MEDIA WATCH: Tribune doubling down on dishonest, hyping 'Urban Prep' again and tut tut tutting about the Longest School Day
It's a rare week that the Chicago Tribune shows all of its biases so completely, but during the days leading up to April Fool's Day 2012, the editors of one of the most reactionary newspapers between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans outdid itself in slanting both its "news" versions of reality and editorially. The highlight for most readers, though, has to be the two editorials brought out on March 30, 2012, telling Chicago parents that the Longest School Day was a great thing — and that the parents and teachers just didn't get it — but that millionaire North Suburban Hero Rahm Emanuel and Mayoral Mercenaries like Jean-Claude Brizard (a year ago, of Rochester New York and the Broad Foundation) and Jennifer Cheatham (three years ago, from California and the Broad Foundation) do.
On March 30, 2012, the management of the Chicago Tribune treated its readers to two lies in one editorial page. In "More School Time" the suburbanites who write the Trib's editorials told Chicago parents they don't know what's best for their kids, but suburban hero Rahm Emanuel does on his quest for the Longest School Day. On the same page, the Trib's editorialists treated one of their suburban readers to a "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" stories with the latest Salvation narrative about Tim King's Urban Prep. But the other piece of deception that graced the editorial pages of the Tribune came in their annual puffery on behalf of Tim King and his Urban Prep hype. Ignoring the fact that Urban Prep, like the other charter school "miracles" touted by the suburban guys who write the Trib's editorials, gets rid of almost half its 9th graders by 12th grade, the Tribune ran another limited version of reality by telling its readers that Urban Prep was still the miracle the Tribune and its millionaire buddies loved from the year before it even opened its doors. Never letting a fact get in the way of a good anti-union ghetto myth, the Tribune is still hoisting King and his strange version of reality up in lights, long after even the Trib's reporters have noticed that the Tim King miracle story is about as credible as the one across town at the Michale Milkie miracle factory, Noble Street charter schools.
It's good that fewer and fewer Chicago teachers are buying the Tribune in 2012 than in previous years, and that fewer still are believing the lies that pass for news there. Since some of us have to read the Tribune as part of our jobs, however, we'll be sharing, from time to time, the most grotesque examples of Trib bias.
