Giving Compass' Take:

• Charles Keidan questions philanthropy's unbalanced investments in the sector's media - favoring PR over unbiased reporting.

• How can funders work together to support impartial media coverage of the sector? Who is already covering the sector well? 

• Learn about the state of global media philanthropy. 

Late last year, Alliance magazine devoted a whole issue to the growing involvement of philanthropy and the media. Almost all contributors agreed that more funding of media—from investigative journalism to new technologies to combating disinformation—was a welcome development given the pressures on business models caused by technological change, digital disruption, and declining advertising revenues.

Most observers were confident that this funding would not undermine editorial independence and some—particularly those tasked with bringing in the philanthropic dollars—protested (perhaps a bit too much?) that all this could be achieved without diluting existing safeguards.

But surprisingly, one question was barely addressed in the issue: How should the media cover philanthropy itself? Philanthropy is not just a source of funding but a significant, if mercurial, social phenomenon through which people convert their deep-seated and often inarticulate desires into some idea or other about the public good. As a global philanthropy publication, our mission is to do justice to developments, issues, and trends—essentially to provide coverage of philanthropy in its institutional form.

Read the full article about philanthropy’s investment media by Charles Keidan at Media Impact Funders.