Kearney Public Schools Sells Out Students to Censorship Group "News Literacy Project"
The Nebraska Legislature is complicit.
by Sue Greenwald, M.D.
It was just recently, July 30, that Forward Nebraska highlighted a new Nebraska law, promoted by two liberal Democrat Senators McKinney and Vargas, and a Republican Senator Slama. The law requires Digital Citizenship, aka Media Literacy as a graduation requirement in Nebraska. Read the article HERE. The bill was LB 1112, and it was signed into law in 2022. It begins to be applicable during the 2024-25 school year.
It isn’t surprising that school districts would look for a way to fulfill the new requirement without straining their budget, as this is clearly an unfunded mandate. Riding to the rescue is an NGO (non-governmental organization) with deep pockets called the News Literacy Project. They claim to be non-partisan, that is a lie.
Kearney Public Schools fell for it. Please read this article:
Is NLP a new thing?
As usually happens with the left, they create a bureaucracy and then work to change state laws to mandate the use of their “program.” Then they subsidize it with grants. The grant donors are always One Worlders whose goal is to “transform the culture.”
Once a program is mandated, and/or an accepted part of the educational environment, they take away the grants and run it with taxpayer funds, which, after being laundered through several billionaire-backed NGO’s, always find their way into the campaign funds of leftists.
CASEL did it with “Social Emotional Learning” which normalizes Marxist ideals of victimhood and relativism, and is the anti-thesis of the Judeo-Christian ideals of morality and meritocacy. (So far, SEL is not mandated in Nebraska, although most educators believe it is because it is so ubiquitous.)
SIECUS did it with “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” which teaches minors they can exercise their sexual rights if they give “consent.” Mainly, it promotes abortion. (So far CSE isn’t mandated in Nebraska, but if we don’t flip the State Board of Education this year, it will be. Vote for Linda Vermooten, Lisa Schonhoff, and Liz Davids.)
WPATH did it with Transgenderism, convincing a generation of school counselors and teachers that students struggling with anxiety, depression or neurodiversity, can be “helped” by socially and medically “transitioning” in secret, since parents are all “abusive.” Obamacare insurance mandates set the stage for billions in taxpayer compensated “affirming care.” Even after WPATH had been completely discredited, the schools are still a willing partner to the carnage.
MTSS is doing it with “school based mental health care.” Stay tuned as this coming disaster is just beginning. It is currently in the “grant” stage.
The commonalities of all of these extraneous interest groups destroying American education:
The bureaucracies are put into place by unaccountable NGO’s whose donors are often hidden by layers of cut-out organizations, and who generally hate America, or just want to control the world.
Those NGO’s spend donor money on marketing, making their plans seem appealing to the ESU’s, education influencers and administrators. Kickbacks have been known to be involved. Grant money is impossible for schools to turn down.
Grant money to early adopters allows the organization to do rigged “fact-based” studies proving they are essential to learning. The organization then appears to be fulfilling a “need” they actually created.
Those NGO’s buy their way into state legislatures, generally through teacher’s union donations to candidates. Then they work state-by-state to get their program mandated.
As the new programs make everything worse, they sell to the teachers that only more of that program can make it better. SEL is genius at this one. “Mental Health” will be doing this also, count on it.
The reward for the NGO’s efforts are myriad: ideological mind control and demoralization which weakens the population. Also, unlimited collection of data from the minors who have their whole lives to deal with that social credit score, and whose data is more precious than gold on the open market.
Most importantly, that sweet, sweet unlimited taxpayer money that no one, especially a bought-off politician, will deny to the schools.
Who is the NLP?
The News Literacy Project, is exactly one of these organizations. They bill themselves as the “solution” to the problem of the “media literacy/digital citizenship” unfunded mandate that was unwisely passed by the Nebraska legislature.
None of us have heard of “media literacy/digital citizenship” until very recently. But this NLP group was started in 2008. That was 16 years ago! The iPhone was invented in 2007, but wasn’t widely available before 2010. Coincidence? (Apple is a donor.)
They put themselves into place as the solution before they create the problem.
Un-accountable billionaire donors, check.
Grants to early adopters, check.
Fake studies to prove they are valuable, check.
Marketing to education influencers, check.
Buying off politicians to get state mandates, check.
News literacy is the ability to determine the credibility of news and other information and to recognize the standards of fact-based journalism to know what to trust, share and act on.
The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit founded in 2008, is building a national movement to create systemic change in American education to ensure all students are skilled in news literacy before they graduate high school, giving them the knowledge and ability to participate in civic society as well-informed, critical thinkers.
The above is from their website: Notice their mission is “to create systemic change in American education.” Every single one of the organizations highlighted in this article has that same mission.
What does the NLP do?
In a word; Censorship.
The mission of the NLP is to create distrust among students for any news outlet that does not tow the approved regime line. Their preferred news outlets are liberal corporate media such as CNN and The Washington Post, the outlets owned by the donors. Any alternative media (such as this platform) should not even be considered as a source. It is labeled as mis-information.
From Influencewatch.org
“Though claiming to be nonpartisan, 7 News Literacy Project adopts many of the left-of-center biases and priorities of the mainstream news media outlets that support it.
Similarly, NLP warns educators and students against “misinformation,” 8 a term it sometimes applies to good-faith policy disagreements. For example, NLP branded those who do not agree with left-wing opinions on climate change as believers in “climate misinformation.” 9
While calling on readers to disregard arguments based on personal attacks 10 NLP nonetheless promoted attacks on COVID-19 vaccine skeptics as “vaccine denialists.” 11
NLP focuses on left-of-center racial principles of “equity” of results over equality of treatment 12 along with promoting “inclusion and diversity” as one of its core organizational values. 13”
NLP will teach students that to question election results, to question vaccine mandates, or to question the climate narrative is “mis-information.”
Any news outlet questioning the approved narrative should be ignored. Snopes and Google are the ultimate authority. The “trusted sources” are the first links that pop up on Google, no need to go to page 3. (For several days after the first Trump assassination attempt, it was impossible to look it up on Google.)
NLP advertisements talk about teaching critical thinking, but they actively discourage it.
Perusing their website, they use their methods to “debunk” satire.
Meanwhile, NLP does not mention the ACTUAL CNN HEADLINE from July 13 (below), which is supremely mockable, as well as blatant propaganda. This is the group that is going to “teach” our students to recognize “mis-information.”
Who Are the Donors?
“Nearly all of the news media outlets supporting News Literacy Project are left-of-center, including “60 Minutes,” ABC News, the Associated Press, Buzzfeed, CBS News, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, the New York Times, NPR, Politico, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Vice News, Vox Media, and the Washington Post. 14
News Literacy Project has also received donations from the MacArthur Foundation, 15 Apple, Max and Victoria Foundation, News Corp, Tegna Foundation, Argosy Foundation, Dow Jones Foundation, and the Grable Foundation. 16 It has also received support from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, 17 and California billionaire couple Melanie and Richard Lundquist. 18”
If you follow the links to the donors’ donors and partners, you will find these names:
Planned Parenthood, Rockefeller, Barack Obama, ACLU, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and the ever present Bill Gates.
Now that we know the facts, what can be done?
Contact your Legislator to Repeal Section 3 of 2022, LB 1112
Contact your School Board members and Superintendents to watch out for this scam.
Kearney Public Schools needs to say “no, thanks” and return the $20,000.
the author is a retired Pediatrician and co-founder of Protect Nebraska Children Coalition
I appreciate your support.
Some thorough homework in this piece. Thank you.