Left-wing ideology pervades education news coverage
Becket Adams
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The most powerful newsroom in the nation’s capital has taken a break from shielding a massive Chinese Communist data-mining operation from scrutiny to shield school administrators from parental scrutiny.
The Washington Post is not exactly crowning itself in glory these days.
“Schools forced to divert staff amid historic flood of records requests,” reads the headline of a March 27 Washington Post report. The subhead adds, “Districts are rushing to comply with complex queries as parents seek ‘transparency’ about what is taught.”
Enjoy the none-too-subtle use of square quotes around the word “transparency,” as if there is no legitimate reason a parent would ask for a review of his or her child’s curricula.
“In Fairfax County, the largest school division in Virginia, a surge of 258 records requests since the pandemic led to the hiring of a full-time [Freedom of Information Act] analyst and the purchase of a document review platform, costing the school division $72,000 annually,” the Washington Post reports.
It adds, “In total, the district earmarked $500,000 of its 2023 budget for FOIA matters.”
First, no: You are not crazy. This Washington Post article is clearly anti-transparency and all in deference to public bureaucrats. When it comes to parents vs. teachers, the “Democracy dies in darkness” newspaper apparently favors public officials over the individual. Only reporters, with their laminated badges and thousands of dollars in student debt, are allowed to file FOIA requests.
Secondly, the Virginia county that is supposedly scrambling to rearrange its budget to accommodate “FOIA matters” in 2021 signed a five-year $2.4 million contract with a data analytics company to collect confidential information on the county’s 180,000-plus K-12 school children for “social and emotional screening.” Also, in 2021, Fairfax County Public Schools paid a New York-based nonprofit group $49,600 for an “anti-bias community engagement policy.”
Earlier, in August 2020, Fairfax County Public Schools awarded professional racialist Ibram X. Kendi, author of Antiracist Baby, a $20,000 speech honorarium. The speech wasn’t even delivered in person. It was virtual. Later, in September of the same year, Fairfax County Public Schools cut Kendi a $24,000 check for his books. Naturally, not even one of these clearly nonessential expenditures is mentioned in the Washington Post report. We’re asked only to worry about the costs associated with parents asking to see what their children are learning.
This story is exactly as it seems. It’s a story about parents demanding greater transparency and accountability from public officials, accountability the parents are owed. It’s a story about parents simply asking school administrators what they’re teaching their children. It’s a story about parents using the tools made available by the institutions they subsidize to remain involved in their children’s formation. For the Washington Post, this is all disturbing — troubling even! As if the newspaper’s attack on transparency isn’t absurd enough, the Washington Post reiterated its criticism on social media in the form of a TikTok video.
“Schools are being flooded with records requests,” Chris Vazquez, an associate producer on the Washington Post’s “TikTok team,” said. “They come from parents and others scrutinizing what schools are teaching about race, gender and sexual orientation. And they’ve forced districts to reallocate funding and staff resources.”
What better way to protest parental information requests as an unfair burden on public bureaucrats than to publish a video on a social media platform owned by the Chinese Communist Party? It’s magnificent.
Whoopsie
The corporate press’s eagerness for activism results often in moments of completely avoidable embarrassment. Take, for example, NPR’s recent attempt to protest a sports governing body’s ruling regarding elite competitions for women.
“In regard to transgender athletes,” World Athletics announced in a March 23 statement, “the Council has agreed to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty from female World Rankings competition,” most notably from female track and field events.
The statement adds, “In terms of [athletes with differences of sex development] regulations, World Athletics has more than ten years of research and evidence of the physical advantages that these athletes bring to the female category.”
It continues, noting the organization currently has no data on transgender athletes competing internationally in athletics and therefore can’t provide specific data demonstrating either advantages or disadvantages or “the impact these athletes would have on the fairness of female competition in athletics.”
“In these circumstances, the Council decided to prioritize fairness and the integrity of the female competition before inclusion,” the statement reads.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe himself added, “Decisions are always difficult when they involve conflicting needs and rights between different groups, but we continue to take the view that we must maintain fairness for female athletes above all other considerations. We will be guided in this by the science around physical performance and male advantage which will inevitably develop over the coming years.”
He continued, saying, “As more evidence becomes available, we will review our position, but we believe the integrity of the female category in athletics is paramount.”
NPR ignored outright the group’s findings, opting instead to protest the decision via a supposedly straight news report.
On social media, NPR published the following news blurb (emphasis added): “The international governing body for track and field will ban trans women athletes from elite women’s competitions, citing a priority for fairness over inclusion despite limited scientific evidence of physical advantage.”
Did we read separate statements?
The double-bylined story also includes the following line: “The ban is part of a growing resistance against transgender women and girls in female sports.”
Interestingly enough, NPR deleted its original news blurb claiming there is “limited scientific evidence of physical advantage.” It took a second crack at the story, claiming this time that there is “limited scientific research involving elite trans athletes.”
NPR also published a correction, which reads, “An earlier tweet incorrectly stated there is limited scientific evidence of physical advantage. Existing research shows that higher levels of testosterone do impact athletic performance. But there’s limited research involving elite trans athletes in competition.”
But even this isn’t true. A study conducted by the British Journal of Sports Medicine proposes biological men who identify as women do indeed enjoy a distinct physical advantage over biological women. Also, there’s the simple fact men’s and women’s categories even exist in the first place. There’s also the fact that a biological woman who identifies as a man has never taken the podium in men’s athletics.
Guys, come on. Are we supposed to just forget or ignore these details? It’s clear NPR has a position on the matter and that it feels very strongly that biological men who identify as female should be allowed to compete in female athletic competitions. But NPR can at the very least double-check some of its assumptions before publishing.