Orwell’s Ministry of Truth Alive At Miami Herald
BY SAM FIELDS
The State & Local section of the May 4th Miami Herald had a major story headlined “Schools win big in session”. In the same story, a second headline l“Florida’s schools did very, very well” was a comment from Senate President Don Gaetz which the Herald didn’t challenge.
You had to get through seven paragraphs of legislative self-praise before you figured out that these headlines must have been promulgated by George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. I say that because of facts buried farther down in the story that all this self-praise by lawmakers, along with the headlines, were bogus.
Yes, per student spending was raised by $176 to $6,937. But deep in paragraph 8, it was pointed out that the $6,937 was still $189 below the 2007-08 school budget!
If the reporter wanted to go one step further, the whole truth was even worse. Take into account the average of about 2% inflation-a-year since the 2007-08 school year, and the $6,937 shrinks to $6,105 in current dollars.
Apparently Florida’s Republican Legislative leaders believe “very, very well” for public schools is 14% behind where they were seven years ago!
The Miami Herald, once a great newspaper, bought this GOP guff hook, line and sinker.
Newspapers are supposed to get out the “who”, “what”, “where” and “when” in the first paragraph. The propaganda comes later. This story was upside down. Readers, who commonly don’t finish a newspaper story, should still get the gist.
In this case beginning with the headlines, instead of the gist, readers of the Miami Herald got the jive.
May 6th, 2014 at 4:03 pm
http://www.fundeducationnow.org/education-101/floridas-funding-formula/
Voters passed the Florida Lottery to supplement [add to] the existing state education budget. It has since served to supplant [replace missing] money from the state. This year, the Lottery will not pay for even a single day of K-12 education. It now helps pay for college Bright Futures scholarships.
May 6th, 2014 at 10:09 pm
Time has come to hold the elected officials accountable for what the voters mandated. If they don’t send them to prison. Enough is enough.