Monday, February 07, 2005

LAT education coverage is biased

As the local parents are blissfully unaware of how Arnold is going to wreck public schools via draconian changes in the state budget, I have been fuming about the huge void in coverage from our local rag, the LAT*. Media bias is making a difference here even in the one of the so-called 'liberal' bastions of the nation.

In contrast, the SF Chronicle has been much better at providing timely articles on the whole deal from the beginning.

After Arnold's SOTU address in January, the proposed budget was placed online, a huge pdf file, of course. It took about a week for the analysts on the education side to figure out what was going in.

The cuts in the budget were a huge surprise for education advocates, after all that Arnold had said about supporting children, education, and Prop. 98.

Now, this Sunday, I noticed a huge rah-rah article on charter schools in the LAT. After the silence about Arnold's new budget regarding education, I'm starting to think there's a pattern here.

Sorry, no smoking gun. The biases and omissions seem deliberate. This comes after the (my opinion) biased coverage of the Westminster School Board takeover by the rightwing Christians. In fact, the LAT ran a very nice fluff article on the son of one of the Christian activists who was in film school.

Unfortunate because most parents don't have time to go online and check SF or other papers. They sure will be surprised to find out what Arnold has planned. In the meantime, LAT pops up with a cheery 'solution' of charter schools.

Does make me wonder about how much is invested in charter schools by the money people behind the LAT.
(end rant of the day)
*LAT = Los Angeles Times