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Timothy Egan: Blame Our Civic Stupidity on Failure to Teach Civics and Government

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2017 //
112

Timothy Egan writes a regular column in the New York Times. I usually find myself vigorously nodding in assent as I read whatever he writes. I went to a wonderful conference at Oberlin College this week, and he gave a talk that is reflected in this column.

He blames our current national stupidity on schools and teachers because they are not teaching civics, Government, and history. He acknowledges that these vital courses may have been casualties of the standardized testing hysteria.

But that can’t be the only reason so many Americans can’t tell the difference between fake news and facts, why so many Americans don’t bother to vote, why so many accept outright lies without question, why so many know so little about our government or our history.

Teachers, what do you think?

Read what Egan writes and speak up.

Categories Citizenship, Civics, Fake News, History, Ignorance, Lies

Florida Squanders $1 Billion on “Schools Without Rules”

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2017 //
12

This is a story about vouchers in Florida, where the state constitution forbids the use of public funds “directly or indirectly” for religious schools. Message to school-children: Ignore the state Constitution. It is meaningless.

The Florida state Constitution forbids the use of public funds in religious schools.

Article 1, Section 3 of the state Constitution says:

“Religious Freedom

“There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

Jeb Bush wanted to amend that language so Florida could provide vouchers for religious schools. So, he got an amendment on the ballot in 2012 called the Religious Freedom Amendment, or Amendment 8. What clever wording! How many people would vote against “religious freedom”?

Enough to defeat Amendment 8. Fifty-five point five percent (55.5%) of voters said NO to vouchers.

But that didn’t stop Jeb and his friends from cooking up ways to bypass the State Constitution and the clear will of the people.

They proceeded to develop voucher programs masquerading as something else: tax credits, scholarships, whatever.

The Orlando Sentinel just concluded an investigation of Florida’s voucher programs and concluded it is an unregulated sector that enrolls 140,000 students and costs taxpayers $1 Billion per year. All in a state whose Constitution prohibits vouchers and whose voters opposed changing the Constitution.

The series begins like this:

“Private schools in Florida will collect nearly $1 billion in state-backed scholarships this year through a system so weakly regulated that some schools hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records.

“The limited oversight of Florida’s scholarship programs allowed a principal under investigation for molesting a student at his Brevard County school to open another school under a new name and still receive the money, an Orlando Sentinel investigation found.

“Another Central Florida school received millions of dollars in scholarships, sometimes called school vouchers, for nearly a decade even though it repeatedly violated program rules, including hiring staff with criminal convictions.

“Despite the problems, the number of children using Florida’s scholarship programs has more than tripled in the past decade to 140,000 students this year at nearly 2,000 private schools. If students using Florida Tax Credit, McKay and Gardiner scholarships made up their own school district, they would be Florida’s sixth-largest in student population, just ahead of the Jacksonville area.

“The scholarships are good. The problem is the school,” said Edda Melendez, an Osceola County mother. “They need to start regulating the private schools.”

“Melendez complained to the state last year about a private school in Kissimmee. The school promised specialized help for her 5-year-old twin sons, who have autism, but one of their teachers was 21 years old and didn’t have a bachelor’s degree or experience with autistic children.

“I feel bad for all the parents who didn’t know what’s going on there,” she told the state.

“Last year, nearly a quarter of all state scholarship students — 30,000 — attended 390 private schools in Central Florida. The schools received $175.6 million worth of the scholarships, which are for children from low-income families and those with disabilities.

“During its investigation, the Sentinel visited more than 30 private schools in Orange, Seminole, Lake, Osceola and Brevard counties, reviewed thousands of pages of public records and interviewed dozens of parents, private school operators, state officials and policy experts.

“Unlike public schools, private schools, including those that accept the state scholarships, operate free from most state rules. Private school teachers and principals, for example, are not required to have state certification or even college degrees.

“One Orlando school, which received $500,000 from the public programs last year, has a 24-year-old principal still studying at a community college.

“Nor do private schools need to follow the state’s academic standards. One curriculum, called Accelerated Christian Education or ACE, is popular in some private schools and requires students to sit at partitioned desks and fill out worksheets on their own for most of the day, with little instruction from teachers or interaction with classmates.

“And nearly anything goes in terms of where private school classes meet. The Sentinel found scholarship students in the same office building as Whozz Next Bail Bonds on South Orange Blossom Trail, in a Colonial Drive day-care center that reeked of dirty diapers and in a school near Winter Park that was facing eviction and had wires dangling from a gap in the office ceiling and a library with no books, computers or furniture.

“However, scholarships can be appealing because some private schools offer rigorous academics on modern campuses, unique programs or small classes that allow students more one-on-one attention, among other benefits. Bad experiences at public schools also fuel interest in scholarships.

“Parents opting out of public schools often cite worries about large campuses, bullying, what they call inadequate services for special-needs children and state-required testing. Escaping high-stakes testing is such a scholarship selling point that one private school administrator refers to students as “testing refugees.”

“But the Sentinel found problems with Florida’s programs, which make up the largest school voucher and scholarship initiative in the nation:

► At least 19 schools submitted documents since 2012 that misled state officials about fire or health inspections, including some with forged inspectors’ names or altered dates. Eight of the schools still received scholarship money with the state’s blessing.

► Upset parents sometimes complain to the state, assuming it has some say over academic quality at these private schools. It does not. “They can conduct their schools in the manner they believe to be appropriate,” reads a typical response from the Florida Department of Education to a parent.

► The education department has stopped some schools from taking scholarships when they violated state rules, from the one in Fort Lauderdale led by a man convicted of stealing $20,000 to a school in Gainesville caught depositing scholarship checks for students no longer enrolled. But the department often gives schools second chances and sometimes doesn’t take action even when alerted to a problem.

► Florida’s approach is so hands-off that a state directory lists private schools that can accommodate students with special needs — such as autism — without evidence the schools’ staff is trained to handle disabilities.”

Since Betsy DeVos considers Florida to be a national model, you should read this series and learn what’s heading your way and stop it before it gets into your state.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-schools-without-rules-story-gallery-storygallery.html

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Education Reform, Ethics, Florida, Lies

Denver: Jeanne Kaplan on the District’s Pathetic Lies about Academic Performance

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2017 //
14

Jeanne Kaplan served for two terms as an elected board member in Denver.

Since she retired from the board, she has watched with a combination of disgust and rage as the district statisticians spin the data to make it appear that students are making dramatic progress

In the last board election, Dark money poured in to buy all seven seats on the school board for friends of corporate reform. Education Reform Now and Stand for Children brought in large sums to secure control.

This is the way the game is played: make a big deal out of growth and try not to talk about current performance.

She writes:

“If you have an important school board election coming up in less than a month and you want to protect your incumbent candidates and your “reform” agenda, and

“If community meeting after community meeting implores you, the District, NOT to close any more schools but rather put real time and resources into the schools with very high concentrations of students living in poverty and not speaking English as their first language and these schools are located in Board Districts where the seats are being contested, and

“Even if you have been warned repeatedly from both sides of the philosophical education debate that so much emphasis on GROWTH over STATUS is misleading, and

“If all of these decisions are determined by high stakes test scores where proficiencies are terrible (39% in reading and 30% in math) and achievement gaps enormous (the highest in the state and among the highest in the nation),

“WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Answer: Change how you calculate school success and rankings, and then put all your public relations minions to work to tout the importance of growth and to downplay the importance of grade level competency.”

Categories Accountability, Denver, Lies, Testing

Trump and Common Core: He Makes No Effort to Get Rid of It

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2017 //
41

It is not unusual to say that Trump lied about something. It happens every day.

But he does try to keep his campaign promises. He has tried and failed to build the Wall, and Mexico won’t pay for it. He has tried and failed to get rid of Obamacare.

But he hasn’t even tried to get rid of Common Core, which he promised to do. Everyone he interviewed for Education Secretary–including Eva Moskowitz and Michelle Rhee–supports Common Core.

Betsy DeVos was a supporter of Common Core before she became Secretary of Education, like her mentor Jeb Bush. She recently nominated at least three strong supporters of Common Core–former Michigan Governor John Engler, former North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue, and test expert Greg Cizek, who helped develop one of the Common Core tests (Smarter Balanced Assessment)–to the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

DeVos has not made any effort to discourage use of the Common Core.

Opponents of the CCSS: you were hoaxed! Trump will not get rid of it, nor will Betsy DeVos.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Common Core, Lies, NAEP

Facebook is Failing to Identify and Exclude Fake News, Conspiracy Theories

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2017 //
86

Jon Christian, writing in The Atlantic, reports that Facebook has not been successful in identifying and screening out fake news (Campbell Brown–a close friend of Betsy DeVos– was hired by Facebook to lead this effort earlier this year). No matter how outlandish the story or the headline, people will read it and believe it if it confirms their own views.

Facebook’s fact-checking efforts are on the rocks. Five months after the social-media giant debuted a third-party tool to stop the spread of dubious news stories on its platform, some of its fact-checker partners have begun expressing frustration that the company won’t share data on whether or not the program has been effective.

In the absence of that official data, a study by Yale researchers made waves last week by suggesting that flagging a post as “disputed” makes readers just a slim 3.7 percent less likely to believe its claim. Among Trump supporters and young people, the fact-checking program could even backfire: Those respondents were more likely to believe unflagged posts after they saw flags on others.* That concern was echoed earlier this year by the actor James Woods, who tweeted that a disputed tag on Facebook was the “best endorsement a story could have.”

The study—as well as ongoing revelations about how Russian troll farms might have used Facebook ads to meddle with the U.S. presidential election—has been stirring up the debate about whether and how social-media companies ought to police misinformation and propaganda on their platforms. Facebook claims that its efforts are working, and criticized the Yale researchers’ methodology, but a growing body of scholarship shows how difficult fact-checking has become online. With roots in old-fashioned cognitive biases that are amplified by social-media echo chambers, the problem is revealing itself to be extraordinarily difficult to fight at an institutional level.

Open the link to read the full article and the embedded links.

Facebook is no doubt the most powerful media platform in the world. If it spreads lies and conspiracy theories, this poses a huge problem for everyone. It is an especially big problem for a democracy, which relies on having an informed public. If the public is fed a steady diet of lies, the liars win.

The Founding Fathers believed that the great enemy of sound government was ignorance. They could not have imagined a world in which lies and propaganda are even worse than ignorance. And travel faster.

Categories Fraud, Ignorance, Lies, Media, Propaganda

Steven Singer Was Blocked by Facebook for Writing This Post: ”School Choice Is a Lie”

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2017 //
20

Steven Singer was blocked by Facebook for a week because of the post you are about to read. This post “violated community standards.” Steven Singer was censored by an algorithm. Or, Steven Singer was censored by the Political Defense team that tries to prevent any criticism of charter schools and TFA. This team swarms Facebook and other social media and complains that a post or tweet is “offensive” and the machine blocks the offending post.

This is the post by Steven Singer that has been blocked. This is the lie about “school choice” that DeVos and ALEC and charter promoters don’t want you to read.

He writes:

Neoliberals and right-wingers are very good at naming things.

Doing so allows them to frame the narrative, and control the debate.

Nowhere is this more obvious than with “school choice” – a term that has nothing to do with choice and everything to do with privatization.

It literally means taking public educational institutions and turning them over to private companies for management and profit.

He adds:

There are two main types: charter and voucher schools.

Charter schools are run by private interests but paid for exclusively by tax dollars. Voucher schools are run by private businesses and paid for at least in part by tax dollars.

Certainly each state has different laws and different legal definitions of these terms so there is some variability of what these schools are in practice. However, the general description holds in most cases. Voucher schools are privately run at (at least partial) public expense. Charter schools are privately run but pretend to be public. In both cases, they’re private – no matter what their lobbyists or marketing campaigns say to the contrary.

They take money from public schools that serve all students and give it to privatized schools that choose their students and expel those they don’t want.

Charters and vouchers are the Walmartization of public education. They introduce corporate chains to run what used to be neighborhood public schools. The only difference is that everyone may shop at Walmart, but not everyone who applies will be accepted at a choice school. The school does the choosing, not the family.

Steven reinforces what I wrote in Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. “School choice” is a hoax, a lie. It is promoted by rightwing ideologues and by Democratic politicians hungry for funding by the financial sector, which sees schools as an emerging industry. Don’t be fooled.

School choice is privatization. And privatization is very bad for those who are not chosen. And very bad for our democracy.

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, For-Profit, Lies, Privatization, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Steve Nelson: In War or Education, Beware of Propaganda

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2017 //
26

Steve Nelson, veteran educator and board member of the Network for Public Education, warns that we must protect outrselves against lies and propaganda. Ken Burns’ brilliant series on the Vietnam War shows how we blundered into a horrific war and picked to the burden of defending the French colonial empire.

There are other lies and propaganda that surround us every day. One is the lie that our public schools must be “saved” by privatization. Not true.

He writes:

“The war on public education, like the war in Vietnam, is being prosecuted on the basis of propaganda. In the 1960’s it was the myth of the threat of communism toppling one nation after another like dominos. It wasn’t true and it certainly wasn’t implicit or explicit in the conflict between South and North Vietnam.

“Now, in the 21st century, the war on education is being prosecuted in the name of another set of myths: that public schools are failing – they are not; that school choice gives families more opportunity – it does not; that teachers unions serve only to protect incompetence – a vile, unsupportable lie; and that competition and free markets can deliver everything, including education, with greater quality and efficiency – a heroically grandiose and inaccurate assertion.

“The other striking facet of the wars that bookend my adult life is the way in which the least advantaged among us are used as fodder for the ambitions of those most privileged.

“America’s casualties in Vietnam were disproportionately skewed toward young men of color and relatively poor, rural white men. The draft was ostensibly color blind, but privilege finds it way through the law. As most folks know, deferments for education and other dodges were easily sought and obtained for those with privilege. The cases of George W. Bush and Donald Trump are particularly vivid examples. But if you were poor and black, the choices were jail or service, not Yale or the podiatrist’s office.

“At least in 1967 no one claimed that the Vietnam War was being waged on behalf of the black men and boys who crawled through the jungle. But now, in the 21st century, the war on public education is being waged on the disgusting false propaganda that suggests education reform as a way of improving life for poor folks, particularly girls and boys of color. That is a bald-faced lie too.

“Education reform, particularly in urban charters, is touted as the salvation for communities of color when, in fact, education reform is furthering the decimation of poor communities of color. Education is a $700 billion “market.” As in the 60’s, there is money to be made.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Lies, Propaganda

A Teacher in Florida Reacts to the LAUSD Election

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2017 //
38

The good guys lost. The guys with the backing of the billionaires won. The public schools of Los Angeles will shrink in numbers as the charter industry takes charge of the district.

Although the charter candidates wrapped themselves in the banner of Obama and Duncan, their victory is indeed a victory for the Trump-DeVos agenda.

A teacher in Florida reacted:


I am sitting here at 6 am in So. Florida crying. I feel like I am living in a nightmare and can’t wake up. So many good teachers jumping ship and the new ones coming in are doing so with no intention of making this nearly impossible job a career. With the chaos of moving ESE behaviors into the gen ed popuation as it is “least restricitve” to “restorative justice” (time out for desk throwers and send ’em back to class), overworked and overwhelmed guidance counselors, shared psychologists with 3-4 schools and an IDIOT state legislature that loves “births”, hates “lives” and depises the poor. Does anyone else see this as the beginning of the end of a free society or am I catastrophizing? What is wrong with this country? Why can’t the public see what is happening? If they see, why don’t they care? The defeat in teacher’s eyes is palpable. It can’ t continue.

As devastating as the defeat in Los Angeles is, we cannot give up hope for the future. As the saying goes, it is always darkest just before the dawn. This darkness is deep right now, and the dawn is nowhere in sight.

But the only certainty of defeat is giving up. The loss in Los Angeles was due to money and lies, but also apathy.

The message is clear: if we don’t rally the people, the parents, the citizens who owe their education to public schools, we will lose. If we give up trying, we will lose. Those of us who believe in democratic control of public schools that take responsibility for all children, that are financially and academically accountantable, that hire only certified staff, must fight on.

We must not lose hope. Without hope, we are lost. Hard as it is to sustain hope, we must persist. To abandon the struggle is to abandon our belief in a basic democratic institution. We can’t and we won’t. The struggle is not over, nor is it lost. Consider the loss in L.A. to be a loud wake-up call to fight the free-market ideologues and entrepreneurs. Consider it a challenge to redouble our efforts to save public education and resist privatization.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Lies, Los Angeles, Privatization, Propaganda, Resistance

Los Angeles: The Scurrilous Smear Campaign Against Steve Zimmer

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
14

The run-off campaign in District 4 in Los Angeles for School Board has turned into a national issue. The race between Steve Zimmer, president of the Los Angeles school board, and his challenger, Nick Melvoin, has become an epic struggle between supporters of public schools and supporters of privatization.

Zimmer entered teaching through Teach for America but, unlike the typical TFA, he stayed in the classroom in Los Angeles for 17 years.

Blogger “Red Queen in L.A.,” a parent of children in LAUSD, says this is a dirty and disgraceful campaign, and almost all the dirt has come from Nick Melvoin’s camp. Melvoin is running a campaign based on lies, propaganda, and smears. He is smearing not only Zimmer, but public education. He doesn’t deserve to be elected.

Steve Zimmer understands the gravity of his responsibility as president of the school board. He is a man of honesty, candor, and dignity. Melvoin is a puppet of out-of-town billionaires.

She writes:


Negative Ads Undermine Democracy

Mostly, the fourth board district school board race has been one of incessant negativity and lies. Why do we permit this uncivilized behavior? I can tell you in walking my neighborhood I am met with deep weariness, wariness and hostility. This is the legacy of democracy abused. This race has been nothing if not about Big Lies and electoral abuse, and that’s a lesson being bought – and paid for – dearly.

Independent Committee expenditures (IECs, the new normal for “PAC”s) in favor of both candidates have been about the same, averaging $1.8 million dollars at the moment. Each. You read that right. Think of the children. (Think of the printers.)

What is not similar is IC expenditures in opposition to their candidate. Melvoin’s IC devotes half an order of magnitude more in slandering Zimmer than his IC spends to oppose Melvoin.

Thus quite apart from the overall total spent which is obscene, a dramatic distinction between candidates is evident from what’s being spent to smear the other guy. Zimmer’s adherents spent less than one-quarter, 25%, of that average toward denigrating their opposition ($441K). Melvoin’s buddies sunk 140% of that average spent in support of their candidate ($2.4 million) on negative ads.

In fact, the amount Zimmer’s IEC devoted to negative campaigning is so comparatively trivial, the negligible difference between both campaign’s positive expenditures, which is just 6% – this sum ($114K) is 25% of what Zimmer’s camp spent in negativity altogether. His challenger spent 5.5x as much as the incumbent in stuffing our mailboxes with scurrilous lies.

So the current overall total of IECs is $6.4 million, and the electorate has responded with a resounding: “Beat It”.
The blowback to our electoral democracy is fierce. When I try to speak with my own neighbors with whom I have worked side-by-side for over twenty years improving their neighborhood, my neighborhood, everyone’s lives, their doors stay shut and they make clear they are fortressed against hearing anything “political”.

What they have absorbed are buzz words: “bad”, “failing”, “violent”, “drop-out”, “waste”, “fraud”, “scandal” – and on and on and on.

What they have forgotten is that their littlest neighbors, my children, are part of that system being smeared. And I volunteer within that system improving it just like I work to improve our neighborhoods….

That is what is Trumpian about the might of the California Charter Schools Association’s money and their power in this battle for the school board. Intimidation, slander and ultimately electoral paralysis. They strive to overwhelm us with false equivalence such that even the stark consequence of ideological differences so riven as represented by these candidates, is obscured.

Please do not let all this money win your single democratic voice. You must turn out to the polls in order to use it. This is the one and only way to assert Resistance.

VOTE FOR STEVE ZIMMER ON MAY 16:

KEEP OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM PUBLIC

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Lies, Los Angeles, Privatization

Los Angeles Times: Trump’s War on Journalism

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2017 //
15

This is the fourth and last editorial published by the Los Angeles Times about Trump. It contains links to the preceding three. These are strange times we live in. We have a president who lies and doubles-down on his lies and is incapable of apologizing; a president who refuses to divest or even disclose his worldwide financial holdings, which may be affected by decisions he makes; a man who trusts his immediate family members more than his cabinet to carry out government functions; a man without honor or integrity or knowledge or decency or even a sense of irony (after declaring April to be Sexual Assault Awareness Month, he defended Fox News host Bill O’Reilly who has settled multiple sexual harassment complaints; Trump said O’Reilly had “done nothing wrong.”)

Here is the editorial:

PART VI
Friday
By THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

APRIL 5, 2017

In Donald Trump’s America, the mere act of reporting news unflattering to the president is held up as evidence of bias. Journalists are slandered as “enemies of the people.”

Facts that contradict Trump’s version of reality are dismissed as “fake news.” Reporters and their news organizations are “pathetic,” “very dishonest,” “failing,” and even, in one memorable turn of phrase, “a pile of garbage.”

Trump is, of course, not the first American president to whine about the news media or try to influence coverage. President George W. Bush saw the press as elitist and “slick.” President Obama’s press operation tried to exclude Fox News reporters from interviews, blocked many officials from talking to journalists and, most troubling, prosecuted more national security whistle-blowers and leakers than all previous presidents combined.

But Trump being Trump, he has escalated the traditionally adversarial relationship in demagogic and potentially dangerous ways.

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Most presidents, irritated as they may have been, have continued to acknowledge — at least publicly — that an independent press plays an essential role in American democracy. They’ve recognized that while no news organization is perfect, honest reporting holds leaders and institutions accountable; that’s why a free press was singled out for protection in the 1st Amendment and why outspoken, unfettered journalism is considered a hallmark of a free country.

Trump doesn’t seem to buy it. On his very first day in office, he called journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth.”

Since then he has regularly condemned legitimate reporting as “fake news.” His administration has blocked mainstream news organizations, including The Times, from briefings and his secretary of State chose to travel to Asia without taking the press corps, breaking a longtime tradition.

He apparently hopes to discredit, disrupt or bully into silence anyone who challenges his version of reality.

This may seem like bizarre behavior from a man who consumes the news in print and on television so voraciously and who is in many ways a product of the media. He comes from reality TV, from talk radio with Howard Stern, from the gossip pages of the New York City tabloids, for whose columnists he was both a regular subject and a regular source.

But Trump’s strategy is pretty clear: By branding reporters as liars, he apparently hopes to discredit, disrupt or bully into silence anyone who challenges his version of reality. By undermining trust in news organizations and delegitimizing journalism and muddling the facts so that Americans no longer know who to believe, he can deny and distract and help push his administration’s far-fetched storyline.

It’s a cynical strategy, with some creepy overtones. For instance, when he calls journalists “enemies of the people,” Trump (whether he knows it or not) echoes Josef Stalin and other despots.

But it’s an effective strategy. Such attacks are politically expedient at a moment when trust in the news media is as low as it’s ever been, according to Gallup. And they’re especially resonant with Trump’s supporters, many of whom see journalists as part of the swamp that needs to be drained.

Of course, we’re not perfect. Some readers find news organizations too cynical; others say we’re too elitist. Some say we downplay important stories, or miss them altogether. Conservatives often perceive an unshakable liberal bias in the media (while critics on the left see big, corporate-owned media institutions like The Times as hopelessly centrist).

The news media remain an essential component in the democratic process and should not be undermined by the president.

To do the best possible job, and to hold the confidence of the public in turbulent times, requires constant self-examination and evolution. Soul-searching moments — such as those that occurred after the New York Times was criticized for its coverage of the Bush administration and the Iraq war or, more recently, when the media failed to take Trump’s candidacy seriously enough in the early days of his campaign — can help us do a better job for readers. Even if we are not faultless, the news media remain an essential component in the democratic process and should not be undermined by the president.

Some critics have argued that if Trump is going to treat the news media like the “opposition party” (a phrase his senior aide Steve Bannon has used), then journalists should start acting like opponents too. But that would be a mistake. The role of an institution like the Los Angeles Times (or the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or CNN) is to be independent and aggressive in pursuit of the truth — not to take sides. The editorial pages are the exception: Here we can and should express our opinions about Trump. But the news pages, which operate separately, should report intensively without prejudice, partiality or partisanship.

Given the very real dangers posed by this administration, we should be indefatigable in covering Trump, but shouldn’t let his bullying attitude persuade us to be anything other than objective, fair, open-minded and dogged.

The fundamentals of journalism are more important than ever. With the president of the United States launching a direct assault on the integrity of the mainstream media, news organizations, including The Times, must be courageous in our reporting and resolute in our pursuit of the truth.

Categories Freedom of the Press, Lies, Trump
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