Unfortunately, many of these real criticisms of Gates and his network are obscured by wild and untrue conspiracy theories about such things as inserting microchips in vaccines to control the population.

This has meant that genuine critiques of the Microsoft co-founder are often demonetized and algorithmically suppressed, meaning that outlets are strongly dissuaded from covering the topic, knowing they will likely lose money if they do so. The paucity of scrutiny of the world’s second-richest individual, in turn, feeds into outlandish suspicions.

Gates certainly deserves it. Quite apart from his deep and potentially decades-long ties to the infamous Jeffrey Epstein, his attempts to radically change African society, and his investment in controversial chemical giant Monsanto, he is perhaps the key driver behind the American charter school movement — an attempt to essentially privatize the U.S. education system.

Charter schools are deeply unpopular with teachers’ unions, which see the movement as an attempt to lessen their autonomy and reduce public oversight into how and what children are taught.

All the way to the bank

In most coverage, Gates’s donations are broadly presented as altruistic gestures. Yet many have pointed to the inherent flaws with this model, noting that allowing billionaires to decide what they do with their money allows them to set the public agenda, giving them enormous power over society.

“Philanthropy can and is being used deliberately to divert attention away from different forms of economic exploitation that underpin global inequality today,” said Linsey McGoey, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, U.K., and author of “No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy.” She adds:

“The new ‘philanthrocapitalism’ threatens democracy by increasing the power of the corporate sector at the expense of the public sector organizations, which increasingly face budget squeezes, in part by excessively remunerating for-profit organizations to deliver public services that could be delivered more cheaply without private sector involvement.”

Charity, as former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee noted, “is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.”

None of this means that the organizations receiving Gates’ money — media or otherwise — are irredeemably corrupt, nor that the Gates Foundation does not do any good in the world.

But it does introduce a glaring conflict of interest whereby the very institutions we rely on to hold accountable one of the richest and most powerful men in the planet’s history are quietly being funded by him.

This conflict of interest is one that corporate media have largely tried to ignore, while the supposedly altruistic philanthropist Gates just keeps getting richer, laughing all the way to the bank.

Originally published by MintPress News.