Year in Review: The media’s biggest lie in 2022 – Washington Examiner
One of the benefits of the political upheaval of the past several years is that no one is surprised anymore when the legacy media act more like partisan activists than objective journalists. In fact, such bias is what most of the public has come to expect from the news industry and is also why the vast majority of people disapprove of it.
Still, the lengths to which the media
are willing to go to advance their own ideological agenda can sometimes shock even the most weathered press watchers.
The best example of this from the past year is the media’s deliberate distortion of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which is more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The very fact that the bill is known as such proves my point. Leftist activists didn’t like that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was cracking down on the gender ideology agenda in public education. They came up with a dishonest nickname for the bill, and the media made sure it stuck.
Every single mainstream outlet, from Time magazine to the Washington Post, referred to this legislation as the Don’t Say Gay bill repeatedly, even after Florida officials made it clear that the bill in no way prevented students or teachers from saying the word “gay.” The word doesn’t appear in the text of the bill once.
What the law actually does is prohibit educators from teaching children in third grade and under about sexual orientation and gender ideology. In response to parental lawsuits over school employees secretly gender-transitioning children behind parents’ backs
, it also required schools to keep parents informed regarding “critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.”
It’s a commonsense reform — 10-year-olds should not be learning about sexual preferences or so-called gender identities. Those arguing otherwise clearly are more interested in using the public education system to indoctrinate rather than educate.
The law is also very popular, drawing support from a majority of Republican, Democratic, and independent voters alike. The headlines about the bill’s passage, however, would have you believe that it ushered in the end of progress, democracy, and the liberal world order as we know it.
The media’s hyperbolic meltdown over Florida’s law represents everything wrong with them. They deliberately misled the public about what the bill said and did in order to sway public opinion against it, then refused to stop using activist-coined language even when corrected. Their goal was obvious: They wanted to frame the Parental Rights in Education Act and anyone who supported it as bigoted and radical, and they were willing to stretch the bounds of journalistic ethics to accomplish it.
That the bill succeeded in spite of the media’s best efforts is a testament to just how tired the public has grown of journalistic dishonesty.