Education

If the cheers of Columbia University's Class of 2009 are any indication, the future of journalism will be looking for a federal bailout.

Washington Times correspondent Christina Bellantoni live-tweeted today's event, noting the remarks from university president Lee Bollinger appealing for more government-owned media outlets. Bollinger also received "big cheers" for his call for increased spending on public broadcasting.

Here are the relevant tweets from Bellantoni's feed in reverse chronological order (emphasis mine):

Update #2 (16:15 EDT): Greg Hengler of Townhall.com has video of the interview mentioned in my first update. He notes that while Brewer is hot under the collar, the student she talked to didn't seem to care that Obama was not receiving an honorary degree tonight.

Update (14:45 EDT): A few minutes ago Brewer pressed an ASU student for his thoughts on Obama not receiving an honorary doctorate. As usual, she was quite irate at the perceived snub.

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer is bound and determined to maintain a grudge on behalf of President Obama against a university at which he's honored to give the Class of 2009 commencement speech this evening.

Today, via her Twitter account, Brewer picked up on her televised rant from early April [video below page break] about how Arizona State University is neglecting to give President Obama an honorary degree when he delivers the commencement speech there this evening:

Tonight the Pres. gives commencement speech at ASU. I'm still shocked ASU won't give him an honorary degree. Seems rude & illogical.

As NewsBusters contributor Jeff Poor noted on April 10:

A new propaganda video created by an extreme environmental activist is making its way into America's classrooms and The New York Times loves the whole idea. Enviro obsessive Annie Leonard, Greenpeace member and activist, has created a 20 minute video filled with anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda to encourage kids to eschew "stuff," calling the presentation "The Story of Stuff."

Leonard's propaganda piece is so anti-American she even begins her video by saying that her "friends" say she should describe the United States by using the symbol of a military tank because "it's true in many countries and increasingly in our own." And why is a tank "increasingly" the symbol of the USA? Because "more than 50% of our federal tax money is going for our military." Naturally, this misleading propaganda doesn't mention that a large portion of that federal military spending ends up going to the weekly pay and health care of our soldiers, something apparently Ms. Leonard is against. She goes on to say that a government's job is to "take care of us, that's their job." Here she is trying to promote dependency and proves that she has no clue what a government is really for -- especially in the U.S. system.

President Obama is proposing a measure today to slowly kill the D.C. school voucher program by attrition. Because the liberal National Education Association wants Congress to immediately kill the program, the Washington Post's Bill Turque and Shailagh Murray hailed Obama's plan as "an attempt to navigate a middle way on a contentious issue."

President Obama will propose setting aside enough money for all 1,716 students in the District's voucher program to continue receiving grants for private school tuition until they graduate from high school, but he would allow no new students to join the program, administration officials said yesterday.

The proposal, to be released in budget documents today, is an attempt to navigate a middle way on a contentious issue. School choice advocates, including Republicans and many low-income families, say the program gives poor children better access to quality education. Teachers unions and other education groups active in the Democratic Party regard vouchers as a drain on public education that benefits relatively few students, and they say the students don't achieve at appreciably higher levels at their new schools.

As if school kids didn't get enough liberal propaganda. Whether parents know it or not, millions of students across the country have been receiving biased news magazines in the classroom. Without adult guidance, children are at risk to take as fact the consistently liberal views of Time magazine.

Through Great American Opportunities, people can order magazine subscriptions and earn Time for Kids subscriptions for the school of their choice. Kindergarten through sixth-graders will then receive this publication free of charge.

According to its website, "The Time For Kids Program helps schools receive the best in current weekly classroom news magazines for students in grades K-6 at no cost. TFK delivers three weekly news magazines to over 3.9 million students."

This program comes from a magazine that has published articles on how kids are bad for the environment. As CMI noted previously, Time's article on May 8 described this environmental problem:

Last Friday, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer expressed her shock and disbelief that Arizona State University would not award President Barack Obama an honorary degree since he was their commencement speaker.

However, over the weekend, the University announced it would instead name "their most important scholarship" after Obama - instead of awarding the president an honorary degree.

"Here's the statement from ASU President Michael Crow: ‘We never felt an honorary degree was the only or event the best means of honoring his tremendous service to our country,'" Brewer said. "‘Naming the scholarship program after President Obama that will affect the lives of thousands of students is an honor befitting, not only the president's exceptional achievements, but also his value as an individual.'"

That didn't impress Brewer, responding on MSNBC in a segment on April 13. "Whoop-dee-do! That's my reaction," Brewer said

The University of Maryland -- my alma mater, for full disclosure -- has made national headlines this week with a pirate-themed porn flick originally scheduled for a full-length screening last Saturday at the campus theater. Under pressure from state legislators, campus officials backed down, yet a student group stepped in the gap, pledging to screen the film in a lecture hall yesterday evening.

Only 30 minutes of the feature-length "Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge" were screened last night by a group of students running for election in the school's student government, but it was coupled with a panel discussion on freedom of speech, featuring an ACLU representative and some campus college professors.

Covering the story, Tirza Austin of the student newspaper The Diamondback noted that even in the "fraction of the film" screened, "the segment was still explicit and included two different sets of threesomes - one with 'Devil Stick Willy' and two blondes in corsets."

But that wasn't enough for the Diamondback's editors, who included a link to video of the panel discussion AND film screening.

It seems that deciding which college is best for gay students goes beyond the usual questions of affordable or not, private or public, close to home or far away, and Big Ten or Big East. It also involves finding out which colleges are considered most sensitive to LGBT concerns.

This week's "My Story" section in Newsweek focused on the plight of freelance journalist Julie Halpert's lesbian daughter as she narrowed down her college choices. Halpert also managed to imply that police officers and Marines are homophobes in her exploration of the topic.

Halpert used unfortunate incidents that LBGT high school students experienced as a way to illustrate the need for LGBT-tailored policies in colleges. She highlighted 25-year-old Jacob Weldon, "who became estranged from his parents during his senior year in high school after he told his father, a police officer and former Marine, that he was gay. (He's now reconciled with him.)" Halpert continued, "Growing up in a conservative town in Texas, he became accustomed to having "fag" scrawled across his windshield."

The Associated Press did a masterful job of portraying Republican Governors as perpetrating "noncompliance" for how they want to spend Obama's education stimulus money. But, even as the AP spends the top half of a story wagging fingers at those nasty Republicans for not spending Obama's generous gift the right way, buried in the story it is revealed that the fault is really with how the stimulus bill was written, not in how GOP governors wish to spend it. Ah, but it's much better to make Republicans look like bad guys than it is to blame Democrat Congressmen for writing a bad bill, isn't it?

Even worse, the point AP is trying to promulgate is that these evil governors are hurting "the children" by not spending on education the way Obama says they should. Yes, the AP and the Obama administration are again hiding massive increases in federal control behind help for "the children." It's agenda journalism at its finest... or worst, depending on your point of view.

The Albany Times Union recently showed the breadth of their journalistic abilities by doing a head scratching piece on ‘Baracking' - a supposed new culture-changing form of slang.  Ah, so that's what the kids are calling it...

Scott Waldman of the Union apparently suffered from what those in the business would call ‘a slow news day' this past weekend.  As such, he ran with a piece on two local high school seniors who have seemingly foregone a desire to excel at English, and instead have developed new phrases that play upon the President's name. 

Waldman interviews the pair, and then makes a mind-boggling extrapolation, interpreting the action of these two students as a demonstration that,

Barack Obama's rise to the White House already has changed the way young people talk to one another,' and that this is simply ‘a natural progression of Obama's prominent spot in pop culture.

Exactly what phrases are sweeping the nation these days?  How about these allegedly ‘creative' gems...

What up, my Obama?

Barack's in the White House now - which means cool it.

And the appalling response to someone sneezing - Barack you.

Now for something completely different, or at least something pretty rare on network TV. ABC’s John Stossel has paired up with Drew Carey and the libertarian Reason TV for tonight’s 20/20 special headlined “Bailouts and Bull,” on the limits and unintended consequences of government involvement in the economy and in our lives.

While Stossel is known for his skepticism of big government solutions, most journalists at the big networks have been accepting of the premises of President Obama’s interventionist approach, not challenging his assertions the way President Bush’s economic policies were frequently challenged.

Stossel will tackle the idea that all economists support Obama’s government-spending-as-stimulus policies, liberal claims that the American Dream is now out of reach for most workers, and the idea that a fence along the Mexican border will really stem the tide of illegal immigrants.

Los Angeles's NBC television affiliate must not have gotten the memo telling them that they should not utter the name of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), lest anyone reach the "wrong" conclusions.

NBC Los Angeles is the only media outlet I have found thus far to identify ACORN's presence in a story about a "disruptive display of disobedience" by members the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) at a school board meeting Tuesday (the story credit is to "Associated Press/NBC Los Angeles," but as you will see later, I found no AP story containing an ACORN reference).

Here is the story headline that the Google News crawler apparently originally found:

Look at how it changed.

ABC and CNN, two reputable news sources, have done their part in promoting a “study” that posits conservatives are the nation’s biggest consumers of online pornography. Problem is, many think the study is full of holes and fuzzy math. ABC and CNN bought it: hook, line and sinker.

“Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers” is a New Scientist article by Ewen Callaway that alleges that those who reside in “red” states, typically associated with support of the GOP, purchase more pornography than those in “blue” states. He cites a nationwide study that analyzed credit card receipts from a “popular online adult entertainment provider” in various states.

At the end of Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric introduced a segment on Tysheoma Bethea, a 14-year-old girl who attended Obama’s address to Congress: "President Obama has said one of the biggest adjustments of his new job is living in a bubble. Now, to combat that problem, he started to read a handful of letters everyday from average Americans. One letter, written by an eighth grader from Dillon, South Carolina, caught his eye, and her story caught ours."

Correspondent Mark Strassmann then reported: "Thanks to Tysheoma Bethea, everyone at J.V. Martin Junior High now shares the audacity of hope...Last night, the 14-year-old watched President Obama read America her letter to Congress, a plea to build a new school for her small town." Strassmann described the situation at Bethea’s impoverished school and how Obama had instantly inspired them: "Too often at J.V. Martin Junior High dreams die early. 85% of students live below the poverty line. This school, built in 1896, is falling apart. For generations here, hope has been in shambles. The dropout rate is 60% and the daily fight is against a poverty of the spirit. But last night, this junior high reconnected to hope."

So where did the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Sabrina Eaton go for opinions on what Michelle Malkin earlier today called "the massive mortgage entitlement campaign launched by President Barack Obama"?

Why, they went to "housing experts," of course.

But the people she quoted aren't builders, realtors, mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, or economists. Nor, based on the area's results, are they experts in helping individuals and families make smart housing decisions, or in helping communities build property values.

No-no-no. The people Eaton consulted as "housing experts" were an "organizing project executive director," the head of the "Columbus-based Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio," and a county treasurer. Not surprisingly, these alleged "experts" liked Obama's plan, but conditioned their praise with the requisite "there should be more" caveats  -- both in terms of money and coercion.

Here is some of Eaton's Wednesday report (bolds are mine, and reinforce points above):

So you think Barack Obama has done nothing yet but coddle terrorists, kill unborn babies, and shove through Congress a spending bill of gargantuan proportions?  Well, think again, Buster.  The Associated Press reported in passing yesterday that The One also "has done wonders to bring the office of the presidency to life for young people."

Now precisely what those wonders are isn't detailed.  We have to take the AP's word for it.  Still, the piece titled "New e-book captures kids' hopes, dreams for Obama" is brimming with the hope and change we've come to expect in mainstream media accounts of Obama.  The article begins:

NEW YORK (AP) — End war, forever. Make the planet greener. Please help my dad find work. Make it rain candy!

Thousands of kids detailed their hopes and expectations for President Barack Obama in letters and drawings as part of a worldwide project, with 150 chosen for a free e-book being released on Presidents Day.

Most had tall orders for the new guy in the White House.

Anthony Pape, 10, of DuBois, Pa., offered: "I hope that we will have no war ever again. I mean why are we fighting why can't we all be friends."

Fellow 10-year-old Sasha Townsend of Soquel, Calif., had a similar request, and then some.

"I would appreciate it if you would try to make this a greener planet and try to bring home the troops and end the war," the fifth-grader wrote. "I am very luckey because I am not part of a military family, but it saddens me to hear about all the people who die in Iraque and know that somewhere In the world people are greiving over a lost family member."

The Associated Press is taken with the new e-book full of letters to President Obama published by the National Education Association (NEA) a liberal teachers union. Naturally, all the kids in this book are filled to overflowing with leftist talking points like pushing the anti-military angle -- one kid even said he was "very luckey because I am not part of a military family."

The kids were all indoctrinated with concern over global warming, infused with unthinking anti-war sentiment, disdain for our soldiers, and enthusiastic for Father Obama and his big government machine. Sadly, it appears that not one of these kids have been taught by their teachers about liberty, freedom, personal responsibility and American principles.

On a Friday night, where can you look to find a little anti-religious media bias? No other than MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show."

In her "Ms. Information" segment, Maddow engaged in a rant about Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., opposition to language in the stimulus bill that could forbid the practice of religion in institutions of higher learning where stimulus funds are used, as a Feb. 3 story by the Culture & Media Institute pointed out.

Maddow explained how this provision had been in the bill for over 40 years, then played a portion of DeMint's speech on her Feb. 6 MSNBC show.

"Student's can't meet together in their dorms, if that dorm has been repaired with this federal money and have a prayer group or a Bible study," DeMint said in the clip Maddow played. "[S]omeone is so hostile to religion that they're willing to stand in the schoolhouse door like the infamous George Wallace to deny people of faith from entering any campus building renovated by this bill. This cannot stand."

"For an illegal immigrant, getting into UCLA was the easy part," lamented the headline for a Groundhog Day article by Los Angeles Times's Jason Song.

"A San Pedro girl's undocumented status means no financial aid. Money is tight, classes are tough, and just getting to campus takes 2 1/2 hours," reads the subheader for Song's February 2 Column One story.

Yes, despite the national and state economies in recession and California in a major budget crunch, the L.A. Times has the chutzpah to lament the obstacles to a taxpayer-subsidized college education for an illegal immigrant.

It seems considering legal immigrants and American citizens the victims of the high social and governmental costs of illegal immigration just isn't in Song's liberal hymnal. Apparently Song's aim was to paint one Karina De La Cruz as a downtrodden Cinderella in need of a beneficent fairy godmother (emphasis mine):

Sleep a little, miss a lot.

As noted Friday evening (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Jake Tapper at ABC's Political Punch blog revealed that former South Dakota senator Tom Daschle, Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, had failed to pay over $100,000 in federal income taxes for 2005, 2006, and 2007, because he did not originally report the "the services of (a free) car and driver" provided to him by his employer, private equity firm InterMedia Advisers.

At 11:24 last night, Tapper posted a separate update (HT to NB commenter "slickwillie2001") indicating that Daschle's tax problems involve larger amounts, go well beyond the matter of a "mere" car and driver, and are not completely resolved (bolds are mine):

"Don't know much about history, don't know much biology."

Those famous lyrics from Sam Cooke's 1958 song, "Wonderful World," never rang truer than today. American students continue to test far behind the highest performing nations in science and math, according to the American Institutes for Research. And many would be hard pressed to name the three branches of government or the authors of the Constitution. But they are learning their environmental dos and don'ts. And, as the Jan. 27th CBS "Evening News" showed, the best students have truly internalized their green indoctrination.

That broadcast dedicated over two and a half minutes to children determined to live a "green" lifestyle. The children in this segment don't just recycle or turn off the lights; they have convinced their parents to buy eco-friendly light bulbs, wash their clothes in cold water, and even get an "untraditional" Christmas tree they could replant in the backyard.

Wow.

This unbylined Associated Press story (HT Michelle Malkin) doesn't really require any elaboration, except to note one thing -- It ends the debate over the existence of liberal/left media bias:

Exit question:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer could be going out of business.  And the culprit is . . . capitalism.  That's Pilgrim's Complaint. Tim Pilgrim, that is.  The professor of journalism at Western Washington University was quoted today in the P-I's article about its own pending demise. The P-I's parent company, the Hearst Corp., has put the paper up for sale, and prospects aren't good for finding a buyer.

But not to fear.  Prof. Pilgrim has a solution: 

[Pilgrim] suggested that the P-I staff buy the paper and run it at a lesser profit than Hearst requires -- perhaps assisted by a wealthy patron such as Bill Gates or Paul Allen.

CNN correspondent Joe Johns’ report on Monday’s American Morning heaped praise upon Sidwell Friends School, the new school for the Obama daughters. Johns read from one of the school’s own mission statements about its “Quaker values” and later described how President-Elect Obama apparently “often seems in tune with Quaker principles -- seeking consensus with others; talking rather than fighting with opponents; and, at least in the case of Iraq, if not Afghanistan, opposing war even when the majority supports it.” The correspondent also featured three clips from The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn, who gushed over school: “Sidwell is a happy school....it can be a really magical place.”

Johns began introducing Sidwell Friends as “among the elite private schools in Washington,” and set the laudatory tone of the report by playing the first clip from Quinn, who described the school as “very much about peace and community” and that it’s “very progressive.” He continued by highlighting how “the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now.”

Various "Good Morning America" hosts and reporters on Monday glowingly commented on the first day of school for young Sasha and Malia Obama at posh private institution Sidwell Friends. At the same time, they ignored the contradiction of President-elect Barack Obama opposing vouchers which would allow poor inner-city children in Washington D.C. to do the same thing.

Instead, reporter Claire Shipman cooed over Sidwell Friends and the exciting opportunities awaiting the Obama children. Speaking of ten-year old Malia and the school, she enthused, "It's an award winning, entirely green building, complete with organic lunches, one of the many things that appealed to her and her family." Regarding Sidwell Friends, which costs over $30,000 a year to attend, Shipman touted, "Seven-year-old Sasha has a 25-minute trip to the lower school campus in Bethesda, Maryland where the emphasis is on Quaker values." At no time did Shipman, or any other host in the three segments that followed, mention Obama's opposition to school choice programs and vouchers.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has launched a wonderful little feature that will run until Barack Obama takes the oath of office next month. They are calling it "Dear Mr. Obama" and it is a heartwarming exercise in child indoctrination and brainwashing. The Post-Gazette will be publishing letters from local students to Obama asking him for all sorts of global warming fixes, Iraq war enders, and big government programs.

Sadly, it appears that the government schools these kids have been subjected to have failed to teach their charges about anything like the American system, federalism, even science seems neglected. But they SURE taught their kiddies that government is there to spend, spend, spend, that government is to be treated like our collective parents, and that the war in Iraq is obviously an evil venture. Obviously.

And, yes little kiddies, The One, your very own Obamessiah, is flying to the rescue like a super hero. Cue the theme music -- I'd suggest the theme to 2001, like Elvis used, is appropriate for the sentiment here. The Obamessiah has entered the building!

It's hardly a secret that Chicago public schools chief executive Arne Duncan was the architect behind a failed plan to open a "gay-friendly" high school in the Windy City. But for some reason Washington Post staffer Maria Glod decided to keep that skeleton in the closet, leaving the fact out completely from her page A3 December 17 story, "Education Pick Is Called 'Down-to-Earth' Leader."

Glod set out in her 22-paragraph article to portray Duncan as an education reformed well-respected by both Democrats and Republicans and even garnering begrudging respect and even some allies among teachers unions and school bureaucrats who were at first wary of him.

The controvery over the proposed Social Justice Solidarity High School -- which was scrapped in a November 18 school board vote -- was completely left unmentioned although as Brad Haynes of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog reported yesterday:

**UPDATE** Duncan also tied to Chicago Annenberg Challenge organization employing terrorist William Ayers

So, how often do you think that the Old Media will mention that Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of Education, Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan, supported to be opened in Chicago a gay, lesbian and transgender high school? Any takers?

I have looked over many of the stories on Obama's pick for Sec of Ed, but seen mention of his support of the gay high school only a few times. Only three stories mentioned it out of the first 20 I checked. Even the Wall Street Journal didn't mention it in their announcement of the Obama pick.

The future of a media dominated by left-leaning professionals seems assured.  At least, it is if my experience addressing an Ithaca College course today is any indication.  Professor Wenmouth Williams, Jr. kindly invited me in to address two sections of his course on media and politics at Ithaca College's Park School of Communications.

Prof. Williams—who identified himself as a registered Dem—couldn't have been nicer or more gracious, and gave me absolute free rein.  After I spent a few minutes at the beginning of each section discussing NewsBusters and related subjects and offering my general take on the MSM and the elections, the students and I spent the rest of the hour exchanging ideas and generally talking politics.

Note to Chris Matthews: when mocking someone for using a ghostwriter, it's best to avoid doing so on a day when Hillary Clinton is prominently in the news . . .

On this evening's Hardball, Matthews went out of his way to mock Joe The Plumber for his use of a ghostwriter on his just-released book.  This on the day Hillary Clinton was in the headlines, having been named Barack Obama's Secretary of State.  You know, Hillary Clinton.  The woman famous, in writing "It Takes A Village," for failing to credit her . . . ghostwriter.