Archives for category: Freedom of the Press
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Leaders Engage in Strange, Irresponsible Behavior

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2024 //
16

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, keeps a close watch on state government and the state legislature. He has friends in both parties, so he is diplomatic. But since I don’t live in Oklahoma, I read what he reports in this post with a mixture of amazement and amusement. I can’t believe these people think they will improve education by their shenanigans. There are serious and reasonable people in Oklahoma. Unfortunately, they do not run the state.

John also forwarded to me a critique of pending legislation in the State Senate that would require every science teacher to give equal time to evolution and “intelligent design,” i.e. creationism. The critique came from the National Center for Science Education. I repeat: Where are the sane people? The grown-ups?

He writes:

Our Internet and phone went out for five days as the legislature’s bill filing period closed, so I was limited to learning the latest craziness of the national MAGA campaign, and national coverage of Oklahoma news. For example, State Superintendent Ryan Walters selected “Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the ‘Libs of TikTok’ social media account,” as member of the Oklahoma library media advisory committee. She has no background in education and does not live in Oklahoma. And the governor has already “banned the use of TikTok by any executive branch agency or employee and blacklisted the software from all state networks and state managed devices.”

But, the Oklahoman reported, “Walters said he put Raichik on the advisory committee because she was on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools and pushing ‘woke indoctrination’ on kids.”

The Oklahoman also explained, “Last year, a ‘Libs of TikTok’ post drew attention to a video posted by an elementary school librarian in Tulsa.” The Libs of TikTok version “had been edited from her original TikTok” and identified the teacher and the school. The Oklahoman explained:

After the post was made, the Ellen Ochoa Elementary School in Tulsa received a bomb threat on Aug. 22. That day Ryan Walters had also retweeted the “Libs of TikTok” post.

The threat appeared to have been made in retaliation for a librarian’s public post on TikTok.

Also leading the recent news, Republican Senator Nathan Dahm’s Senate Bill 1837 sought to:

Create the “Common Sense Freedom of Press Control Act.” The measure requires criminal background checks of every member of the news media, licensing of journalists through the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the completion of a “propaganda free” training course through the Oklahoma State Department of Education, a $1 million liability insurance policy and quarterly drug tests.

KOSU reported that they would also have to “attend an eight-hour ‘propaganda-free’ safety training developed by PragerU.”

Not to be outdone, Republican Rep. Juston Humphrey’s House Bill 3084, sought to ban:

“Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school” from participating in class and school activities.

Humphrey would “require parents or guardians to pick the student up from school. … But, if parents are unable to pick the student up, the bill says ‘animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.’”

Humphrey also filed:

House Bill 3133, as it is currently worded, states that any person who is of Hispanic descent living within the state of Oklahoma; is a member of a criminal street gang as such term is defined in state statutes; and has been convicted of a gang-related offense enumerated in state statute shall be deemed to have committed an act of terrorism and will be subject to property forfeiture.

Humphrey had previously said “he intends to file legislation that will require any Oklahoma elected official known to be in support of a terrorist organization to be removed from their seat.” He did so to stop “Hollywood’s fake agenda.”

Other Republicans contributed bills such as Sen. Dusty Deevers’ Senate Bill 1958 “that would no longer allow Oklahomans to file for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, also known as no-fault divorce.”

And Rep. Jim Olsen:

Filed legislation to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms.” It “would require each classroom to clearly display a poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments, measuring at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall, beginning in the 2024-2025 school year. The bill also outlines the specific text to be used for the display.

He did so because “The Ten Commandments is one of the foundations of our nation,” and “Publicly and proudly displaying them in public school classrooms will serve as a reminder of the ethics of our state and country as students and teachers go about their day.”

Olsen also “pointed to numerous passages in the Bible he said clearly endorsed corporal punishment as a part of proper child training, including Hebrews 12:11, which states, ‘Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterword it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.’”

Others continued the filing of bills to support Ryan Walters’ agenda. For instance, Rep. Tom Gann:

Said he is taking a proactive step toward safeguarding Oklahoma’s public school students with the introduction of House Bill 3112. The bill would prohibit schools and school districts from accepting financial donations or gifts from countries (meaning China) designated as “hostile” or “Countries of Particular Concern (CPC)” by the United States Secretary of State.

And Chris Banning “released a statement applauding State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters for working to eliminate all references to American Library Association guidelines in Oklahoma’s Information Literacy Standards and proposing new standards that are aligned with Oklahoma values.”

I kept scrolling back from December and January filings until I got to two other types of statements For example Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall’s, praised:

The conservative rating for the Oklahoma Legislature after the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Foundation’s Center for Legislative Accountability (CLA) released its 2023 ratings of the voting records of state legislators in all fifty states. Oklahoma was ranked as the second.  

But also I read a number of Republican statements condemning the bomb threats directed at the Tulsa Union Public Schools after the Libs of TikTok’s false post which likely prompted the threats. For example. “Rep. Ross Ford, R-Broken Arrow, vowed to help track down those who have made recent bomb threats made against several schools in the Union Public Schools district.”

So, what has the rightwing done in terms of policy when they could have been protecting children and educators? Gov. Stitt appointed Nellie Tayloe Sanders, “who last year helped advance a controversial Catholic charter school proposal (the St. Isidore religious school)” as his new secretary of education.

Worse, on Newsmax, Stitt seemed to warn of a civil war prompted by a confrontation between the Texas National Guard and President Biden. He certainly seemed to say that Oklahoma and our National Guard would side with Texas against the U.S..

And Ryan Walter’s confusing and flawed $16 million teacher bonus program is now clawing back $50,000 incentives they gave to teachers who were doing their best to follow the confusing application rules that Walters’ staff mismanaged.

That’s just the latest batch of the rightwing’s frightening behavior. Some serious reporters dismiss “headline-grabbing proposals such as prohibiting so-called furry costumes in public schools and the licensing and drug testing of journalists [that] have little chance of passage,” arguing that “scores of other bills, if passed, could mean big changes for Oklahomans in everything from land sales and medical marijuana to prescription drugs and state pension system investments.”

But, reading the proposed legislation, it seems overwhelmingly impossible that more good than harm could come out of the 2024 session. And, the historian in me worries that these irrational, but not passable, bills could do even more harm than the legislation that could come out of the Republican-controlled legislature. After all, they are parts of a continuing barrage against trust in government and democratic principles.

So, what can be done to curb the stress the MAGAs are imposing?

We can hope that more adult Republicans will push back against their extremist colleagues. Or, I guess we could wish for more ice storms that will shut down the Internet so we don’t need to dwell on their threats to democracy.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Ignorance, Oklahoma

Thom Hartmann: What Did the Founders Say About Separation of Church and State?

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2024 //
53

Thom Hartmann is at his best in this column. He writes about the current GOP obsession with a “Christian America” and compares it to what the Founding Fathers wrote about the role of religion in their new nation. Added to the current pandering is the fact that we now have a Supreme Court majority of six-three that elevates “religious freedom” above the Constitutional prohibition of “establishment” of religion. That means trouble for those of us who do not want to live in a theocracy.

He writes:

Monday, in addition to being Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, was National Religious Freedom Day. But what does that mean, and for whom? What would the “Christian America” that Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are calling for look like?

When I was a kid, my parents and our pastor taught me that Jesus specifically, and religion more generally, was all about peace, love, and people caring for each other. That’s what’s explicitly at the core of Jesus’ most famous and clear teachings at the Sermon On The Mount and in the Parable of the Goats and Sheep.

But the Republican Party, thirsting for more voters in the 1980 Reagan vs Carter election, realized that Southern Baptists had helped give the White House to Carter in 1976 (he’s a Southern Baptist). If they could just peel those voters away from Carter and the Democratic Party, they believed they could win big.

The issue the Reagan campaign decided to use to bring religious voters to Republicans in that election was abortion, a topic Jesus never discussed.

Up until that election, both former Governor Reagan and former CIA Director Bush had been open supporters of a woman’s right to choose; in the run-up to the primaries Reagan became an unabashed foe of abortion, and George H.W. Bush changed his position on the issue when he joined the ticket in 1980.The legacy of those decisions has brought us Trump, Qanon, and badly damaged large parts of what’s left of Christianity in America (church attendance is collapsing). It’s turned both religion and politics into armed camps. At the founding of our Republic, if there was any one topic that the Framers of the Constitution were mostly in agreement about, it was the importance of keeping religion separate from government.

More recently, even uber-Catholic Antonin Scalia wrote, in the 1990 Employment v Smith case rejecting Native Americans’ petition to overrule federal regulations and legally use peyote (an outlawed substance) for religious purposes:

“The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind ranging from compulsory military service to the payment of taxes; to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races. The First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty does not require this. …

“To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

Don’t tell today’s Republicans that’s a bad thing, though: Scalia’s list is a good summary of many of the realms they’re currently targeting. The six Catholic extremist Republicans on the Court appear anxious to overturn any final semblance of secular primacy in law, using religion as their excuse.

It’s gotten so absurd and frankly obscene that a reporter recently spoke with a woman at a Trump rally sporting a crucifix and a tee-shirt that said “Hang Joe Biden For Treason”; she was essentially arguing that Jesus would be all in favor of watching Biden’s execution.

Monday was Religious Freedom Day because it commemorated the publication of Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. That early publication (he was 33) not only asserted that all citizens should be free to practice whatever religion they wanted but, more importantly, that nobody should be persecuted for holding either a religious belief or no religious belief.

Jefferson thought it was more important than his having been a two-term president: when he wrote his own epitaph, he only included his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, his founding America’s first free university (University of Virginia), and his Statute for Religious Freedom.

Jefferson and Madison had a philosophical debate over which would be more dangerous: a religious individual who wants to bring religion into government like Christian nationalist Mike Johnson, or the government endorsing or subsidizing any particular religious group or belief like Trump is promising.

Jefferson (a Deist) was worried about religious leaders (a letter of his is *footnoted below) corrupting government; Madison (a Christian) was more worried about government corrupting his beloved religion.

For example, on February 21, 1811, President Madison vetoed a bill passed by Congress that authorized government payments to a church in Washington, DC to help the poor. Faith-based initiatives were a clear violation, Madison believed, of the doctrine of separation of church and state, and could lead to a dangerous transfer of both money and political power to religious leaders.

In Madison’s mind, caring for the poor was a public and civic duty — a function of government — and must not be allowed to become a hole through which churches could reach and seize political power or the taxpayer’s purse.

Funding a church to provide for the poor would establish a “legal agency” — a legal precedent — that would break down the walls of separation the Founders had put between church and state to protect Americans from religious zealots gaining political power.

Thus, Madison said in his veto message to Congress, he was striking down the proposed law:

“Because the bill vests and said incorporated church an also authority to provide for the support of the poor, and the education of poor children of the same;…” which, Madison said, “would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, flatly rejected government supporting religion in any way whatsoever, noting in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston:

“We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government.”

He added in that same letter:

“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”

Now we see that both were right, although Madison probably had the edge: when the GOP offered evangelicals political power and big money in 1980, it so corrupted many conservative Christian churches that they’ve today put Trump above Jesus.

It’s gotten so bad that fully a third of evangelicals polled said they supported violence to advance political goals, which is quite literally the opposite of Jesus’ telling the Pharisees:

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Not to mention his extensive preaching about nonviolence. He was MLK’s role model, for G-d’s sake.

Instead, Trump’s followers are busily sharing memes of him as their savior, while Speaker Johnson and his fellow travelers on the Supreme Court are working as hard as they can to open the doors (and money) of government to religious leaders.

Religion has a lot to offer people and often fulfills a basic need to stand in awe of creation, to feel at one with everything and everyone. Every culture all the way back to the Neanderthals have engaged in religious rituals, particularly around funerals: no tribe or group has ever been found that entirely lacked what could be described as religious rituals.

But, as our founders pointed out, religion should be separated from government as far as possible. Jefferson’s Virginia Statute says it explicitly:

“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

Instead, Republicans are exploiting that religious urge built into us humans to cynically pander for the votes of those people who’ve put religion at the center of their lives.

They’re reinventing America as a country where religion dictates women’s healthcare, specifies who can marry whom, and destroys the lives of people who weren’t born heterosexual.

They’re promoting movies/vids portraying Trump as the incarnation of Jesus, a bizarre sort of Second Coming worthy of North Korean propaganda.

They’re using religion as an excuse for bigotry, a rationale for government tax subsidies of churches that promote Republicans from the pulpit, and a weapon to wield against those they condemn as being insufficiently pious.

In the process, they’re harming both religion and our government.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Hoax, Propaganda, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump

Texas: When Billionaires Fund the News….

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2024 //
6

This story by Michael Hardy was published by the Texas Monthly. It goes to the heart of serious problems in today’s journalism: is the Internet destroying the audience for daily newspapers? Can daily newspapers survive? The Baltimore Sun was just purchased by the rightwing Sinclair Network, which already owns a large number of local radio stations. Can newspapers be independent when they are owned by billionaires with a political agenda?

Billionaire Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post but he doesn’t seem to have imposed his political views on the newspaper. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch famously bought The New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News. He has pushed his properties to match his politics.

The Los Angeles Times was purchased by a billionaire doctor, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, in 2018. He has not imposed his politics, but he has ordered drastic layoffs in newsroom personnel, which led to a one-day walkout last Friday by the newsroom guild, the first such work stoppage in the newspaper’s 142-year history. The pending layoffs would be the third round of cuts since June.

This is not a good sign for the health of our democracy.

The death of major newspapers over the past few decades has created “news deserts,” regions where there are no newspapers. It is more important than ever to support local journalism, which provide the sole source of information about local events, school board elections and meetings, elections, and local government.

Into the gap comes a new form of journalism, the nonprofit newspaper. Most such enterprises are supported by subscribers, advertisers, and foundation gifts. I support the Mississippi Free Press, which does an amazing job of covering news in the state. I also support the Texas Observer, which is a low-budget newspaper whose scrappy staff is known for investigative journalism. (I also subscribe to The Texas Tribune and The Texas Monthly).

In some cases, even the nonprofits depend on billionaires to keep them afloat. As this story shows, relying on billionaires can be hazardous. In some cases, their gifts come with long strings attached.

In a recent issue of The Texas Monthly, Michael Hardy reported what happened to a new nonprofit journal called the Houston Landung.

In its mission statement, the nonprofit Houston Landing describes itself as an “independent, nonpartisan news organization devoted to public service journalism,” one that “offer[s] solutions to pressing problems” and “holds the powerful accountable.” Its stories are free to read, and its website runs no ads or clickbait. Its vision of an independent, well-funded outlet built on rigorous investigative reporting attracted some of the city’s brightest journalism stars after its soft launch two years ago with financial backing from the philanthropic American Journalism Project and Houston billionaires John Arnold and Richard Kinder.

Among its first hires were Houston Chronicle investigations editor Mizanur Rahman, who became the Landing’s editor in chief (and helped write the mission statement), and the Chronicle’s Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Alex Stuckey, who became the Landing’s top investigative journalist. Rahman and Stuckey helped build a newsroom of about thirty editors, reporters, photographers, and web designers that routinely punched above its weight, producing major stories about an epidemic of deaths in Harris County jails and a plague of stopped trains in Houston’s East End. Since the website’s official debut in June, it has regularly scooped the competition—including Texas Monthly—on stories ranging from the state takeover of Houston ISD to predatory lending at the Colony Ridge development north of Houston.

The Landing’s success made it all the more shocking when, on Monday morning, Rahman and Stuckey were summarily fired by CEO Peter Bhatia, a fifty-year newspaper veteran and former Detroit Free Press editor in chief who had been in the job for less than a year. Bhatia is longtime friends with Landing board member Jeff Cohen, a senior advisor at Houston philanthropy organization Arnold Ventures—a major funder of the Landing—and a former Chronicle editor in chief. The six-member board of directors appears to have brought Bhatia in to shake things up at the website. (None of the Landing’s six board members agreed to interview requests for this story; the author of this story worked briefly under Cohen at the Chronicle in 2017 and did sporadic freelance copy writing for the Arnold Ventures website from 2019 to 2020.)

“Over recent months I’ve become concerned about whether or not we were fully engaged in the process of being effective in the digital spaces,” Bhatia told Texas Monthly this week. “We’ve been putting out a newspaper on a website. There’s been some really good journalism and some high-impact stuff, for sure. But after a lot of conversations with Mizanur, I reached the conclusion that we had to make a change if we’re going to be as effective as we can in the digital space.” A document prepared for the November meeting of the Landing’s board and obtained by Texas Monthly showed that the site exceeded its 2023 goal for annual page views (1.5 million) and was within striking distance of its goal for unique visitors (1 million). For comparison, the nonprofit San Antonio Report, founded in 2012, claims 500,000 monthly page views.

Stuckey told Texas Monthly that she was blindsided by her firing. Just two weeks earlier, she had received a glowing performance review and a 3 percent pay raise. In a recording of Monday’s termination meeting provided by Stuckey, Bhatia can be heard saying he has “enormous respect for you as a journalist . . . you are an investigative reporter of the highest level.” But, he explains, there is no place for her in the “comprehensive reset” he believes is necessary at the Landing.

“If you had ever come to me and said, ‘I want you to revamp how you do stories,’ I would have done that in a heartbeat,” Stuckey tells him.

“It’s not my job to do that,” Bhatia replies. “It’s the editor’s job.”

“So I’m getting cut off at the knees because you felt that Mizanur didn’t do that?”

“Well, you can jump to that conclusion.”

At the end of the meeting, human resources director Susie Hermsen offered Stuckey three months of severance pay if she signed a nondisparagement agreement. Stuckey refused. “I believe in transparency,” she can be heard saying in the recording. “This is insanity, and I am absolutely not signing anything.”

The Landing’s newsroom was similarly dumbfounded by the firings. Much of the staff converged upon the organization’s sixth-floor office, in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, on Monday to show solidarity with Rahman and Stuckey. Later, the staff wrote a collective letter to the Landing’s board of directors warning of “significant damage to employee retention and recruitment” and predicting that “the optics of such a massive restructuring during a moment of forward momentum will hurt our fundraising and financial efforts.”

Bhatia acknowledged that the newsroom was in open revolt against his leadership. “I have no illusion that some people are going to leave over this, and I respect that,” he told Texas Monthly. The Landing’s managing editor, John Tedesco, will temporarily take over for Rahman while Bhatia leads a search for a new editor in chief. Tedesco told me that he disagrees with the decision to fire Rahman and Stuckey and fears that “this turmoil will cause our best and brightest journalists to look for the nearest exit ramp.”

The Landing is one of dozens of local nonprofit newsrooms that have sprung up around the country in the past couple of decades. Often funded by a combination of wealthy donors, foundation grants, NPR-style membership drives, and paid events, these nonprofits have been touted as a supplement or even a replacement for declining local newspapers. But some observers worry that such publications are beholden to the whims of their billionaire patrons. (Texas Monthly is a for-profit magazine whose chairman is Houston billionaire Randa Duncan Williams.)

Where did the staff go wrong? Did they write anything critical of charter schools (billionaire John Arnold has poured many millions into promoting charters)? Or did they praise pensions for public service workers (another of Mr. Arnold’s pet peeves)? Or was it something that stepped on the toes of the other billionaire funder, Mr. Kinder? The publication was launched with $20 million, so it would not have been a financial issue.

This is what Thomas Jefferson said about the importance of a free press:

Jefferson believed that a free press was necessary to keep government in check. He wrote that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”:

The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Houston, Texas

Beware Deep Fake Videos! Protect Our Democracy!

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2024 //
18

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed (or not) that I never mention artificial intelligence. I think it’s ominous. I don’t like simulations of real people. I don’t like technology that can write even better than most humans. I prefer to deal directly with humans, not fakes.

Artifial intelligence may be deployed as a deceptive weapon in the upcoming elections.

2024 is a crucial year in our politics. On the ballot in the primaries and in the general election will be candidates who are offering theocracy, dictatorship, or democracy. They will use AI to woo and confuse voters.

New Hampshire blogger and former state senator Jeanne Dietsch has posted a warning about deep fake videos. The video she posts is titled “This Is Not Morgan Freeman.” The face is Morgan Freeman, the voice is Morgan Freeman. But it is not Morgan Freeman.

She also offers a warning about the three factions that are competing in New Hampshire.

She writes:

Elected officials no longer act as individuals. They vote as teams. In NH we have three types of teams:

  • “LIBERTY” CANDIDATES who do not believe in majority rule or public services. They want to privatize education, public lands and government services. They believe the only behaviors that should be illegal are theft and bodily harm. People may make fentanyl, pollute the water supply, sell body parts, or do anything else on their private property. That includes corporations that want to buy up state forests to lumber or entire swaths of housing to rent.
  • FASCIST & THEOCRATIC CANDIDATES also want to replace democracy with minority rule. Unlike liberty candidates, they want stricter laws set by a dictator or by religious leaders. Their goal is to control society, as in Putin’s Russia or a Christian version of Iran.
  • PRO-DEMOCRACY CANDIDATES may disagree on how large government should be and many other issues. However, they will stand up against those who support lawlessness or dictatorship. They will ensure we regularly hold fair elections. They believe in the rule of law.

Political parties no longer define the teams in this state. Undeclared voters outnumber either party by a third. In 2020, the “liberty” team temporarily took over the NH House Republican Caucus. Even though they were a minority of the 400 House members, they controlled the agenda. Pro-democracy legislators in both parties were powerless.

The story in DC is similar. The functions of the American republic are being held hostage by a small minority.

Will we fall for the deep fakes? Will we be deceived by AI? Or will we protect our democracy?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read

Heather Cox Richardson: Biden Speaks Out for Democracy in Arizona

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2023 //
24

Heather Cox Richardson wrote about President Biden’s homage to democracy and his tribute to the Late Senator John McCain. Biden traveled to Arizona to speak at a librarian named in honor of the Senator McCain. Biden took the opportunity to praise democracy and warn about the threats we are with facing.

Biden recalled that when McCain was dying, he wrote a farewell letter to the nation that he had served in both war and peace. “We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil,” McCain wrote. “Americans never quit…. We never hide from history. We make history.”

In Tempe, Arizona, today, President Joe Biden spoke at the dedication ceremony for a new library, named for the late Arizona senator John McCain, who died in 2018. Biden used the opportunity not only to honor his friend, but to emphasize the themes of democracy and to call out those who are threatening to overturn it. While Biden has made the defense of American democracy central to his presidency, he has never been clearer or more impassioned than he was today.

Biden reiterated the point he makes often: that the United States is the only nation founded on an idea, articulated in the Declaration of Independence, that we are all created equal and have the right to be treated equally before the law. While “[w]e’ve never fully lived up to that idea,” he said, “we’ve never walked away from it.” Now, though, our faith in that principle is in doubt.

“[H]istory has brought us to a new time of testing,” Biden said. “[A]ll of us are being asked right now: What will we do to maintain our democracy? Will we, as John wrote, never quit? Will we not hide from history, but make history? Will we put partisanship aside and put country first? I say we must and we will. We will. But it’s not easy.”

Biden laid out exactly what democracy means: “Democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not rule of the monied, not rule of the mighty. Regardless of party, that means respecting free and fair elections; accepting the outcome, win or lose. It means you can’t love your country only when you win.”

“Democracy means rejecting and repudiating political violence,” he said. “Regardless of party, such violence is never, never, never acceptable in America. It’s undemocratic, and it must never be normalized to advance political power.”

“Today,” he warned, “democracy is…at risk.” Our political institutions, our Constitution, and “the very character of our nation” are threatened. “Democracy is maintained by adhering to the Constitution and the march to perfecting our union…by protecting and expanding rights with each successive generation.” “For centuries, the American Constitution has been a model for the world,” but in the past few years, he noted, the institutions of our democracy—the judiciary, the legislature, the executive” have been damaged in the eyes of the American people, and even the eyes of the world, by attacks from within.

“I’m here to tell you,” Biden said: “We lose these institutions of our government at our own peril…. Democracy is not a partisan issue. It’s an American issue.”

“[T]here is something dangerous happening in America now,” Biden said. “There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy: the MAGA Movement.” After high praise for his Republican friend McCain, and recollections of working with Republicans to pass bipartisan legislation throughout his career, Biden made it clear that he does not believe “every Republican,” or even “a majority of Republicans” adheres to the MAGA extremist ideology. But, he said”

“[T]here is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”

The MAGA Republicans, Biden said, are openly “attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.” They are “banning books and burying history.” “Extremists in Congress [are] more determined to shut down the government, to burn the place down than to let the people’s business be done.” They are attacking the military—the strongest military in the history of the world—as being “weak and ‘woke’.”

They are “pushing a notion the defeated former President expressed when he was in office and believes applies only to him: This president is above the law, with no limits on power. Trump says the Constitution gave him…’the right to do whatever he wants as President.’ I’ve never even heard a president say that in jest. Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans but by vengeance and vindictiveness.”

Biden accurately recounted the plans Trump has announced for a second term: expand presidential power, put federal agencies under the president’s thumb, get rid of the nonpartisan civil service and fill positions with loyalists. Biden quoted MAGA Republicans: “I am your retribution,” “slitting throats” of civil servants, “We must destroy the FBI,” calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a “traitor” and suggesting he should be executed. These extremists, he said, are “the controlling element of the House Republican Party.”

“This is the United States of America,” Biden said. “Did you ever think you’d hear leaders of political parties in the United States of America speak like that? Seizing power, concentrating power, attempting to abuse power, purging and packing key institutions, spewing conspiracy theories, spreading lies for profit and power to divide America in every way, inciting violence against those who risk their lives to keep America safe, weaponizing against the very soul of who we are as Americans.”

“The MAGA extremists across the country have made it clear where they stand,” Biden said. “So, the challenge for the rest of America—for the majority of Americans—is to make clear where we stand. Do we still believe in the Constitution? Do we believe in…basic decency and respect? The whole country should honestly ask itself…what it wants and understand the threats to our democracy.”

Biden knew his own answers:

“I believe very strongly that the defining feature of our democracy is our Constitution.

“I believe in the separation of powers and checks and balances, that debate and disagreement do not lead to disunion.

“I believe in free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power.

“I believe there is no place in America…for political violence. We have to denounce hate, not embolden it.

“Across the aisle, across the country, I see fellow Americans, not mortal enemies. We’re a great nation because we’re a good people who believe in honor, decency, and respect.”

Pointing to the fact that the majority of the money appropriated for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has gone to Republican-dominated states, he added: “I believe every president should be a president for all Americans” and should “use the Office of the President to unite the nation.”

The job of a president, he said, is to “deliver light, not heat; to make sure democracy delivers for everyone; to know we’re a nation of unlimited possibilities, of wisdom and decency—a nation focused on the future.”

“We’ve faced some tough times in recent years, and I am proud of the progress we made as a country,” Biden said, “But the real credit doesn’t go to me and my administration…. The real heroes of the story are you, the American people.” Now, he said, “I’m asking you that regardless whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or independent, put the preservation of our democracy before everything else. Put our country first…. We can’t take democracy for granted.”

“Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle,” Biden said. “They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy, when people are willing to give away that which is most precious to them because they feel frustrated, disillusioned, tired, alienated.”

“I get it,” Biden said. But “[f]or all its faults…, American democracy remains the best…[path] forward to prosperity, possibilities, progress, fair play, equality.” He urged people not to sit on the sidelines, but “to build coalitions and community, to remind ourselves there is a clear majority of us who believe in our democracy and are ready to protect it.”

“So,” he said, “let’s never quit. Let’s never hide from history. Let’s make history.” If we do that, he said, “[w]e’ll have proved, through all its imperfections, America is still a place of possibilities, a beacon for the world, a promise realized—where the power forever resides with ‘We the People.’”

“That’s our soul. That’s who we truly are. That’s who we must always be.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Biden, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read

Thom Hartmann: Can Humanity Survive Trump and the GOP?

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2023 //
38

Thom Hartmann is an insightful, incisive journalist and blogger. In this terrifying post, he describes what to expect if the Republican Party wins the presidency.

Please read and react.

Thom Hartmann

So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a GOP president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher…

Hartmann writes:

Every day that goes by, even with yesterday’s newest indictment, looks more and more like Donald Trump will be the GOP’s standard bearer in 2024. After all, his popularity stood at 44 percent when NY DA Alvin Bragg indicted him; it then rose to 49 percent when he was indicted in the documents crime; following his conviction for raping E. Jean Caroll it rose to 54 percent among Republicans.

But even if he’s not the candidate, Republican primary voters will demand a candidate with the same affection for Putin and other dictators; the same disdain for racial, religious, and gender minorities; the same abusive attitude toward women and girls; the same faux embrace of Confederate and hillbilly values and hatred of city-dwellers and college graduates; the same cavalier attitude toward guns and fossil fuels.

There’s also the growing possibility that Trump or another MAGA Republican could win the White House. Yesterday, both the New York Times and CNN reported on polls showing that Trump and Biden are right now at a dead heat.

And even if Trump collapses in the polls as the result of the indictments, which is unlikely (Netanyahu is under indictment for bribery and some pretty terrible stuff and he just got re-elected), there are numerous other Republicans who would love to take his place. 

And no matter who it is, if they are MAGA inclined, Trump has shown them where there are levers of power and corruption that are consequential in ways that they never dreamed of before him.

Joe Biden, at 81, faces multiple possible personal scenarios that could pull him out of the race. No Labels and the Green Party’s candidates (presumably Joe Manchin and Cornell West) could pull enough votes from Biden to hand the election to Trump as Jill Stein did in three swing states in 2016 (she pulled more votes in each of those states than Trump’s margin of victory).

The prosecution of Trump (which almost certainly won’t be resolved before the election — and it’s not even remotely possible that appeals would be resolved by then — because of Garland’s dithering for two years) could backfire politically and make him into a popular martyr even with Republicans who disliked him before.

And don’t discount the impact Putin throwing millions of rubles into social media can have: his previous fleet of trolls overwhelming social media helped get Trump elected in 2016 and drove Brits to make the crazy decision to separate from the European Union.

So, it’s important to examine what a second Trump or 2025 MAGA presidency would look like, what effect it would have on America and the world, and how it will impact average Americans. 

Forewarned, after all, is forearmed, and all these predictions are based on past behavior and public statements:

Women make up 51 percent of the American populace but they won’t be spared by a MAGA presidency.

MAGA voters celebrate Trump’s “proof of manhood” through his multiple sexual assaults, from his alleged rape of 13-year-old Katie Johnson (with Jeffrey Epstein) to the adult E. Jean Carroll and more than 20 others. He publicly bragged that he just “grabs them by the…” whenever he wants, and Republicans — including more than half of all white women voters — ran to the polls to mark his name on their ballots.

The MAGA base supports bans on abortion: the white nationalist part of that base is fervent about having more white babies (and middle class white women are the most likely to get abortions when they’re legal, according to these people).

Catholics and evangelicals even support bans on birth control, an issue that’s already been floated by Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and in several state legislatures. Fully 195 Republican members of the House of Representatives voted against protecting birth control from state bans. And all of the Republicans on the Court are conservative Catholics (Gorsuch attends his wife’s church, but was raised Catholic).

Additionally, MAGA Republicans support ending no-fault divorce and limiting alimony, putting women back under husband’s thumbs; lowering the marriage age for girls to as low as 12, as Republicans have already attempted in Idaho, Wyoming, Tennessee, Missouri, and Louisiana; and seizing and monitoring the health and doctor’s records of all childbearing-age women to catch early pregnancies so those women can be detained or surveilled “for their own good” (yes, it’s already happened).

The LGBTQ+ community will come under assault in ways not seen for decades.

Like in Germany in 1933, the trans communitywill be the first to come under assault, a process that’s already begun as Red state after Red state enacts laws banning gender-affirming healthcare. Drag queens are already criminalized in multiple states.

Gays and lesbians won’t be far behind; Republicans are already trying to outlaw gay marriage and adoption. Three-quarters of all House Republicans voted against a Democratic bill protecting gay marriage; all but one Republican on the House Appropriations Committee voted for a Republican bill that would allow states to ban gay and lesbian parents from adopting.

Stochastic terrorism against the LGBTQ+ community will explode, and, in a throwback to the 1980s (when Reagan refused to say the word “AIDS” for 8 long years as tens of thousands, including close friends of mine, died) and before, rural law enforcement will often yawn when queer people are assaulted or even murdered.

Terror against racial and religious minorities will become routine.

The last time Trump was president and sanctioned a “very fine people on both sides” climate of hate and bigotry, incidents of lone-wolf terrorism exploded. Jews executed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue; Blacks gunned down in a supermarket in Buffalo and executed at Mother Emmanuel church in Charleston; Hispanics slaughtered in El Paso. All of the killers cited or wrote what were essentially MAGA or MAGA-aligned propaganda instruments as part of their motivation.

When minority communities rise up in indignation and step out into the streets to demand protection from roving bands of street Nazis, armed vigilantes will threaten and even kill them with impunity. As I noted yesterday, Kyle Rittenhouse is now lionized by Republicans and three states have passed into law provisions that hold people who kill protestors with their cars free from prosecution.

American support for democracy around the world will end and Putin will destroy Ukraine.

During his first four years, Trump did everything he could to ridicule and minimize our democratic allies and suck up to strongman dictators around the world.

He tried to blackmail Ukraine’s president and then withheld defensive weapons from that country when Zelenskyy refused to go along.

He told the world that he trusts Putin more than America’s intelligence services. After meeting privately with Putin, he demanded a list of all of America’s spies and their stations around the world; within months, the CIA reported that their assets were being murderedwith an unprecedented speed and efficiency.

He or his son-in-law conveyed top-secret documents to the brutal murderer MBS in Saudi Arabia that enabled him to stage a coup and seize control of that nation, a gift for which the Trump family has already received at least $2.5 billion with more coming every day.

Trump has now said that he will end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours.” His strategy? As Mike Pence (who would know) said, “The only way you’d solve this war in a day is if you gave Vladimir Putin what he wanted.”

Putin’s allies, in fact, have told the press that his main strategy for seizing all of Ukraine is to wait for Trump to re-take the White House (and, of course, he’ll do everything he can to make that happen). And just last week, in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump came right out and saidthat he’d end all arms support to Ukraine on day one.

Seeing that America will no longer defend democracies, China will take Taiwan and North Korea may well attack South Korea. It could trigger a nuclear World War III, although instead of America being the “bulwark of freedom” as we were in the 1940s, that burden will fall to Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Reagan’s Republican War on Workers will resume and even pick up steam.

The Heritage Foundation already has a 900+ page plan to change the American government, stripping the DOJ, FBI, FCC and the Fed of their independence while ending most union rights and effectively outlawing strikes.

Billionaires will receive more tax cuts, Social Security and Medicare will be fully privatized, and public schools will be replaced with vouchers for private, segregated, religious academies as has already happened under Republican administrations in Arizona and Florida.

The EPA and other regulatory agencies that protect workers, consumers, and the environment will be gutted to the point of impotence in the face of corporate and billionaire assaults.

Efforts to mitigate the climate emergency will be rolled back and fossil fuel extraction and use will explode.

The world just lived through the hottest month in human history; ocean waters off Florida are at the temperature Jacuzzi recommends for their hot tubs; the world’s oceans are dying and winter sea ice isn’t forming in Antarctica.

Right now we humans are adding heat to the atmosphere (because of higher levels of greenhouse gasses) at a rate identical to 345,600 Hiroshima bombs going off in our atmosphere every day: four nuclear bombs per second, every second, minute, and hour of every day.

In response, our planet is screaming at us.

Fossil fuel billionaires and their shills, however, are unconcerned as they continue to fund climate denial nonprofits and Republican politicians who claim it’s all a hoax. They apparently believe their vast wealth will insulate them from the most dire effects.

And they’re probably right: a third of poverty-stricken Bangladesh was underwater this year, as drought, floods, wildfires, heat domes, bomb cyclones, tornadoes, derechos, and typhoons ravaged America with unprecedented ferocity. Increasingly, those without the financial means to withstand weather disasters are killed or wiped out, losing their family homes and often their livelihoods.

Scientists tell us we may have as few as fiveyears, and certainly not more than 20, to end our use of fossil fuels and fully transition to clean renewables. Even within the five-year window it’s technically feasible, but if Trump or another MAGA Republican is elected, civilization-ending weather and the death of much of humanity is virtually assured.

We must wake up America.

So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a MAGA president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Guns, Health, History, Ignorance, Injustice, Insane, Lies, Politics, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Robert Kuttner: Hope for Local Journalism

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2023 //
9

Recent years have seen a dramatic decline in local newspapers. As access to the internet expanded, many people stopped paying for the local newspaper. This is a shame because it meant there would be little or no coverage of local government, school boards, and the many decisions that affect daily lives.

An additional reason to worry about the fate of journalist: private equity began buying up news media, slashing their staff, and reselling them to other private investors. Many parts of the country have become news deserts, where cable TV is the only source of news. The talking heads read press releases, and there are few if any investigative reporters.

Democracy requires an informed public, debate and discussion.

Robert Kuttner writes about a hopeful development:

A nonprofit group dedicated to rescuing local newspapers from either collapse or private equity pillaging is buying 22 local papers in Maine. The National Trust for Local News, founded just two years ago, will purchase five of the state’s six dailiesand 17 weeklies from a private company called Masthead Maine owned by Reade Brower, who made his money in direct mail. (How one guy managed to get control of all the important newspapers in a state is a story for another day.)

The Prospect has long been interested in the takeover of local papers by private equity companies. In 2017, I wrote an investigative piece with Ed Miller titled “Saving the Free Press From Private Equity.” We were reporting on a sickening trend with immense implications for democracy and civic life.

As daily newspapers became less profitable with the rise of online competitors for both news and ad revenue, private equity operators were swooping in and buying up papers by the thousands, and making profits by paring staff and news coverage to the bone. Since then, the venerable Gannett chain was bought by GateHouse, one of the most predatory of the private equity outfits, which took over the Gannett name.

But there was a silver lining to our story that had not yet come to fruition: Local dailies and weeklies could actually turn a profit with well-staffed newsrooms if owners could be satisfied by returns in the 5 to 10 percent range rather than the 15 to 20 percent that was typical in the pre-internet era and that is demanded by private equity players. Despite the internet, local merchants still rely heavily on display ads, which are profit centers. And well-run local papers attract more display ads.

Since then, there has been a slowly growing movement to save the local press by returning it to community or nonprofit ownership. My friend and co-author Ed Miller has gone on to found an exemplary weekly, The Provincetown Independent, which has thrived at the expense of the GateHouse-owned Provincetown Banner, which has lost most of its staff and circulation. Between 2017 and July 2022, over 135 nonprofit newsrooms were launched, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Another hopeful sign is that even by laying off staff and reducing coverage, private equity companies are not making the money they hoped for, so some of these papers are on the auction block and can be saved. Maine is not a typical case, since Reade Brower is a relatively benign monopolist and was willing to work with the National Trust for Local News.

The trust, still in its infancy, has an operating budget of only about $1 million, which means it does not have its own money to finance community buyouts. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, so it’s not clear whether the trust found a benefactor or whether Brower is selling the Maine papers for a nominal sum.

The Trust uses a variety of ownership models. Its first major deal was in Colorado, where it now owns24 local newspapers in that state in collaboration with The Colorado Sun. It has funders that include the Gates Family Foundation, the Google News Initiative, and the Knight Foundation. The MacArthur Foundation also recently announced a major initiative to save local news.

This is the beginning of a very hopeful trend to save priceless civic assets from predatory capitalism at its worst.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, For-Profit, Freedom of the Press, Media

Gavin Newsom: Where Freedom Reigns in the USA

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
48

Gavin Newsom sent out July 4 greetings with a question: Where do people have true freedom?

Newsom writes:

Happy 4th of July from the Freedom State of California.

Freedom.

While Republicans cry freedom, they dictate the choices that people are allowed to make. Fanning the flames of these exhausting culture wars. Banning abortion, banning books and banning free speech in the classroom and in the boardroom.

But the truth is, true freedom means being able to love the person you love without fear or discrimination.

True freedom means you can afford to get the health care you need without going bankrupt.

True freedom means you can go to a movie, a parade, a church or an elementary school without fear of getting shot.

True freedom is a woman and her doctor making the health care decisions she needs.

True freedom means you don’t have to choose between covering the cost of your utilities or the medicine you need to live.

True freedom means living life without fear that large portions of the planet will be uninhabitable for future generations.

More than any people, in any place, California has bridged the historic expanse between freedom for some, and freedom for all.

Freedom is our essence, our brand name – the abiding idea that right here, anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.

So with that, I want to wish you and your family a safe, happy and healthy 4th of July from the Freedom State of California.

Thank you,

Gavin Newsom

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, California, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Gender

Gannet Workers on Strike to Protest Low Wages, Threats to Local Newspapers

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2023 //
1

Alexandra Olson of AP wrote about a strike by journalists who work for Gannett newspapers. A vibrant free press is essential to democracy. Talking heads reading from a script on television are not a good substitute for local journalism that holds power to account. The death of community and local newspapers narrows our sources of information and strengthens the handful of barons who own the networks.

NEW YORK (AP) — Journalists at two dozen local newspapers across the U.S. walked off the job Monday to demand an end to painful cost-cutting measures and a change of leadership at Gannett, the country’s biggest newspaper chain.

The strike involves hundreds of journalists at newspapers in eight states, including the Arizona Republic, the Austin American-Statesman, the Bergen Record, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, and the Palm Beach Post, according to the NewsGuild, which represents workers at more than 50 Gannett newsrooms. Gannett has said there would be no disruption to its news coverage during the strike, which will last for two days at two of the newspapers and one day for the rest.

The walkouts coincided with Gannett’s annual shareholder meeting, during which the company’s board was duly elected despite the NewsGuild-CWA union urging shareholders to withhold their votes from CEO and board chairman Mike Reed as an expression of no confidence in his leadership. Reed has overseen the company since its 2019 merger with GateHouse Media, a tumultuous period that has included layoffs and the shuttering of newsrooms. Gannett shares have dropped more than 60% since the deal closed.

Susan DeCarava, president of the The NewsGuild of New York, called the shareholder meeting “a slap in the face to the hundreds of Gannett journalists who are on strike today.”

“Gannett CEO Mike Reed didn’t have a word to say to the scores of journalists whose livelihoods he’s destroyed, nor to the communities who have lost their primary news source thanks to his mismanagement,” DeCarava said in a statement.

In legal filing, the NewsGuild said Gannett’s leadership has gutted newsrooms and cut back on coverage to service a massive debt load. Cost-cutting has also included forced furloughs and suspension of 401-K contributions….

Among the contract demands are a base annual salary of $60,000. The median pay for Gannett employee in 2022 was $51,035, according to the company’s proxy filing. Reed’s total annual compensation was valued at nearly $3.4 million, down from $7.7 million in 2021.

At the shareholder meeting, NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss said the union proposed lowering Gannett’s median CEO-to-employee ratio from 66:1 to 20:1. But Schleuss said the meeting lasted just eight minutes and Reed didn’t address any questions. In a series of tweets, Schleuss called the meeting a “complete joke…”

Gannett, which owns USA Today and more than 200 other daily U.S. newspapers with print editions, announced last August that it would lay off newsroom staff to lower costs as it struggles with declining revenue amid a downturn in ad sales and customer subscriptions.

The newspaper industry has struggled for years with such challenges, as advertising shifts from print to digital, and readers abandon local newspapers for online sources of information and entertainment. Major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have gained substantial digital audiences for coverage of broad topics, but regional and local papers have struggled to replicate that success in narrower markets…

According to the NewsGuild, Gannett’s workforce has shrunk 47% in the last three years due to layoffs and attrition. At some newspapers, the union said the headcount has fallen by as much as 90%.

The Arizona Republic, for example, has gone from 140 newsroom employees in 2018 to 89 this year, the NewsGuild said. The Austin American-Statesman’s newsroom shrunk during that period from 110 employees in 2018 to 41 this year.

Elahe Izadi of the Washington Post wrote this about the strike:

Gannett merged with the GateHouse chain in 2019, a deal that executives promised would lead to dramatic cost savings while critics warned of job cuts and leaner newsrooms. While the resulting company included 261 daily newspapers and 302 weeklies, those numbers had shrunk by the end of last year to 217 dailies and 175 weeklies, after some papers were shuttered or sold.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle education reporter Justin Murphy said Monday’s protest represents a “desperation and fear that not only is our workplace and our employer going astray, but the consequences for our communities will be truly devastating.”

Gannett last summer froze hundreds of positions and laid off 400 employees — some of whom were the last remaining reporters at their newspapers — after a dismal financial quarter. Gannett has also offered voluntary buyouts and in December laid off 6 percent of its roughly 3,400-person news staff.

A year before he joined the paper in 2012, Murphy said the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle had a newsroom with 86 union members — a count that excludes editors and other managers — but that the number is now down to 23.

“Those of us who are left are kind of local journalism sickos who just can’t stop doing this,” he said. “As we’ve had cutbacks and cutbacks and they’ve asked us to do more and more, we’ve done it because we think it’s important that the work get done, and that’s just how we’re wired. But it’s one thing to do that when you have 86 people going to 80 or 73, but to 23? It doesn’t make sense anymore.”

Sportswriter Rob Aitken grew up reading the newspaper where he now works, the Record in northern New Jersey. “It was the best thing in the world to see your name in this paper,” he recalled. “It meant you were something.”

But now he says some high school sports are rarely written about, as staffers are stretched too thin. “You want to try to be everywhere and cover every great story. It makes you wonder how many great stories are not being told,” he said. “When we can tell a story about a kid and give them enough attention that maybe they get a college scholarship — you wonder how many kids aren’t getting that opportunity now.”

After the cutbacks, Gannett ended the year with a quarterly profit of $32.77 million, and $1.27 billion in outstanding debt.

The walkout also follows the departure of several top Gannett executives in recent months, as well as editors at some of the chain’s largest newspapers.

In a May earnings call, Reed said “2023 is off to a great start,” noting that the cuts and other “cost management initiatives” had boosted Gannett’s net income to $10.3 million, compared with a loss of $3 million during the first quarter of 2022. Digital subscriptions also grew by about 15 percent from the same time frame the previous year, totaling around 2 million paid subscribers.

Reed has also said he’s open to selling more Gannett newspapers.

“We would entertain bids on any of our markets, any of our products, that are at or above fair-market value,” he said in February. “We’re hopeful that we’ll have an opportunity this year to do that. But it’s not anything that’s in our plans.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Media

Rich Migliore: Our Most Precious Rights Are at Risk

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2023 //
22

Retired educator Rich Migliore knows that the current rightwing demands for censorship violate the Constitution. Sadly, the current Supreme Court seems determined to obliterate the long-honored tradition of separation of church and state, creating a breach into which religious zealots are eagerly pushing their creeds. The high court has signaled through several of its recent decisions that at least five, possibly six, of its members are willing to eviscerate that separation.

He writes:

Freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the freedom to read books of our choice are among our most precious human rights. And the freedom from having other people’s religion and beliefs imposed upon us is among our basic human rights as a free people. That is why they were placed first in the Bill of Rights.

When we allow others to impose their religion and beliefs upon us we cease to be a free people. May I again quote from my favorite Supreme Court Opinion issued in the year that I graduated from high school.

“The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District; U.S. Supreme Court (1969), (quoting Justice Brennan in Keyishian v. Board of Regents.

“The classroom is peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas.’ The nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth ‘out of a multiple of tongues, (rather) than through any kind of authoritative selection.”

Our founders wisely separated church and state. And the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause protects our liberty interest in freedom of thought, freedom of belief and freedom of religion.

We do not give up those rights “when we cross the school house gates.” Nor do our children.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, History, Religion, Separation of church and state
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »