CommentsFIRST PERSON-Corporations and their foundations have arrived at a point in this country where they have final say over virtually all the content of commercial and non-commercial media.
Especially when it comes to reporting -- or not reporting -- what has come to be called the Fake News. No, it might not be what The Donald calls fake news, but it's fake nonetheless.
This has taken the once cherished 1st Amendment freedom of the press to a place that might fairly be expressed by a variation on the old saw: “If a tree falls in the forest... and we don't hear, see, or reportit... did the tree actually fall... or even exist?" Your answer may be, "Yes, of course it exists!" If so, the folks at your local news stations, who continue to engage in conscious censorship of relevant facts needed to fulfill their much-touted mandate of "public service journalism reporting" might say, “Prove it!” And given the open suppression of much that is objectively newsworthy, you would then be hard pressed to do so.
Just one, or maybe two illustrations of this notion: Is it just a coincidence that both Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times and Kyle Stokes of local NPR affiliate KPPC report virtually the same article and interview with new LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner (photo above), swallowing hook, line, and sinker his false LAUSD party line that what’s wrong at LAUSD is just that some bad teachers are "hard to get rid of." Reality? Nothing could be further from the truth, and both Blume and Stokes know it, but they don't want to lose their jobs by telling the truth. So, they go along as Beutner blames LAUSD's purposefully failed public education system on teachers, who are supposedly hard to get rid of. This is about as far from reality as you can get. And again, both Blume and Stokes know it.
Yet, neither Blume and Stokes nor any other corporate-influenced mainstream reporter from coast to coast has reported that LAUSD and other districts like it around the country have already found it easyto systematically get rid of thousands of more expensive, high seniority teachers, by falsely accusing them, and labeling them "bad teachers" for the sole "crime" of being at the top of the salary scale.
Virtually none of these teachers had prior bad marks against them...until they were targeted. Many were Nationally Board Certified. But these facts, unless journalistically expunged, would contradict what corporate clone LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner has been saying and what the LA Times’Blume and KPCC's Kyle Stokes have been going along with: that it has been difficult to get rid of these mostly high seniority, expensive teachers.
What has made this disingenuous process even easier has been the active collusion of the teachers’ unions UTLA, CTA, and AFT, whose leadership has been in the pocket of blatantly corrupt school districts for many years. Somehow, this also never sees the light of day in the media.
So how do you stop this and resurrect a free press that does something more than parrot the corporate for-profit party line? Here's a suggestion:
In looking at the 2017 Annual Report for local NPR station KPCC, you notice that 28% of KPCC’s "Public Support" comes from corporations with an agenda exclusively determined by things that effect the corporation's profit -- either directly or indirectly. In addition, 70% of the Public Support comes from "Individual gifts & membership." But in this case, "individual" does not mean a single person, but could mean a foundation or other disproportionately rich corporate connected "individual," whose gift is contingent on KPCC slanting its news coverage to accommodate their financial interests. These corporate, foundation, and other "individual" entities actually make up a small percentage of KPCC's 600,000 weekly radio audience and its 900,000 online hits.
Truly individual listeners still represent enough of the contributions to KPCC that, if they were to withhold their donations and memberships until the stories and news covered by KPCC were more complete and more truthful, they would be doing something that could not be ignored by KPCC’s leadership and their current de facto corporate/foundation masters. If what we do this, what we say should not be ignored with impunity. Such a concerted action – the withholding of dues and membership by real individuals who know they are not being told the news based on complete facts -- could stand an excellent chance of finally turning things around and making KPCC accountable to its listeners and the truth.
I wrote the following email to KPCC Reporter Kyle Stokes and received no response.
KPCC Reporter Kyle Stokes: [email protected]
Leonard Isenberg <[email protected]>
Sep 18, 2018, 9:44 PM (17 hours ago)
to kstokes
Mr. Stokes,
With literally thousands of top of the salary scale teachers having been removed already on completely fabricated charges and with no UTLA union opposition, it is not difficult as you alleged on KPCC to get rid of "bad teachers," especially when LAUSD saves a combined $60,000 in salary and benefits payments, when they replace them with a 20-something fresh out of college and working on an emergency credential.
If KPCC's dependence on foundation money doesn't preclude you from telling the truth, give me a call.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
