Media WATCH
Analysis by Joe Schaeffer, 247 Real NewsBig-box network news outlets that have been funded by Bill Gates are prominently propping up a library association heavily backed by the billionaire globalist as a go-to source to denounce efforts by concerned parents who object to having their captive-audience children exposed to Cultural Marxist rot.
WorldTribune documented last September how ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC have all received funding from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recent years. Each network has also lavished Bill Gates with pointedly friendly "news" coverage.
That's not all that's going on, of course. The Gates agenda is also being promoted by these ostensibly objective major news organizations and presented as "reporting." Here's one example of how this works.
"The American Library Association (ALA) is the oldest and largest library association in the world," the group states on its website.
"Founded on October 6, 1876 during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the mission of ALA is 'to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.'"
We're not in 1876 America anymore, and the ALA has recalibrated its "mission" to reflect the fashionable leftist social agenda of the 21st century:On June 28, 2015, the ALA Council adopted a new Strategic Plan (2017 Update) and the Association’s new strategic directions for the next three to five years. Building on the Council-adopted Key Action Areas, three strategic initiatives have been identified as priority areas of focus for the Association. At the 2017 Midwinter Meeting, ALA Council approved a fourth direction on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. At their 2018 Fall meeting, the ALA Executive Board voted to affirm that ALA will apply a social justice framework to the ALA strategic directions. The four strategic directions are:
Advocacy
Information Policy
Professional & Leadership Development.
Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
The "Advocacy" priority area features a category on "Banned and Challenged Books." Predictably, the ALA is presenting itself as a staunch defender of "intellectual freedom." And in keeping with the spirit of its social justice framework, the initiative is extremely radical Woke chic: "Every year, the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles a list of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books in order to inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools," ALA proclaims.The lists for the past few years include the following literary masterpieces:
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for “its effect on any young people who would read it,” and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased
Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth
Reasons: challenged, banned, and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content; for discussing gender identity and sex education; and for concerns that the title and illustrations were “inappropriate”
Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
Reason: challenged and burned for including LGBTQIA+ content
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds
Reasons: Banned and challenged because of author’s public statements, and because of claims that the book contains “selective storytelling incidents” and does not encompass racism against all people
You get the idea. This is an agenda. And a well-funded one at that. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been pouring money into the ALA for close to two decades. Eighteen grants to the organization are detailed on the Gates Foundation website from August 2006 through September 2017. The grand total: in excess of $35 million. And lo and behold, here is fellow Gates grantee CNN dutifully aligning with this agenda of its financial benefactor. From a Feb. 18 article:Two students have sued a Missouri school district over its decision to remove eight books from school libraries, arguing the novels were banned because they discuss issues surrounding race, gender and sexual identity.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU) against the Wentzville School District on behalf of the students who are minors and not named in the complaint....
The American Library Association's executive director Tracie Hall warned against banning books as it affects child development in relation to real-world challenges.
"It is so important to provide access to a free range of reading to young people to help them actually problem solve before they encounter the problem in real life," Hall said.
NBC News just so happened to be on point too with its Feb. 20 article headlined "From book bans to 'Don’t Say Gay' bill, LGBTQ kids feel 'erased' in the classroom.” From the "news" article:Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in November that while challenges to books with LGBTQ- and race-related content have historically been “constant,” the association has recently seen a “chilling” uptick.
“I’ve worked at ALA for two decades now, and I’ve never seen this volume of challenges come in,” she said. “The impact will fall to those students who desperately want and need books that reflect their lives, that answer questions about their identity, about their experiences that they always desperately need and often feel that they can’t talk to adults about.”
ABC News decided to give ALA the full feature-story treatment in December:"In recent months, a few organizations have advanced the proposition that the voices of the marginalized have no place on library shelves," ALA, which fights censorship, wrote in a recent statement against the efforts. "Falsely claiming that these works are subversive, immoral, or worse, these groups induce elected and non-elected officials to abandon constitutional principles, ignore the rule of law, and disregard individual rights to promote government censorship of library collections."
But a special Bill & Melinda prize should go to CBS News, which was more than happy to use Caldwell-Stone as a prominent quoted source in November, using her to push the favored ruling regime argument that the Internet is a dangerous breeding ground for extremism. Note how CBS does not hesitate to paint free speech online as a threat in an article allegedly devoted to championing free speech:Deborah Stone, director of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, told CBS News there appears to be an organized effort to challenge books that deal with two broad topics: racism or Black American history and the LGBTQ community.
Stone said campaigns to ban books may be spreading more easily due to social media, and ALA has seen different people from different communities use the same language when arguing against books — a clue that they got the idea from someone else, possibly online.
She said campaigns to ban books are usually a coordinated effort by activists targeting school boards.
Dominant media titan The New York Times is naturally on board with the agenda being parroted by the Gates-puppet outlets as well. A Jan. 30 article leans on ALA expertism while throwing another thoroughly distasteful organization into the mix:Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. The American Library Association said in a preliminary report that it received an “unprecedented” 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books, last fall.
"It’s a pretty startling phenomenon here in the United States to see book bans back in style, to see efforts to press criminal charges against school librarians,” said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of the free-speech organization PEN America, even if efforts to press charges have so far failed.
As WorldTribune also reported last September, Jonathan Friedman, the "director of free expression and education at PEN America," has openly declared that schools have a duty to expose young children to leftist cultural propaganda as part of the core education process:“The district has an obligation to open students’ minds to the difficult issues these books reckon with, not close them off to diverse lived experiences. After all, how can we expect young people to learn about diversity, if we do not expose them to diverse perspectives in literature?”
If the boulder-sized rock that is the issue of Critical Race Theory in public schools manages to be completely turned over due to the actions of irate parents across America, an elaborate network will be found underneath.And a wholly compromised major media nexus will once again be revealed to be the purchased vehicle of a powerful individual of immense concentrated personal wealth who is seeking to remake the planet in the direction he desires and frighteningly possesses the means to make a good go of it.
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