Gates Foundation Funded PBS Program That Dovetailed With Microsoft Interests

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent hundreds of millions promoting Common Core Standards in public schools, supplied funding to a PBS video series on the subject without any explicit disclosure from PBS about the foundation’s political activism in that area, says Pando Daily. Microsoft is building part of its business around the Common Core.

“Teaching Channel Presents” aired in 2012 and was produced in partnership with New York’s WNET to help teachers “better understand the Common Core State Standards.”

Candice Meyers, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Teaching Channel, said that the Gates foundation did not tell the organization what it should produce.

This follows a similar flap over support by John Arnold for a PBS program on public pensions.

PBS’s website states that it has a “perception test” for controversial and current-affairs programs: “When there exists a clear and direct connection between the interests or products or services of a proposed funder and the subject matter of the program, the proposed funding will be deemed unacceptable.”