The Chicago Tribune is No Friend to Teachers or Any Working People
By Jim Vail
The Chicago Tribune is a media weapon used by those in power to get what they want.
People will say it is all we have - it is the city´s major newspaper that reports the news.
But the Trib just ran a front-page story about the controversy stirred up on social media where some teachers protested a few Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members traveling to Venezuela under the CTU logo.
The story was well reported getting both sides. The people who were against the trip say that CTU should not sponsor a delegation to Venezuela because many people are leaving the country due to political strife. The people who went said they want to support the country, believe the U.S. should not interfere in other countries affairs, and noted that schools have not been closed like in this city.
But was this story really a front page article? The paper determines what it determines is front page material. Why is Jeffrey Epstein suddenly a big news item today, and not 20 years ago when all his sex crimes and sweet-heart deal were made known to the public?
Newspapers are owned by the business elite and are used as a weapon to attack workers and people that they merely see as costs, rather than human beings. They are also used to go after their political enemies.
The Chicago Tribune wrote a series of articles about the sexual predators in the schools last year. Again, well reported and informative. However, life has become a living hell for many teachers now that the Chicago Public Schools have increased their internal police force to investigate teachers, and not only the guilty are being snared. I liken it to the Jon Burge days when it was open warfare on the black people on the South Side after a couple of cops were killed.
Why doesn´t the Tribune write about the student assaults on teachers? Why doesn´t the Tribune write about abusive principals? Why doesn´t the Tribune write about how stressful it is to teach in the inner city schools? Why no investigations in these areas?
Because the Tribune´s mission is to destroy the CTU and all other unions. They are there to tell people they must sacrifice their hard-earned pensions, yet it is no problem that wealthy developers get tax subsidies meant for the schools and poor in a scam called TIFs.
Now it is time for a new teachers contract so the Tribune will play up anything negative on the union so that the public won´t take the teachers side.
This is the same paper that wrote that they wished for a Hurricane Katrina in Chicago so all the public schools could be closed and charter schools with no teachers unions replace them. God, I wish another 9-11 in lower Manhattan because I hate Wall Street!
So how do we the people navigate the world when the media is owned by the one percent? As a teacher, I tune out, as one infamous Timothy O´Leary once said to do. I do not play CNN for the students. Instead, we critically look at the issues and the sources. We read classic literature and grapple with what our great minds once grappled with. We analyze and question - not blatantly follow!
Once people see this, they will stop reading and using the weapons meant to destroy us!
By Jim Vail
The Chicago Tribune is a media weapon used by those in power to get what they want.
People will say it is all we have - it is the city´s major newspaper that reports the news.
But the Trib just ran a front-page story about the controversy stirred up on social media where some teachers protested a few Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members traveling to Venezuela under the CTU logo.
The story was well reported getting both sides. The people who were against the trip say that CTU should not sponsor a delegation to Venezuela because many people are leaving the country due to political strife. The people who went said they want to support the country, believe the U.S. should not interfere in other countries affairs, and noted that schools have not been closed like in this city.
But was this story really a front page article? The paper determines what it determines is front page material. Why is Jeffrey Epstein suddenly a big news item today, and not 20 years ago when all his sex crimes and sweet-heart deal were made known to the public?
Newspapers are owned by the business elite and are used as a weapon to attack workers and people that they merely see as costs, rather than human beings. They are also used to go after their political enemies.
The Chicago Tribune wrote a series of articles about the sexual predators in the schools last year. Again, well reported and informative. However, life has become a living hell for many teachers now that the Chicago Public Schools have increased their internal police force to investigate teachers, and not only the guilty are being snared. I liken it to the Jon Burge days when it was open warfare on the black people on the South Side after a couple of cops were killed.
Why doesn´t the Tribune write about the student assaults on teachers? Why doesn´t the Tribune write about abusive principals? Why doesn´t the Tribune write about how stressful it is to teach in the inner city schools? Why no investigations in these areas?
Because the Tribune´s mission is to destroy the CTU and all other unions. They are there to tell people they must sacrifice their hard-earned pensions, yet it is no problem that wealthy developers get tax subsidies meant for the schools and poor in a scam called TIFs.
Now it is time for a new teachers contract so the Tribune will play up anything negative on the union so that the public won´t take the teachers side.
This is the same paper that wrote that they wished for a Hurricane Katrina in Chicago so all the public schools could be closed and charter schools with no teachers unions replace them. God, I wish another 9-11 in lower Manhattan because I hate Wall Street!
So how do we the people navigate the world when the media is owned by the one percent? As a teacher, I tune out, as one infamous Timothy O´Leary once said to do. I do not play CNN for the students. Instead, we critically look at the issues and the sources. We read classic literature and grapple with what our great minds once grappled with. We analyze and question - not blatantly follow!
Once people see this, they will stop reading and using the weapons meant to destroy us!
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