MEDIA WATCH: Sun-Times reporters getting the story straight on school closings and budget attacks on real public schools, with the Sports pages even offering serious discussion while the Tribune provides non-stop propaganda for CPS and Emanuel
While the Chicago Tribune continues to show itself to be a regular propagandist for the party line on corporate school reform coming straight from the Emanuel administration, a funny thing happened on the way to the "news." For more than a week, the Chicago Sun-Times, which is owned by friends of Rahm, has been offering more extensive news and commentary on the current policies of destruction of public schools in Chicago than any other publication in Chicago.
Detroit Pistons point guard Will Bynum learned his craft at Chicago's public high schools, graduating from Crane.The Sun-Times has been covering both the unconscionable school closings and the new "student-based budgeting" scam under which CPS officials are trying to force hundreds of principals into terminating the careers of veteran teachers and eliminating art, music and other non "Core" subjects less than one year after the much ballyhooed beginning of Rahm Emanuel's "Longer School Day."
First, the low points, which are almost comical.
On one day, the Tribune devoted most of its editorial page to a semi-literate and factually challenged attack on Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis. The attack on Lewis was motivated, in the opinion of many observers (including this reporter) by the fact that the Tribune was hosting a lopsided "Chicago's Future" forum in a private space featuring, along, Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Barbara Byrd Bennett. Although the Tribune neglected to mention, it, less than two years earlier the same Tribune had hosted the same forum in a public space and featured a debate between CTU President Karen Lewis and Byrd Bennett's predecessor, Jean-Claude Brizard. But that was so 2011. By 2013, the Tribune was unabashedly promoting Byrd Bennett's versions of reality as both "news," commentary and editorial.
But during those same days, the Sun-Times was actually reporting on the school closings, which began on Wednesday, June 19, and finished up on Monday June 24. But the coverage of the closings was not limited to the news pages. On June 24, a full-page story in the Sports section featured the opinions of one CPS graduate who became "college and career ready" thanks to a bunch of "underperforming" and/or "underutilized" inner city high schools.
In "Bynum frets about CPS downsizing", Sun-times sports reporter Mike Clark gave a page to Will Bynum, who currently plays for the Detroit Pistons. "The Crane grad spent time playing in the D-League and for an Israeli club team. When you're a six-foot point guard, you have to pay your dues..." the story begins.
But the meat of the story comes with Bynum's informed criticism of the CPS closing policies.
"He's worried that the next generation of kids might not have the change to be as successful [as he has become]. Closing traditional schools and diverting money to charter schools is a bad idea, Bynum believes.
"'It's a direct blow to African-American kids,' he said, expressing concern that students who don't fit it at charters might wind up in alternative schools for no good reason.'"
There is more...
