For some additional context, on Puck, Teddy describes himself as “covering power, influence, and ego in Silicon Valley”, which is maybe a bit less EA-centric than this post makes it sound. Here is a recent interview with Teddy about covering the “billionare beat”. And a quote from that interview about attempting to give people neutral ground facts about the activities of the rich:
Whether you want to be outraged by billionaires’ philanthropy, political spending or tax avoidance, or whether you think that billionaires are God’s gift to the green earth, you need the facts. And I think that too often, we’re deprived of them. So I don’t really approach the beat as a critic or defender of the system. I just think that there’s an alarming lack of fact-based reporting about it, and that’s a damn shame.
Here is a quote about how he covers billionaire philanthropy:
Much of the tech billionaire set is very thin-skinned about some of the questions that I ask. I don’t say that necessarily as a criticism, but I think that lots of them think that the billionaire beat itself puts them inherently on the defensive.
Take the topic of philanthropy, which is something I write about a lot. I think a lot of wealthy people are not used to serious philanthropy journalism, as a concept. So the very idea that someone could be asking questions like, “How is your charitable enterprise structured?” Or, “How much money did you give away to this cause?” Or, “What is your net worth, and how is that reflected or not reflected in the amount of money you give away?”
They see those questions as a fundamental threat, not because they believe that they’re unfair questions, but because the entire premise of the question is something that’s foreign to them. They think about philanthropy as almost above criticism, above journalism. Like, “Yeah you can critique my business record, but don’t critique what I’m doing for the kids.”
I think that misses the forest for the trees to some extent, when there’s obviously a raging debate in this country about inequality and about whether the wealthy should be as wealthy as they are. I see philanthropy journalism as essential to answering those questions. They might disagree, but I don’t work for them.
Here are two (unpaywalled) articles of Teddy’s from the past year about big EA donors:
An Interview With FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried; Teddy asks about the strange maximalism of earning-to-give compared to conventional ESG corporate social-responsibility initiatives, and brings up that “one of the big criticisms of effective altruism is that it doesn’t consider race enough when it comes to what to fund”.
FWIW, I found the interview with SBF to be quite fair, and imho it presented Sam in a neutral-to-positive light (though perhaps a bit quirky). Teddy’s more recent reporting/tweets about Sam also strike me as both fair and neutral to positive.
Thanks, Jackson! I think the interview with me you shared helps — I am indeed EA-sympathetic, but yes, I see my primary “ideology” as pro-transparency above all else.
For some additional context, on Puck, Teddy describes himself as “covering power, influence, and ego in Silicon Valley”, which is maybe a bit less EA-centric than this post makes it sound. Here is a recent interview with Teddy about covering the “billionare beat”. And a quote from that interview about attempting to give people neutral ground facts about the activities of the rich:
Here is a quote about how he covers billionaire philanthropy:
Here are two (unpaywalled) articles of Teddy’s from the past year about big EA donors:
An Interview With FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried; Teddy asks about the strange maximalism of earning-to-give compared to conventional ESG corporate social-responsibility initiatives, and brings up that “one of the big criticisms of effective altruism is that it doesn’t consider race enough when it comes to what to fund”.
Coverage of Vitalik Buterin’s donations to Indian covid relief efforts last year, focusing mostly on the unusual mode of payment (“Shiba” memecoins) and the fact that they dropped 35% in value by the time they reached the charities, rather than talking about which charities Vitalik was giving to.
FWIW, I found the interview with SBF to be quite fair, and imho it presented Sam in a neutral-to-positive light (though perhaps a bit quirky). Teddy’s more recent reporting/tweets about Sam also strike me as both fair and neutral to positive.
Thanks, Jackson! I think the interview with me you shared helps — I am indeed EA-sympathetic, but yes, I see my primary “ideology” as pro-transparency above all else.