PBS News Admits Hidden Sponsor of Anti-Pension Series; Stops Coverage of Story
Here is a quick weekend update on an important development about media coverage of issues connected to school reform. This time the topic is so-called news coverage of public pensions, the kind of pensions school teachers pay into throughout their careers. Attacks on teachers’ fringe benefits including pensions are central to the political agenda of the corporate school deformers.
On Wednesday, David Sirota published an in depth investigation exposing that the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) sought out a $3.5 million grant from the John and Laura Arnold Foundation to sponsor a long running series that began last fall, “The Pension Peril.” Sirota reported that PBS kept the grant a secret, never announcing the sponsor as the segments were aired.
Nobody mentioned that the series was being paid for by “former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire political powerbroker who is actively trying to shape the very pension policy that the series claims to be dispassionately covering… Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own
