The Changing Face of Philanthropy: Sentiment, Criticism, and Organizational Context in Two Centuries of Newspaper Coverage (1840–2024)

This study traces media portrayals of philanthropy across two centuries of American newspapers ( N = 59,332) using validated large language model coding of sentiment, criticism, organizational context, and critique types. Contrary to narratives of growing criticism, modern coverage is more positive and less critical than historical coverage, with explicit criticism falling from over 20% to under 6% of texts. Within-between decomposition shows that historical trends reflect genuine within-outlet shifts, while the modern corpus shows no significant within-outlet trends. Corporate philanthropy now receives the most favorable coverage, while nonprofit-linked sentiment has not improved, consistent with signaling theory. Institution-focused coverage attracts 1.5× to 2× more criticism than coverage of individual philanthropists (historical: 24.9% vs. 17.1%; modern: 7.4% vs. 3.4%). An inductively derived 11-topic critique taxonomy reveals hypocrisy, undemocratic philanthropy, and paternalism as the most prevalent critiques, with a historical shift from concerns about paternalism and impersonal charity toward democratic accountability and transparency.