News coverage of Warren Buffett's $30 billion gift to the Gates Foundation left the impression that the record-setting donation was an open-shut feel-good story. After all, what evil could come from the world's second richest man pledging over three-quarters of his wealth to fight preventable disease?
None at all, at least according to all but one of the top 20 newspapers nationally. "Way to Let Go!" declared the normally contentious editorial desk of the New York Times, while others such as the Wall Street Journal hailed a new "corporate-style" era of private giving.
But what has been lacking in this back-slapping celebration has been a serious attempt by the media to address the implications of the Buffett-Gates alignment. Obviously, saving millions of lives is exemplary. But let's face it: it's also complicated and potentially problematic. The Gates Foundation lavishes money on Third World countries that struggle to provide for the populations they already have. Now that the organization's endowment has effectively doubled in size, boasting a philanthropic armory with a yearly budget surpassing UNICEF's, several uncomfortable questions arise: How will the world's least developed infrastructures cope with population spikes resulting from new access to vaccinations? How will the Gates Foundation coordinate its efforts with other groups and national governments to avoid redundancy and unbalanced investment? And to whom will they be answerable as a private as opposed to public organization? Of course, one doesn't have to practice Jainism to know saving lives is a good thing. But in thoroughly failing regions each inequity is clearly tied to the next, and correcting one problem--such as limited access to vaccines--creates a host of counter problems. It's quite possible--and I hope it's the case--that Gates, Buffett, and the foundation's resident experts have considered these issues, and others. But you wouldn't know to judge by the press coverage.
In fact, the media seemed strangely shy about such questions, as if saving millions of lives with an injection of grant money larger than the GDP of over 40 countries is an uncomplicated development--whether for the economies and societies that must welcome the influx, or the other aid organizations that will surely be influenced by the newcomer in their midst. Instead of global ramifications, many outlets focused on what the bequest will mean for Buffett's heirs or Buffett's legacy as a humanitarian, while others were simply slack-jawed by the number itself. Most publications lost an opportunity to integrate the story into larger affairs they were already covering.
For example, an International Herald Tribune story noted the relationship between unsustainable population growth and today's larger social concerns: immigration, national security, and lifetime healthcare. The article, "Common Query: How Many Immigrants Can be Absorbed?" ran alongside a laudatory New York Times reprint about Buffett's egoless focus on results. Of course, it's the results of uber-philanthropy as well as the celebrity billionaires funding it that the media should be examining, especially when it's not hard to imagine negative outcomes alongside the good.
David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle was an all too lonely critical voice in raising questions about the unaccountable and unprecedented power of the new philanthropic leviathan. "The danger...is that a private-sector entity with the economic heft of the Gates Foundation will be in a position to hijack the public-policy agenda," Lazarus wrote a few days after the Buffett and Gates held a disarmingly modest press conference at the New York Public Library.
This is a tremendous gift, and yes, a tremendous story. But we need more journalists to seek the experts cited by Lazarus, people capable of projecting future developments and adding depth to a story that was otherwise merely an ode to Buffett, Gates, and the West's good intentions (even though, according to the NYT, giving by the richest Americans is actually down). At any rate, if the media means to be more than first-responders to newsy events, and instead be long-term providers of careful analysis and thoughtful perspectives, it needs to remain alert; not to get charmed by media events, outsized figures and modern-day Masters of the Universe. Donating $30 billion to charity is, make no mistake, a fantastic example of generosity. But more importantly, especially for the societies that will be affected the most, it represents a beginning--not an end in itself.