| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
NPR’s Education Coverage Funded By Pro-Privatization Billionaires
Remember Ally Bank’s conflicted funding of NPR financial news program Planet Money? Well, turns out NPR is much more compromised than we ever imagined. Even its coverage of education issues is rife with biased reporting and undisclosed conflicts of interest that tie NPR to some of the most powerful pro-school privatization interests in the country.
Yasha Levine reports for NSFWCORP:
Consider a new NPR local news project called State Impact, which NPR describes as a “local-national collaboration between NPR and station groups in eight states that reports on state government actions and their impact on citizens and communities.”
In January, State Impact published an interview with Greg Harris, the Ohio director of Michelle Rhee’s pro-charter school astroturf group StudentsFirst to promote a “report card” that the group released rating Ohio’s state education policies. . . .
…why would public radio be so willing to gush about groups like StudentsFirst and their pro-privatization agenda?
Well… it might have something to do with the fact that both NPR’s State Impact and Rhee’s StudentsFirst are funded by the same pro-privatization groups. In this case, the Walton Family Foundation, which has been funneling over $100 million a year to various right-wing efforts to break teachers unions and privatize public education—and that includes both NPR and StudentsFirst.
In 2012, the foundation gave Rhee’s StudentsFirst $2 million. That same year, it cut NPR a hefty check for $1.4 million. The foundation classified both handouts—one to a respected news organization; the other to a notorious astroturf outfit—as “K-12 Education Reform Grants” to “Shape Public Policy.” Among other grantees funded under this category include the the ultra-libertarian Institute for Justice and the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation, both Koch-connected outfits involved in the nasty business of busting unions.
Read full story on NSFWCORP.com (subscription required)…
Source: https://shameproject.com/shame-blog/nprs-education-coverage-funded-proprivatization-billionaires/
