What’s a more trustworthy resource: The Drudge Report or the New Yorker? It’s not, to be sure, much of a competition. But, wittingly or unwittingly, Norman Draper of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has lately followed the fedora instead of the monocle. How else to explain the following passage from his piece yesterday on proposed (and unnecessary) legislation in Minnesota to allow teachers to discuss and teach the founding documents?
[Sen. Michele] Bachmann cited a California case in which teachers were forbidden from teaching the Declaration of Independence and some of George Washington’s writings because of the references to God and religion.
Here’s how this little canard entered the Echo Chamber, where it’s still bouncing around more than four months later: After a Cupertino, California, teacher filed suit against his school district, saying he had been discriminated against as a Christian, a conservative legal organization released a press release with the headline “Declaration of Independence Banned from Classroom.” Reuters ran a story asserting that the teacher had “been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God — including the Declaration of Independence.” Matt Drudge splashed a headline across the top of his website, alleging that the Declaration of Independence had been banned. The story exploded on conservative websites and on right-wing talk radio. Sean Hannity moved his Fox News show to Cupertino for an hour-long special called “Take Back America.” At the website Free Republic, a commentator wrote: “This is further evidence of why I truly despise educrats to the depths of my soul. I truly hate them. Petty, PC, ultra liberal, bottom-of-their-class, can’t-do-anything-else, power-mad, petty little drooling morons.”
And none of it was true. Not the way Reuters told it, not the way Hannity told it, not the Free Republic rant — and certainly not the breathless Drudge Report headline.
The Declaration of Independence was never banned from the school, as a recent Peter Boyer New Yorker story, as well as other media accounts, has made clear. In fact, it hangs in the school’s library, and is included in the fifth-grade history textbook. (The Boyer story is not online, but a Q&A with the author is.)
What happened in Cupertino is that the school principal had stopped the teacher from handing out a packet of material that included a three-paragraph excerpt of the document that featured religious language. The teacher had undergone a religious awakening, and subsequently begun speaking regularly of his transformation at school and incorporating more talk of religion into his lessons. He compiled supplementary materials to the standard texts — materials containing “pointedly religious allusions,” according to Boyer — and talked to students about his Bible classes. Parents and other teachers complained, and the teacher began submitting some of his assignments for approval. After the teacher distributed a handout about the history of the National Day of Prayer proclamations, the principal insisted on approving anything he planned to distribute to the class. The packet of materials he submitted contained a number of largely religious texts, including the excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, and the principal told the teacher not to distribute them. It was then he decided to get in touch with a lawyer.
All of which brings us back to Norm Draper’s original story, which quoted State Senator Bachmann’s erroneous citation of “a California case in which teachers were forbidden from teaching the Declaration of Independence…because of the references to God and religion.” Draper allowed the citation to stand unchallenged in his story.
We realize that it’s difficult for a reporter covering a legislature to scrutinize all of the spin that politicians throw at them on a daily basis. But reporters do have a responsibility to do all they can to ensure the accuracy of their own work — and in this case the truth is pretty easily tracked down on the Internet. Because Draper didn’t do so, a grandstanding politician pushing a seemingly unnecessary piece of legislation was allowed to use false information to drum up support for her side.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.