The New York Times published a story about the political consultants to Mayor de Blasio who have been paid $236,000 to lobby in Albany for universal pre-kindergarten, which would help poor children across the city.

 

The New York Times has not written a story about the more than $4 million spent by hedge fund managers to gain preferential treatment for privately managed charter schools and to guarantee that they will never be moved out of public space without their consent and never be required to pay rent and never be subject to public audit. Some of the details about the billionaires behind the ad blitz were used as background in a Times’ story about de Blasio’s conciliatory speech at Riverside Church, where he reached out to the charter sector. There is an irony that a church associated with social justice was the setting for the city’s first progressive mayor in decades to be compelled to humble himself to the titans of Wall Street.

 

Why does the Times finds it newsworthy that the Mayor and his allies paid $236,000 to lobby for pre-school for all children, but it is not newsworthy that Wall Street billionaires shell out $4 million to protect schools that enroll 6% of the city’s children, schools that have the power to kick out any students they don’t want, schools that take few or no children with disabilities, and half as many English language learners?