If mainstream media analysts and college professors weren’t overwhelmingly true believers of the Left, they could find fertile ground for analysis and lessons in the interaction of media, labor unions, and parents when it comes to Rhode Island schools.  Case study 1 comes in the form of an article by Alexa Gagosz of the Boston Globe, promoting a virtual event of the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab:

In one example of a lack of media literacy, [Pam Steager, director of public engagement at the Media Education Lab,] said she has heard from teachers who are afraid to bring copies of The New York Times into their classrooms for fear of how parents might react.

The paragraph moves on from this third-hand rumor to other examples of “misinformation” groups… like white nationalists.  Yes, the proffered equivalence is between parents who speak up with concerns that public schools are being used for indoctrination and conspiracy theorists and Nazis.

Now turn to Steph Machado, for WPRI:

A group of parents are threatening to take legal action over the impending closure of a Providence elementary school in Washington Park, arguing the state’s education commissioner did not have the unilateral authority to close the school.

Conspicuously, the article does not name any actual parents, much less quote them or paraphrase a stated concern.  Machado does, however, mention their attorney, Elizabeth Wiens.  One need spend no more than a few seconds on the Internet to learn that attorney Weins is a labor lawyer specializing in representation of unions.  In fact, she’s a member of the AFL-CIO Lawyers’ Coordinating Committee.  This appears to be a lawsuit on behalf of the teachers union with (potentially recruited) parents to provide the legal on-ramp.

With that in mind, I can’t help but recall the school committee meetings I’ve attended around the state at which union members created such an atmosphere of tension and threat that the Biden Administration would surely have air-dropped the FBI were they not union members, but parents attempting to protect their children from an ideological cult.  Journalists were often in attendance at those meetings, but somehow the shocking air of aggression never seemed conveyed in the resulting stories.

Put my own ideological slant aside, if you can.  The important, objective lesson, here, is how the media, labor unions, and progressive advocacy groups like the Media Education Lab work together to create a reality that aligns with the facts only to the extent the facts are convenient to their preferred narrative.

Featured image by Caleb Woods on Unsplash.