Banned in Boston Globe: Coverage of Barr Foundation’s K-12 Interest Group Spending

As I wrote yesterday in  Latest on the Barr Foundation K-12 Interest Group Team, 2022, from 2017-2022 the Barr Foundation spent over $14,000,000 to support K-12 interest groups in Massachusetts. The twist is, Barr also helps fund the Globe’s K-12 interest group coverage. So, we have the unique situation in which Barr funds K-12 interest groups and the Globe’s coverage of them.

From 2019-2022 Barr donated over $1,400,000 to the Boston Globe for its The Great Divide education coverage. The Globe originally announced the funding relationship with Barr on June 20, 2019 as a two-year program with an initial grant of $600,000. My search through the “Boston Globe (current) 1980-present” database at the UMass Boston library since June 20, 2019, found (as of March 13, 2024) 501 entries by running the single term “Great Divide.” I did not read them all but the database reports duplicates of stories, so my estimate is about half are duplicates and even the most recent “Great Divide” entry is not concerned with schools at all but reviews of a novel about the Panama Canal. My estimate of 250 may be slightly high.

My search through the database for the terms “Barr Foundation” and “Great Divide” found forty-five returns in all from June 20, 2019-present, but about half are duplicate entries. By my count, the Globe has made the disclosure of the Barr Foundation’s financial support in Great Divide stories twenty-three times since 2019 with no entries disclosing that relationship for 2023 or 2024. If you click on the Great Divide banner on its stories you will be brought to the Great Divide landing page where you can find this: “(The Great Divide) is jointly funded by the Globe and the Barr Foundation, a Boston-based foundation that has prioritized student success in high school and beyond. The Globe maintains editorial control and independence over the project.”

In past years, the Globe occasionally disclosed in its stories reporting on education that Barr helps fund its K-12 coverage. One example comes from a May 26, 2021 report about a MassInc poll, After a difficult year, the majority of Mass. Parents want in-person school this fall by Bianca Vázquez Toness; Ms. Toness consistently included disclosure of the Barr-Globe relationship in her reporting. Meghan Irons also provided disclosure in her reporting.

My search from June 1, 2019, forward for the sole term “Massachusetts Parents United” returned thirty-three hits. A search for the terms “Massachusetts Parents United” and “Barr Foundation” returned no hits. The Globe has never disclosed when including MPU in it K-12 coverage that Barr partially funds both the Globe’s Great Divide coverage and Massachusetts Parents United.

A similar search for the term “Democrats for Education Reform” turned up thirty hits. A search for “Democrats for Education Reform” and “Barr Foundation” turned up one hit. That report concerned Governor Healey’s appointment of Patrick Tutwiler as Secretary of Education and noted he “joined the Boston-based Barr Foundation as a member of its education-focused team in August. (The Barr Foundation partially funds the Globe’s Great Divide team, reporting on educational inequities.)” The report sought comment on the appointment from the executive director of DFER but did not disclose that Barr also partially funds both the Globe’s Great Divide coverage and Education Reform Now, the twin of DFER.

A search for the term “Educators for Excellence” turned up thirteen hits. A search for “Educators for Excellence” and “Barr Foundation” turned up no hits.

You get the idea.

When the Barr Foundation originally donated to the Globe for its Great Divide coverage, both organizations issued statements saying that the Globe would have complete editorial control over content. The Globe reported: “Barr Foundation will have no input on the Globe’s coverage for this or any other reporting. An editorial firewall is written into the grant agreement between the Globe and the foundation.” Barr noted other donations it had made to media organizations and stated: “As with all of these other efforts, and following best practices for philanthropic support of media organizations, the Foundation will have no input into the content of the Globe’s coverage. This ‘editorial firewall’ is written into our grant agreement with the Globe and will be noted on the project’s dedicated website.” On January 25, 2023, then Globe editor Brian McGrory announced a new collaboration funded by Barr and focused on the racial wealth gap. The Globe story of that announcement stated “Despite The Barr Foundation’s funding, the Globe will have complete editorial control over the initiative. The team will operate similarly to The Great Divide, a team of Globe journalists focused on investigating race, class, and inequality in Boston-area schools, and that is also partially funded by Barr.”

The only concern other than mine I have seen raised about the conflict or appearance-of-conflict issue is from Don Seiffert of the Boston Business Journal in “Nonprofit grants for journalism are on the rise. So are potential conflicts of interest.” That was written (gated) on December 6, 2019, about the Globe-Barr connection and Barr’s funding of arts coverage at WBUR. I recommend you read the BBJ article. It is a nuanced report with comments from McGrory and Barr president Jim Canales as well as more skeptical scholars of media. BBJ reported: “Multiple experts contacted by the Business Journal agree that public perception of grants for journalism is particularly important, and the burden is on the organization receiving the grant.”

Perhaps you think the claims of independence and posting the source of funding on the landing page are sufficient aids to readers. I do not. It is valuable information for readers to have in each and every story to assess how well the Globe and Barr are keeping their promises of independence. In other words, it should be the readers judgment, not the reassurances of the interested parties that govern. And that is before we get to the practice of the Globe relying on Barr-funded interest groups for comments without notifying readers that Barr is funding the interests and the coverage.

Put the $14 million of Barr Foundation funding of K-12 interest groups together with Walton Family Foundation’s total of over $10 million and we are looking at $24 million in interest group funding since 2017 with no disclosure.

Why?

Politicians “are the only people I know who are expected to take large amounts of money from perfect strangers and have it have no effect on our behavior.”—Barney Frank.

“Imagine movie critics who either did not know, or did not care to know, that movies have producers, script writers, directors, financiers, or casting directors, and so based their reviews on the premise that it was the actors alone who created the storyline, dialogue and mise en scene, and that the most successful actors were those who best understood the audience. That is essentially how all politics is covered in 21st century America.” – Michael Podhoretz, “Hiding in Plain Site”

[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is in print.]

Cartoon: Wikimedia commons