When Yasha Levine wrote his extraordinary article about the parent trigger in Adelanto, he was struck by the failure of the media to do any investigative reporting. It seemed that everyone was cheering for the charter promoters.
He wrote this as a follow-up.
Its title: “Et Tu, NPR?”
His thesis: the Billionaires Boys Club has bought up the mainstream media, even NPR and Education Week.
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“Last week, I wrote about the nation’s first successful “parent trigger” privatization of a public school, in a isolated town on the edge of the Mojave Desert. In that piece, I mentioned how parents and teachers had become disillusioned by the biased reporting of parent trigger in the media.
“No matter what article I read, it seemed to me that the common perspective that was shared was pro-Parent Revolution,” said La Nita M. Dominique, the local Adelanto president of the state teachers union, referring to the outside pro-charter front group that descended on their community and used harassment, deception and thinly veiled threats of deportation to push parents into signing a petition that handed over their kids’ school to a private contractor.
Lori Yuan, a mother of two kids Desert Trails and a member of Adelanto’s planning commission, described feeling that she was caught in some kind of grand conspiracy that was bigger and more powerful than anything she could imagine.
“I would do these interviews with these people and reporters and journalists and bloggers. Anyone that would call I would talk to because I need to get this information out because people need to know this. And then I’d get the article and I’d be like this has nothing to fucking do with what I said. I got to the point when I started thinking, do they — and by they, I mean Parent Revolution — do they own everything? [D]o they own the newspapers?”
It’s easy to paint this as the paranoia of parents who feel like the media doesn’t understand their concern about parent trigger. That was my first impulse too. And then I started reading some of the coverage.
It didn’t matter if it was Fox News, NPR, the Washington Post, LA Weekly or the local right-wing newspaper: coverage of parent trigger issues would invariably have the same pro-privatization bias, even down to their use of the same stock phrases about “parent empowerment” and the need give parents the ability to “reform” a system that protects lazy public school teachers and their sleazy their union cronies.
All very strange — until you start connecting the dots between the financial backers of pro-parent trigger groups like Parent Revolution and the media industry.
…………….
Some media organizations would barely survive without their educational arms. The parent company of The Washington Post, for example (which also owns Slate.com, Foreign Policy magazine and other media properties) relied on its for-profit education subsidiary, Kaplan Inc, for 62% of its revenue in 2012.
In these cynical times you might not be surprised to learn that News Corp, The Washington Post Company and Pearson are hugely conflicted in their education coverage.
But then there’s NPR.
What’s not just surprising, but actually shocking, is how far pro-school privatization interests have been able to infiltrate and corrupt the reporting at supposedly left-leaning NPR, and its affiliate public radio stations.
Consider a new NPR local news project called State Impact, which NPR describes as a “local-national collaboration between NPR and station groups in eight states that reports on state government actions and their impact on citizens and communities.”
In January, State Impact published an interview with Greg Harris, the Ohio director of Michele Rhee’s pro-charter school astroturf group StudentsFirst to promote a “report card” that the group released rating Ohio’s state education policies.
State Impact reporter Ida Lieszkovszky had nothing but praise for StudentsFirst, describing it as “a group looking to improve education through increased accountability for teachers and principals, more financial transparency in schools, and enhanced power for parents, is grading states on their education initiatives.”
StudentsFirst gave Ohio a C-, largely because the state did not “evaluate”—aka fire—teachers based on “performance” and limited the number of total charter schools that could be opened. In fact, StudentsFirst gave most states Ds or lower for not firing unionized teachers, for not being nearly pro-charter enough and for not scrapping their “outdated pension systems.” (California got an F, while NSFWCORP’s home state of Nevada got a straight D.)
Lieszkovszky took StudentFirst’s discredited pro-charter blather at face value, and was even nice enough to embed the full report card at the bottom of the article. She also fed the StudentsFirst rep anti-union questions during the interview…stuff like this:
Q: Some of the measures that you mentioned, like tying teacher pay to teacher performance, are things that the teachers’ unions in the state really don’t like. How much of this has to do with unionization in these states?
The interview also included a link to a NPR State Impact profile page for Michele Rhee that reads like it was crafted by Rhee’s publicist, describing her as a crusading reformer trying to “build a national movement to defend the interests of children in public education.” The profile makes no mention of the controversy surrounding Michele Rhee’s reform tactics, which have been discredited in a series of test-score cheating scandals.
NPR might describe State Impact’s coverage of StudentsFirst as “news reporting” but at times it feel closer to outright shilling.
So, why would public radio be so willing to gush about groups like StudentsFirst and their pro-privatization agenda?
………………….
Here are just a few examples:
In December 2012, NPR’s Morning Edition ran a six-minute segment titled, “In California, Parents Trigger Change At Failing School” about Parent Revolution and its parent trigger campaign in Adelanto.
The program described Parent Revolution in generally positive terms and gave a lot of air time to Ben Austin, the Beverly Hills political operative who runs the group and helped push the parent trigger law through California’s legislature in 2010. It also aired the unsubstantiated rumors spread by Parent Revolution that the nefarious teachers’ union threatened undocumented immigrants were with deportation if they signed Parent Revolution’s trigger petition. (As I revealed in my “Pulling the Trigger” piece, the exact opposite was true: Parent Revolution was offering to help fix the immigration problems of undocumented parents in return for their support of the parent trigger campaign.)
In the end, NPR conceded that Parent Revolution’s campaign was “incredibly disruptive” to the community, but concluded that it was a step in the right positive direction:
“Still, giving parents the right to take over a failing school is a powerful idea. With the financial backing of influential groups like the Gates, Broad and Walton Foundations, the parent trigger is expected to spread beyond Adelanto.”
And, while the program identified the Gates and Walton foundations as funding Parent Revolution and the parent trigger movement (the two foundations gave a combined $7.8 million to Parent Revolution from 2009 to 2012), NPR didn’t see fit to tell listeners that Walton and Gates were also major funders of their own education coverage.
But this wasn’t NPR’s first mention of Parent Revolution and Adelanto. Two months earlier, in September 2012, it had broadcast another parent trigger conflict-of-interest fluff job: a segment on Talk of the Nation called “Parent-Trigger Laws: A Bold Plan To Save Schools.”
For nearly 15 minutes, host Neal Conan promoted “Don’t Back Down,” an “issues” movie in which indie superstar Maggie Gyllenhaal uses the parent trigger law to fight back lazy school teachers and their corrupt union bosses. Conan then used the film (which was produced by right-wing billionaire and school privatization supporter Phillip Anschutz) to describe a real life parent trigger campaign that was being waged by Parent Revolution in the desert town of Adelanto.
Here’s Conan introducing the segment:
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis star as a fed-up parent-teacher combo who mobilized to take on the bureaucrats and the union. . . . The story is fiction, but the theme and controversy the film taps into are very real. Several states have passed what are known as parent-trigger laws, which give parents a pass to make changes in failing school: a new curriculum, longer school days, different personnel. They can even take over, entirely, and turn it into a charter school.”
Conan’s sole guest was Sean Cavanagh, an assistant editor at the influential Education Week magazine.
Cavanagh praised parent trigger “reform” law, and described Adelanto’s parent trigger campaign as having wide parent support: “I can’t think of many issues where it’s easy to get, you know, 51 percent of parents at a school behind – behind any effort.”
And this is where NPR’s coverage got real sleazy.
See, not only was NPR’s Conan doing a fluff piece on a corporate front group bankrolled by two of the radio network’s major funders, without disclosing this conflict-of-interest to readers. But Cavanagh, the sole expert invited onto the program to talk about these issues, was also being paid out of the same bucket, and he wasn’t saying anything about it either.
In 2011, the Gates Foundation gave Education Week a $2 million grant to support coverage “focusing on the education industry and innovation in K-12 education.” The foundation gave the Education Week an additional $5.2 million from 2005 to 2009 to create “special reports on education”
Among other duties, Cavanagh runs Education Week’s “Charters & Choice” blog. A few days ago, that blog boosted a study published by Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice that supposedly shows how school vouchers and other school privatization schemes “can help boost the academic performance of students making use of those programs.” As it turns out, Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, which was founded by Milton Friedman and his wife Rose in the mid-90s, is also funded by the Waltons. Their foundation gave the outfit a combined $1.02 million from 2011 to 2012.
So not surprisingly, talking to Conen on NPR, Cavanagh had nothing but kind words to say about Parent Revolution:
…………
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Shades of Karen Silkwood
Saved. If you need it contact me at: dswacker@centurytel.net
Not shopping at Walmart. I guess NPR doesn’t need my pledge after all.
Didn’t pledge this time around. Even Fresh Air or This American Life can keep me listening.
Since the lead up to the illegal invasion of Iraq I’ve called NPR National Pentagon Radio for their coverage. Now they’re bought and are National Propaganda Radio.
I only listen on Saturdays!
Sure it was jerked around. Who supplies money to them. Tavis Smiley was bought and sold on his last special on truancy promoting Deasy. When I told Tavis at his premier or this show in L.A. that Deasy had a phony PHD and his eyes got as big as pie tins and I told him where to find the stories I thought that was it. No. Within a week he published an article praising Deasy after he had more than enough time to look and see. Someone said “Want more money? Don’t do that. Just write the article we tell you to.” Parent Revolutions director of signatures is a former Green Beret and they are highly trained in intimidation and psychological warfare. There is nothing wrong with the “Parent Trigger” in principal and what most people will not get through their thick heads is that it can be used or students, parents, teachers and community to be used for them to run the schools and to leave the corporate privatizers in the dust. Parent Revolution is not ethical. Read the laws before you say one word. Are you all really educators? If so then know what you are talking about. I have not heard one yet who does on this subject as far as what the law says not what they have done with it so far. We are planning some “Parent Triggers” not run by the corporate privatizers. In fact I have put the word to Ben Austin to stay away from one school I have spent two years to save. Read the law and turn it on their heads for good not bad purposes. We can do that in California. After reading the Florida law it should be turned down. How many of you have read either the California law and rules and regulations and the proposed 15 page Florida law before you commented? Those people in Adalanto got a dirty deal as did the people at 24th Street. I have the original charter school MOU which is in effect with the latest approval which is legally only an addendum to the original MOU since LAUSD has not approved a replacement and here is what it says. In one sentence it says “We love you parents.” In the next sentence it says “Parents will not be on the board of directors.” Now what do you think of this “Parent Empowerment?” We love you just give us the power and then we are done with you, Thanks for giving up your rights and power to us.
And what about Mellow? Releases the memo, and then????
That so many folks have not an inclining that the theft of our American public education systems is only a nanosecond away…and that these oligarchs own us all, is shocking.
George, when are you going to run for office? We need your insight and your guts.
addendum…let’s start wording a Change.org petition drive to see that Rhee is indicted. Must include the secret memo and her verbal assaults in public venues. And also Murdoch quotes, a list of which vultures own which of the media.
I love NPR in respect to all its coverage about almost any issue other than education in America. it saddens me to know that in this respect they are no different from the mainstream news outlets in that their funding influences their false narrative about privatization.
I wouldn’t respect or trust their reporting on any issue. They’re compromised, and I doubt it’s only in the area of education.
I second this opinion. They are compromised and I have lost all interest in hearing anything from them now. I heard that awful parent trigger piece on my way to work and that was it. It was so painfully clear that the message is the medium and the medium is now the bought and signed for message.
Blogs like this and others have become my obsession now that seemingly ever source of news is in the pocket of a ed deform group.
In light of the recent tragedies around hand guns/weapons and the blatant disregard for elected officials to take a stand against a powerful lobby group on life or death issues, it doesn’t surprise me at all that education reform is sold on the cheap.
Trying to convince my own children that this US that they are in now is not the real US way of doing things makes me nostalgic for the callous disregard that called for the national govt to declare ketchup a vegetable for school lunches.
The powerful conservative groups don’t go after the ‘liberal press’ any more- they infiltrate it and destroy it from within. Brilliant. Repellent but brilliant.
some economic issues i notice bias against labor as well..but I’m always looking out for it so i’m never 100% trusting….but nonetheless there still eons better than the main stream media..plus they do good investigative reporting that no one else bothers to do anymore.
but don’t get me wrong, I’m not just one of those naive people who trusts everything I hear on NPR.
They’ve been compromised for over a decade now!
I cannot contain my revulsion for these walking vultures. At least the winged vultures serve a useful purpose in the ecosystem. These vulture capitalists do not realize they are making the source of their prosperity extinct. I am not surprised that the corporations own just about everything. Cue up Tennessee Ernie Ford and 16 tons….I will not be supporting NPR anytime soon.
If you don’t know the 16 ton reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PITYbSZZfk
I had a mini epiphany about the word “vulture” the other day, and I’ve decided we are not only insulting vultures by using the word, but deluding ourselves. Vultures serve a very useful function by eating the carcasses of dead animals and, in some cases, killing old, weak and diseased animals that would die soon anyway. That’s not what edubullies do.
Predators attack vulnerable, but not necessarily weak prey – juveniles and animals that happen to find themselves isolated, for instance. Without the predator, that animal would continue to survive, grow and thrive. But predators want the healthiest, meatiest prey they are capable of catching. So “predatory” would be better than “vulture”.
But even “predatory” is off a bit because predators (animals) don’t kill more than they need to eat – they don’t stack up prey as trophies or to amass their own wealth at the expense of everyone else.
The best word I can come up with is plain old “sociopathic”, but I’m open to suggestions.
Actually vultures eat the carrion, the road kill…which the oligarchs are trying to make all the rest of us.
We have many vultures (both black and turkey) here year round in the beautiful Missouri River hill country of southern Warren County, MO. They are beautiful soaring birds who are the “sanitation workers” of nature. I don’t think there is a day that goes by that I don’t see at least a couple and many times I’ve been within a couple of feet of them. And, Dienne, you are correct that it really is an insult to the birds themselves to call the edubastards “vultures”.
Dienne,
Way to go all Biologist, my friend!
Well played.
😉
Lets go with sociopath.
Great post!
Thank you to Yasha Levine and NSFWCORP for some real reporting! My favorite line in the piece? “Lieszkovszky took StudentFirst’s discredited pro-charter blather at face value…” (Blather is such a great word.)
In 2007-2008 I noticed that Charlie Rose was having had a series of conversations about the “crisis” in our public schools that featured the usual suspects: Duncan, Rhee, Kopp. Then I noticed fine print in the credits and learned that the series was underwritten by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. N-A-T-U-R-A-L-L-Y.
I don’t care how interesting Charlie Rose’s guests might be, I haven’t watched a second of his show since. There is no need to waste my time on being fed propaganda that Eli Broad or anyone else has purchased.
The experience made me permanently wary of what other lies Charlie Rose and PBS and NPR are selling in exchange for someone’s money. Thanks to Levine, now I know a bit more.
How about writing Charlie Rose, and other at PBS to let them know why you no longer watch, or donate?
Charlie Rose sold out a long time ago, as in 3 to 4 years ago. Do NOT bother watching him because his show is biased and imbalanced.
I was very happy to be invited to Charlie Rose show last spring. He has had Rhee, Kopp, and Klein on many many times.
Has he had you and others in our camp on his show the same number of times as he had you?
Okay, you wanted the exposure (very legitimately so!), and I think his forum is excellent for that.
But I don’t see evidence that media is posing balanced coverage of both “camps”, Diane. Your strategy there was very appropriate. . .. just to show up on his cameras is valuable, I must admit.
I, for one, am mostly done with NPR. Leonard Lopaid is a nice segment. . . Jonathen Schwartz on the weekend is wonderful. The rest is corporate media all the way.
He just had our favorite blowhards on. He had Friedman, Klein, and others promoting technology and online learning. They know all so you should listen.
If you want to know more about the Broad Foundation (which has deliberately tried to stay under peoples radar for ten years), read the article “Who is Eli Broad and why is he trying to destroy public education?” at:
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
I disagree…I have heard Diane Ravitch and others speak to both sides of this issue. Specifically, the White Hat organization has been addressed – and I even heard them calling out the Gates foundation where the Gates’ themselves admitted that they had been going in the wrong direction. Simple Google searches will show that NPR has covered the education crisis from all sides, a particularly welcome endeavor that is certainly a rare beast this day and age, and one of the reasons I support NPR. I don’t tune in so they can lean heavily in one direction, but for the whole story from all viewpoints. There is plenty of dirt – take a look for yourself: http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/tag/charter-schools/
I worked in a private school in Akron, where the founder of White Hat Management attended as a student. He would come visit once in a while, and all the “suits” in the building would walk on eggshells around him. I couldn’t care less about him or his 10-gallon cowboy hat he would wear around, and invited him into my classroom to take some notes when he interrupted my class one morning. Anyway, I can’t remember the details, but I remember him asking one of my colleagues who worked in admissions if she could copy/paste some info that he could use for his charter schools. It struck me as unethical then, and it still does now. The man is two-bit fraud, and so is his charter school company. He had George Bush the first at his home in the 80s,by the way. Hmmmm…..
The con of cons. He’s not Gates. Brennan funnels money into the Republican Party. Did Gates fund Obama? Maybe that is why NPR gives better press to Gates’ causes. Locally they played a ton of propaganda pieces on charters. The charters have done NOTHING to improve education in my state. All a con.
Getting Gates to concede that he has been “going in the wrong direction,” is evidence of nothing. An independent news station would question why Gates thinks that being wealthy gives him the right to impose his own policies on our country. Nobody elected him to anything. If he really cared about education, he would use his own money to open schools.
These oligarchs do not care about education or believe in democracy. They want to dismantle democratic institutions and use technology to track and control the population.
This is what happens when money becomes the most important factor. Money is not the root of all evil, but love of money is.
If one doesn’t have tons of money then one must surely be stupid, eh!
NPR is funded in part by the Gates Foundation.
There is no shock here, no surprises.
I stopped pledging and now cherry pck the segments I lke to listen to and enjoy the free ride. I HATE their business coverage, their veiw of labor, and their educational coverage, and they report fart oo much on technology. All of their reporting on these topics is biased and imbalanced.
I heard a report one day that tied student performance improvements to teachers being given their merit pay at the beginning. Supposedly the teachers worked harder to keep the money. Can you believe that crap. NPR never challenged the person reporting the study. They are worthless.
Well, Duh …
There is almost no one in the mainstream media that isn’t compromised. Which is why all this stuff is sailing through — most people never hear the counter-narrative. I had a conversation with my teacher cousins about education deform and they wouldn’t hear a word of it; charter schools were, in their minds, something to help poor kids who had terrible schools.
Now they’re facing charters in the suburban districts where they teach, and need to get up to speed in a hurry, but so far…haven’t. They still think it won’t affect them.
I do not consider them a trustworthy news source. Used to listen all the time.
I was listening to NPR, here in Chicago, today and I noticed that they didn’t seem all that fired up that the City was already taking inventory of schools that they haven’t even voted to close yet. They said they were taking inventory to hand the school over to a private not-for-profit next year = charter school. I wasn’t surprised, though, most of their money for comes from the B&M Gates Foundation. Soon Chicago will have no outlet for unbiased news as the Koch brothers are thinking about buying the Tribune.
I feel like the few have a game of ‘Risk’ set up somewhere and they are playing to see who can take over the most cities and wreak the most havoc. The trouble is they are playing with real people’s lives and they are wreaking a lot of real havoc.
“Game of Risk”..
love it!
I, too, ditched NPR several years ago. The propaganda filled run up to the war was part of it, but of course the “our failing schools” meme, repeated over and over cinched it.
Sad, because I used to love them.
Gave every year.
(OK, I still listen to a couple of local music programs Second Cup concert is excellent as is Jazz classics).
Looking for better news source..
Try Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/
Independent news source.
Amy Goodman rocks.
NPR’s All Things Considered was soft-peddling stories about Archer Daniels Midland in the mid-90’s when ADM was the subject of a congressional investigation for price-fixing. Who was their sponsor? ADM: Supermarket to the World
NPR did another horrible one-sided piece on Social Security disability programs which was chock full of misinformation.
Here’s the piece:
http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
Here’s some good sources for rebuttals
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/4/prweb10652780.htm
http://blog.thearc.org/tag/npr/
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/unfit-to-report/
http://www.ourfamilysecurity.com/might-as-well-blame-the-soup-kitchen/
i couldn’t believe it. They acted as though a gov’t judge wasn’t enough to decide whether or not someone qualified for disability. It was just dumb.
Even Progressive wunderkind Rachel Maddow has supposedly remained mum on discussing anything related to ‘Ed-Reform’ due to her alleged personal ties to Success Academy CEO Eva Mosowitz as well as other elements of the pro-charter movement. The fix is in folks..
MSNBC has been one of the biggest charter propaganda machines ever. What a JOKE
If it’s possible to connect the dots between these foundations giving and efforts to privatize public education for the profit of those running the foundation and their friends, shouldn’t that be a basis to challenge their non-profit status in court?
While a victory there wouldn’t hurt them financially much, it would be tougher to look altruistic if they had to be referred to in the press as the Gates, Walton, or Broad family lobbying and PR firms.
I stopped listening to NPR a little over a decade ago when I began to hear nothing but hyperbolic and melodramatic “news” pieces on the Taliban and the subsequent drum beats to the Iraq War by folks like Juan Williams. As someone commented here, NPR sold out a long time ago. In any case, the entire corporate-state education reform agenda is one big money-making scheme. There are ways to turn this beast on its head. The comment by George Buzzetti in this thread is worth checking out. But the fact of the matter is if we as parents, citizens, and taxpayers don’t connect the dots/are uninformed of the situation, we’re going to be left in the dust by the privateers, yet again: http://www.scribd.com/doc/106337306/THE-CHICAGO-PUBLIC-SCHOOLS-ALLERGIC-TO-ACTIVISM
NPR does it again by claiming a “sudden” anti common core standards opposition and frames it as led by fringe groups…ending the article with Glen Beck. Concerns over the Common Core 3-fer did not just appear suddenly, the media willfully igores! This article trivializes and distorts to form a narrative. Easy to spot.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2013/04/25/central-florida-mom-explains-her-opposition-to-common-core/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Susan Ohanian, Stephen Krashen, and I have nothing in common with Glen Beck
tea party and extreme right-wing people like Beck are only opposed to common core because they falsely view it as dangerous leftist idelogy being imposed on our schools which it really isn’t. even though we oppose common core, we oppose it for true and intellectually sound reasons..but of course the supporters of common core like NPR will try to make it out like its only fringe right-wing people like Beck who hate it. quite sad
I don’t know about Beck, but the rank and file of the Republican Party oppose Common Core for the same reasons as everyone else and passed a resolution condemning it:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B558bfJRCLuuOXdsVXJmZy1IRms/edit?usp=sharing&pli=1
notice their advocation of “free market approach to education” which I don’t think anyone on this blog agrees with…proliferation of charter schools and school choice, and vouchers and the like. i sincerely believe the only reason republicans don’t like common core is because they see it as federal overreach….anything else they may say that we agree with is a facade…they hate federal government intervening in anything no matter what it is…that’s there ideology…its not based on actually looking at the common core and recognizing its weaknesses like Diane and other teachers do in this blog…plus they somehow make the insinuation that common core standards will somehow make competition and school choice go away…that’s not true..it will further exacerbate the problem of school choice and competition and obsession with accountability. but they don’t care about that because they like all those failed “free market” policies. they also give the impression that school choice is opposed to one size fits all education… this isn’t true either…school choice is benevolent code for the policy of closing down public schools based on one size fits all standardized test scores and then giving parents the “option” of sending their students to “better” private and charter schools which will also be obsessed with improving student’s standardized test scores….so i guess I could say while I agree with some of their arguments against the common core in this resolution I think its important for us to recognize that our views on this blog are against privatization, against the principles of free market economics being applied to education, against school choice, none of which they are against.
but I may be wrong about the facade thing…who knows..i just don’t trust these politicians even when they appear to support us…so i may be biased
You, Stephen, and Susan are the furthest thing from Glen.
If all schools use the same curriculum and the same Pearson textbooks and standardized tests aligned with the SAT, then that effectively eliminates choice in education regardless of the school one attends. Having visited some of their websites, I found support for public schools, opposition to a national curriculum controlled by the federal government and billionaires, and opposition to a federal database to track children. They did not post much about charter schools, but their focus is Common Core.
Do I agree with them on everything? Of course not, but on this issue I do. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Your line, Mr. Rains …
The music died for me on the night of 6 Nov 2000. FRONTLINE ran a so-called “documentary” on the two candidates that amounted to an unabashed puff piece for that all-around, fun-loving, good ol’ boy, George W. Bush, and a vile distortion of every fact about Al Gore’s life, record, and values. It was obvious that some producer had been bought.
► http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2000/
I stopped giving money to PBS that day, and have never gone back, even though I continued to support it in spirit, for the sake of the non-political offerings.
Remember this?
Bill Moyers & Michael Winship • In Defense of NPR
As usual, the comments are far better informed than the article itself.
This article confirms what I have been saying to anyone who will listen: as solicitors of our money, NPR, WNYC, and the makers of shows like On the Media and This American Life–which did an entire show on accounting for its own integrity and purported lack of bias!–need to step up and explain HOW they can report fairly on education, while accepting truckloads of billionaire reformer dollars. It is eminently reasonable for me to wonder if my meager public school teacher contributions don’t wield the same power as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, or the Walton Family Fund. I know they don’t!
So here I am resending my letter, written around the time of the winter fund drive, which I DID contribute to, and also forwarding this disturbing report form Diane Ravitch’s blog.
I wonder when we will hear anything at all from NPR or WNMYC. My February letter received no response, not even an acknowledgement of receipt, which I have received from WNYC in the past.
February 24, 2013
Dear Brooke and Bob,
After years of contributing to your station with part of my public school teacher salary (same salary that is often depleted to provide basic supplies to that public school classroom and students who can’t afford their own notebooks and pencils), I swore to stop pledging my money to WNYC when you (editorial decision makers) decided to publicly humiliate me on your station’s website. Remember? That was when you chose to lend credence to the “Teacher Data Reports” designed by the NYC Department of Education, based on a thoroughly unproven “value-added” data analysis method of judging a teacher’s “effectiveness” by analyzing the progress made on standardized tests by his or her students.
At the time, I was naive enough to think that your decision to castigate dedicated public school teachers in the town square was an editorial one, in keeping with your mission to inform the public of all sides of an issue. Of course, I completely disagreed with this move, especially since WNYC totally failed to look critically at what the DOE, Bloomberg, Klein (and the yes-women and men that followed) were up to with their “business model” approach to education “reform.” Where were the interviews with parents, teachers, and teachers who ARE parents? Eventually, my anger waned and my better instincts about the value of (and my enjoyment of) public radio took over, and my husband and I decided we still wanted to support your station.
But lately, after reading Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, a veil has been lifted from my eyes. This is the sinister veil of corporate foundation dollars and their influence on education “reform.” I call it sinister because these foundations always cloak their agendas in beneficial sounding goals: “every person should have the chance to lead a healthy and productive life.” Sound familiar? Who could disagree with that? Certainly not you at WNYC, who are supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The same foundation whose dollars supported the small school movement, a disastrous failure that never gets mentioned anymore. (Too embarrassing for the all powerful corporate money dispensing king, Bill Gates! Say too much about his failures–which have caused extensive suffering in communities affected by public school closures all in communities all over the United States–and the money might stop flowing to YOUR organization.)
Today, during the OTM pledge drive segment, my ears perked up when I heard Brooke mention those corporate dollars that help run your station. I think the gist of her comment was that corporate dollars do help, but it’s the LISTENERS’ dollars that play the more important role. Well, that would be good news!
And so, in the spirit of Brooke’s assurance, I would like to issue a challenge to OTM, WNYC, Brooke, Bob, Brian, Ira, and anyone else who has a stake in public radio’s integrity. In the tradition of your piece about the media’s liberal bias in political reporting, why not do a segment looking into the influence of corporate reform dollars on your reporting, specifically as regards to educational issues? No easy challenge, since you’d have to look into all your editorial decisions about reporting on education, especially the “reform” movement, and take an even harder look at the foundations like Gates’ true agenda: privatization of public school dollars, replacement of community public schools with unproven and unaccountable charters, union busting, the scapegoating of teachers as a way to divert the public’s attention from the real issues of poverty and social degradation. All while taking corporate dollars with one hand, and your listeners’ hard-earned money with the other!
Let me know when it will be airing.
(And by the way, I never heard the apology or retraction or even reporting on the complete discrediting of the value-added system that you had such confidence in before. It’s now called “junk science,” and even its developer has said it shouldn’t be used in decisions about a teacher’s performance. Or were you too worried about losing those corporate dollars?)
With high hopes that public radio really can still provide a fair look at all sides of an issue,
Your listener-member,
Samantha Deutsch
(And edited by… Samantha.) PS–I have made my pledge!
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