FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Writing on the Wall Street Journal editorial page (10/1/09) under the headline “How Teachers Unions Lost the Media,” two education writers praised the press for turning on teachers, showing a “new attitude” that is in sync with today’s politics: Editorial pages of major papers nationwide have begun to demand accountability for schools, despite objections from […]
Teach for America is Exhibit A for the corporate media’s notion that an army of talented teachers stands waiting to take on the most difficult schools—if only the unions would get out of the way. The Peace Corps-modeled project in which college graduates do two-year stints in low-income schools has been a feel-good media topic […]
Few have championed the rights of children or humanized the need for decent, equitable education like author Jonathan Kozol. In a wide-ranging interview with FAIR’s Steve Rendall, Kozol discussed media coverage of the system’s problems and the radical potential of education. The following is adapted from that conversation. On the state of education policy […]
Race to the Top (RTTT), announced by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009, is a $4.4 billion grant program generating more conversation than its relatively small money amount might suggest. What has people talking is its competitive structure that forces cash-strapped states to make radical changes in education […]
Concern for Kindle I love Extra!, but I have a concern with the August 2010 cover. Having the titles of the three main articles appear inside the Amazon Kindle leads the reader to assume, as I did, that the articles are critical of Amazon’s book reviewing, Amazon stealing literature from the public and Amazon’s profits […]
How Not to Report on the Estate Tax Under current law, after a one-year suspension, the federal estate tax rate will return to its pre-2001 level of 55 percent, with the first $1 million exempt. Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D.-Ark.) and Jon Kyl (R.-Ariz.) have proposed a change that would lower the rate to 35 percent […]
After Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty pushed for a mayoral takeover of the city’s school system and dissolved the school board, he chose a relative unknown to take charge. But it wouldn’t take long before she would become a national media darling. Fenty’s pick was Michelle Rhee, a Teach for America graduate who had taught […]
This section was originally printed with Media’s Favorite School ‘Reformer’. The national charter school network KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) is frequently cited by media as an example of the cure for what ails the country’s schools. Few outlets are more zealous in this regard than Newsweek, which makes it noteworthy that KIPP’s D.C. branch […]
When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have established clear standards: Numbers don’t count nearly as much as politics do. Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the […]
