According to a January 2026 report by Oxfam, “the world’s 12 richest billionaires have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity”. And yet global inequality, and the wealth being amassed by billionaires, continues to grow, with their collective wealth reaching record levels.

GNV has in the past discussed the numerous problems associated with extremely wealthy individuals. This includes the often dubious means by which they have obtained their wealth, the burden they impose on society because of the relatively low levels of tax they pay, and the massive environmental damage their wealth and lifestyles cause. The concentration of wealth, as well as billionaire’s access to political power, also gives them the ability to unduly influence decisions regarding the priorities within societies, which threatens democracy.

This is aside from the underlying moral issue of societies allowing extreme levels of wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a few individuals while billions of people languish in poverty. This is particularly problematic considering that this poverty is linked to millions of preventable deaths caused by the lack of access to food, water, and basic health care.

So how has the news media covered these billionaires and their actions? This article looks at the issues and the coverage, focusing on Japanese newspaper coverage.

Billionaire’s Row, Manhattan, New York (Photo: incognito7nyc / Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0])

Rising wealth and inequality

Oxfam is certainly not the only organization raising the alarm about the levels of wealth held by billionaires, and the shocking levels of inequality that accompany it.

Figures published in the World Inequality Report 2026, for example, demonstrate the massive concentration of wealth and its acceleration over time. The percentage of the world’s wealth held by the wealthiest individuals has been growing steadily since 1995. Between 1990 and 2025, for example, the rate of growth of wealth held by billionaires and centi-millionaires in the world has increased by 8% annually. Meanwhile, the wealth held by bottom half of the world’s population has grown by roughly 4%. The report notes that “a tiny minority commands unprecedented financial power, while billions remain excluded from even basic economic stability”.

This increasing concentration of wealth is not an accident. Having wealth puts people in a much better position to further expand that wealth. In addition, those sitting at the top of a large corporation have a great degree of power in determining how the wealth of that corporation is distributed. Billionaires heading large corporations are often able to take advantage of monopolies, allowing them to capture buyers of their products and raise the prices. They are also well placed to benefit from unfair trade and unfair labour. The massive enrichment of Jeff Bezos, for example, lies in stark contrast to the paltry wages given to the people he has employed at Amazon, a large portion of whom struggle to meet basic needs.

Wealthy people are also able to use a wide array of tools to avoid paying taxes. Profit shifting and income concealment by corporations and wealthy individuals is rampant. Through shell companies in tax havens and freeports, among other tools, they are able to (often anonymously) move, sell, and store funds and assets in such a way that they can continue to increase their wealth, paying little or no taxes. This cross-border activity enables them to escape domestic jurisdiction.

Warren Buffett and then US President Barack Obama, 2010 (Photo: Pete Souza / Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Billionaires also benefit from domestic laws and tax policies designed in their favour. Warren Buffett, for example, once acknowledged that his secretary pays a higher rate of tax than he does. US Internal Revenue Service data obtained by ProPublica in 2021 revealed that billionaires including Buffett Bezos, Elon Musk and George Soros were paying almost no income tax.

Wealth also connects billionaires to political power, which helps set rules in their favour, and gives them access to a host of other advantages. Their corporations are able to secure taxpayer welfare and protection that is out of the reach of ordinary individuals or small- medium-scale businesses. These include large-scale corporate subsidies, bail outs, tax breaks, infrastructure provision, and sweeping patent protections.

Beyond their own borders, governments also promote the sales of the products of these large corporations. They also work to prevent the introduction of international regulation aimed at stemming profit shifting and taxation avoidance.

Coverage of wealth and inequality

GNV has already explored the failure of the Japanese media to raise the alarm regarding the sharp rise in global inequality seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. It barely even mentioned the rapidly growing fortunes held by billionaires, including the many new billionaires born from the pharmaceutical industry. Nor did it report on the fact that almost 100 million people had fallen into extreme poverty in 2020 alone.

Japanese newspapers such as the Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun report each year on the annual rankings announced by Forbes about which billionaires have the most money. The reporting style is not unlike sports coverage letting their readers know who is ‘winning’. But these newspapers do not cover the annual reports by Oxfam about world inequality. In one rare exception, the Asahi Shimbun did belatedly mention the Oxfam report of 2026 in an article about the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, and briefly noted the problem of global inequality. But it only published figures regarding the rise in the wealth of the billionaires, leaving out the critical and shocking data regarding the gap between rich and the poor.

Inequality, Sao Paolo, Brazil (Photo: Caio Pederneiras / Shutterstock.com)

Nor does the media tend to report on the mechanisms behind the rising inequality. The Japanese media did publish relatively extensive coverage of the Panama Papers in 2016, and, to a lesser extent, the Pandora papers. This reporting, however, focused mostly on the possibility of individual wrongdoing, rather than the systemic problem of international tax avoidance and evasion. In the last five years, Japanese newspapers have mentioned the phrase “tax haven” only a few times per year, and almost never attempt to delve into the issue itself. No major newspapers took the opportunity of the tenth anniversary of the Panama Papers reporting in 2026 to revisit the issue. In the first five months of 2026, the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun have each printed the phrase “tax haven” only once and in passing.

Coverage of billionaires is not always positive. The media will also report on potential criminal activity, or other potential wrongdoing, as seen in some of the reporting of billionaires that appeared in the Epstein Files. But coverage of billionaires on the whole tends to be deferential and neutral, if not positive. As we will see below, the news media are more likely to focus on charity work funded by billionaires, than on the negative impacts caused by the extreme levels of wealth they amass.

The billionaires’ pledge

In 2010, Bill Gates and his then wife, Melinda French, together with Buffett pledged to give to charity the majority of their wealth in their lifetime or upon their death. Other billionaires came on board, with a total of 57 US billionaires initially making what is know as the ‘Giving Pledge’. As of 2025, 256 people or families had signed. Some went further than promising to give away more than half of their wealth. Buffett, for example, pledged to give away 99% of his wealth.

Whether such pledges are kept or not, the public pronouncement of the pledge itself, and the highly visible philanthropic activities that follow, naturally serve as good publicity for the pledgers. This is particularly useful for billionaires who become the object of scrutiny over questionable business practices, or simply because of the problems associated with such highly concentrated wealth. But have these billionaires followed through on their pledges?

“Move fast and break things”, Mark Zuckerberg, 2014 (Photo: Mike Deerkoski / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 2.0])

In 2025, the Institute for Policy Studies published a report tracking the philanthropic progress made by US billionaires 15 years after the pledge was made. It found that of the 57 pledgers, 22 had since died, with only 8 of these people fulfilling the pledge. Only one set of living pledgers (Laura and John Arnold) has so far given away more than half their wealth. In 2025, Buffett, at age 95, had given away 32% of his wealth, and acknowledged that his original plans to give away 99% of his wealth were not “feasible”.

Contrary to the idea that charitable giving would reduce their income, the wealth of the majority of the billionaires who made this pledge has continued to grow since 2010. Gates, for example, has doubled his wealth in the past 15 years, Buffett’s has tripled, and the wealth of Larry Ellison has increased almost 5 times. Far outpacing these billionaires, however, are Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, who have increased their wealth by 43 times.

Furthermore, the report also points out that the vast majority of donations by these pledgers have been made not directly to charity organizations, but instead to their own private foundations (which are almost invariably named after themselves), and to donor-advised funds (DAFs), and even limited liability corporations (LLCs). Such measures allow for greater private control over the money, increase the level of secrecy regarding how the money is used, and may also blur the line between charitable giving and for-profit activities. Importantly, donations are also tax deductible, reducing the taxes that these billionaires are required to pay.

The philanthropy by Gates and his foundation has in fact been quite profitable for him. Much of his charitable work has been focused on the development and promotion of the sale of vaccines. At the same time, both Gates and his foundation have invested heavily in companies developing vaccines and other related innovations, bringing high returns.

Bill Gates (Photo: World Economic Forum / Flickr [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0])

The rise in profits reaped by pharmaceutical companies was seen most clearly at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gates actively opposed removing patent protections that protected the monopolies held by such pharmaceutical corporations. This prevented a large increase in the production of low-cost vaccines that could potentially have saved large numbers of lives.

The Institute for Policy Studies’ report concludes that the Giving Pledge is “unfulfilled, unfulfillable, and not our ticket to a fairer, better future”.

Coverage of the pledge

So how have the Japanese media covered this pledge? The Asahi Shimbun has discussed the Giving Gledge on multiple occasions, beginning with the initial pledge made in 2010 (※1). Articles focusing on Gates have tended to uncritically discuss the pledge, and unquestioningly quote him on his charitable giving (※2). Only one 2019 article published in the paper’s digital magazine, Globe, contained some criticism of the pledge, with some content noting the issues of tax deductions and the threat to democratic control over social welfare issues.

In 2025, the Asahi Shimbun had the opportunity to interview Gates. In the interview, Gates mentioned his own charitable work and the Giving Pledge. A few months later, the newspaper reported on another pledge by Gates – that his foundation would give away all of its assets by 2045. In these articles, the Asahi Shimbun simply reported Gates’ own words regarding his charitable work, without examining or mentioning the various problems associated with this philanthropy. Nor did it question or mention the fact that his wealth was continuing to rise, seemingly in contradiction to his 2010 pledge to give his money away. It is worth noting that an Asahi Shimbun website withPlanet is funded by the Gates Foundation.

The Mainichi Shimbun (※3), and Nihon Keizai Shimbun also reported on the Giving Pledge in a similar manner, although to a lesser extent than the Asahi Shimbun. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Buffett’s pledge to give away 99% of his wealth (※4). Ten years later, when Buffett had become three-times richer, the same newspaper reported extensively on his stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. But it did not revisit what had become of Buffett’s pledge or mention his own admission that he would not be fulfilling it.

Private jet, Vnukovo, Russia (Photo: Alex Snow / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 4.0])

No major Japanese newspaper has reported on, or even mentioned, the 2025 report by the Institute for Policy Studies evaluating 15 years of charitable giving by the these billionaires. The pattern that emerges is of a media that dutifully report on the grandiose pledges of the world’s richest people each time they make them, but then fail to critically examine these pledges, or follow up on whether or not they are being fulfilled.

Media alignment with billionaires?

The media’s coverage of billionaires can be seen as a logical extension of the media’s broader relationship with wealth and power. This is a relationship in which the media appears sympathetic to wealth and those who possess it. Past GNV analyses have found, for example, that the Japanese media tend to display more interest in countries whose population is relatively wealthy. Another analysis found that the media tend to avoid reporting on scandals abroad that are associated with large Japanese corporations.

The ‘propaganda model’, laid out by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, helps us understand the mechanisms by which the media align themselves with the political and economic elite, using the US media as a case study. A past GNV article has discussed how the same model can apply to the Japanese media as well.

The wealth and power of billionaires continue to grow, as does the damage this concentration of wealth causes to our societies and our planet. Perhaps it is time for the media to recall the old observation about its role: “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.

※1　‘Half of assets to be donated — 40 U.S. billionaires agree; if realized, total would be ¥50 trillion — Buffett, Gates, others’ Asahi Shimbun, 5 Aug 2010.

※2　‘Protecting children’s lives is a fundamental value — Bill Gates speaks on philanthropy.’ Asahi Shimbun, 5 Dec 2015.

※3　‘Opinion: Philanthropy and a “new public” — Michio Ushioda.’ Mainichi Shimbun, 11 Aug 2010.

※4　‘ “The god of investing” — succession issues at 84: Buffett’s 50 years at the forefront of the U.S. economy.’ Yomiuri Shimbun, 6 May 2015.

Writer: Virgil Hawkins