MEDIA WATCH: Tribune manages to cover opening day of schools in Chicago while ignoring students, teachers, and union leaders -- while quoting ruling class touts like Terry Mazany and Robin Steans...
On September 9, 2011 (photo above), Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was in the middle of his campaign of lies on behalf of the "Longer School Day." The campaign received the avid support of a corporate-financed group called "Advance Illinois." The Executive Director of Advance Illinois is Robin Steans (above right), while the group is co-chaired by Bill Daley and Jim Edgar. And the group is one of many "Astroturf" groups (financed by millionaires and billionaires pretending to be a grass roots outfit). Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Anyone who wanted to write a parody of a plutocratic version of reality as the nation's third largest school system opened on September 8, 2015, couldn't have done better than the front page story in the Chicago Tribune. The story ignored students (none quoted), teachers (none quoted), and union officials (none quoted). But at least one parent was quoted, barely. But the most quoted people in the story had no children in the schools and were not teaching either. They were:
-- Terry Mazany, of the Chicago Community Trust, and
-- Robin Steans, of "Advance Illinois"...
Both firmly on the side of corporate "school reform" and long time critics of the elected school board and virtually all other programs to restore a bit of democracy in Chicago.
Terry Mazany of the Chicago Community Trust was made "Interim CEO" of Chicago's public schools following the resignation of Ron Huberman (the first CTA leader to head the schools) in January 2011. Huberman resigned after learning that his mentor, Richard M. Daley, would not run for re-election. Mazany served until Rahm Emanuel appointed Jean-Claude Brizard of Rochester New York to become CEO in May 2011. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.As most people know, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of any generation. But sometimes, at least in the columns purporting to be reporting "news," the bourgeois press tries to pretend to offer a few facts. And so, as hundreds of thousands of children (including two of my own) prepare for the first day of school for the 2015 - 2016 school year in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune has edicted that all of our voices would be muted -- while the voices of the dwindling number of well-subsidized apologists for corporate "reform" are amplified as "news."
And so the question must be asked: WTF?
By: Margaret Wilson
Opening Day
Even when I was less of a sceptic, I used to teach my students that the United States was not a true democracy because we are too large to vote on every issue. We elect people to represent us and act in our best interest (LOL) so we are a representative democracy but even there our founding fathers felt that only white men who owned property should vote. Our history has always been so distorted.