Their Own Facts

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, the old adage goes, just not their own facts.

It is an adage that the New York Sun might consider.

Take its latest article on the ongoing issue of the charter cap, “With Spitzer at Helm, Mayor Will Push for Charter Schools.” It includes the following passage:

Mr. Spitzer is sure to get pushback from charter school opponents, including the United Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Mr. Spitzer and is against lifting the cap.

It simply is not possible for a New York City newspaper to publish such a conclusion in good faith.

Certainly, this issue has been addressed on Edwize with such frequency [for example, here, here, here, here, here and here] that our regular readers, which include education beat reporters for the major New York City news media, know only too well the UFT’s true position. That position is one of supporting an increase in the charter school cap, provided that it is accompanied with labor rights for charter school teachers so that they can freely choose to organize themselves and bargain collectively.

Now that position may not be in favor with Roger Hertog, publisher and financier of the New York Sun, who is in, thick as thieves, with the far right, anti-union crowd calling the shots at the New York Charter School Association [NYCSA]. For him, and the ideologues at NYCSA, FERA, Bright Choice, Et. Al., the lifting of the charter school cap comes in a poor second to keeping charter school teachers voiceless and unionless.

Hertog has every right to editorialize against the UFT’s position, as he has done on the editorial pages of the Sun — where he called for pulling the charter for the UFT’s two charter schools, simply because we would not desert our core principle that charter school teachers have the right to organize and bargain collectively.

What he doesn’t have is a right to his “own facts.” That goes by the name propaganda.