funded NewsHour navigates the challenge of reporting on global health programs that are funded by the Gates Foundation and of interviewing experts who are also receiving funding from the Gates Foundation.
Full disclosure: I received a 2008 Nieman Fellowship for Global Health Reporting. The Gates Foundation had no say in the choice of my field project. And I dealt with even the potential appearance of a conflict-of-interest issue by focusing on the nursing brain drain in Malawi—an issue that, as far as I can tell, has received no Gates funding.
Updated to add Knight Foundation information.
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