News Slant

We finally have a President who gets up in front of congress and gives a speech on education. He speaks about how the United States needs to stay competitive in the global economy. The way to do this, he says, begins in the classroom. He also has the audacity to say that just getting a high school diploma isn't going to cut it anymore – not if you want to make a living wage. I agree with this audacious statement. Actually I agree with everything he said – who doesn't believe that the way to have an educated work force is to – well – educate said work force?

CNN covers the story and goes out among the people to provide an answer to the question: does higher education really help? I have to say that I was somewhat shocked by their biased story. First off – the young woman victimized by 100,000.00 in college debt. Working a 40,000.00 a year job post college, paying half her salary to offset those college loans. Then, let's listen to the guy who says that he's learned more out of college then he ever learned in college. So, what's the message here?

I sometimes forget that news is presented from a particular slant. Sometimes it is more glaring and obvious then other times. But why CNN would run a story about the horrors of college debt and the argument of 'who needs it anyway?' in direct response to the President's speech – I just don't understand. There were so many other ways to get at some of the complexities of our education conundrum than just focusing on one young woman who chose to go to a 4 year university and incur over 25 grand in expenses a year. Obama talked about trade schools, community colleges – he talked about getting at least one year of post high school graduate training. Run a story about how costly college is – how hard it is to run the gamut of grants and scholarships. Educate people as to the alternatives to the 4 year degree – let's talk about night school, adult education programs, trade and vocational schools. Let's promote education by educating people about it instead of just standing back and picking black and white scenarios for our consumption. That does not help the dialogue in this country in regards to the issues at hand.

CNN – run stories about why so many kids are dropping out of high school. Talk about the graduates who still can't read or write. What about jumping on the ESL bandwagon and promoting education among our citizens for whom English is not a second language. How can we find the brightest and most talented among the youth of this country if we don't support programs that support their learning? Hell, how can we educate anyone if we can't pay our teachers a living wage?

It seems to me the news media has its own choice: enrich our understanding of the issues facing this country and our communities or simply try to find the kinks in the potential solutions with rigid and simplistic notions of bad/good, it works or it doesn't, love it/hate it. I think this is the main reason why I choose print media over television all the time.