Ideological conformity. 

At the heart of this troubling trend lies Newsela, a platform influencing 90% of American schools.

The tech company poses as a platform for educating students about current events. In reality, it serves as a pipeline for legacy outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Guardian—a terrible trio notorious for their bias, calculated omissions, and consistent alignment with feelings over facts. Newsela deliberately pushes biased perspectives. By exclusively curating content from its ideologically aligned trio of outlets, it enforces a narrow worldview and silences independent voices. This is simply unacceptable, especially considering how awful those outlets really are.

Including the New York Times in media literacy programs isn’t just misguided; it’s reckless. This so-called "paper of record" has a dark history of complicity in catastrophic events, none more damning than its role in selling the Iraq War. By amplifying the Bush administration's lies about weapons of mass destruction, the Times gave credibility to a falsehood that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and plunged an entire region into chaos. This destabilization fueled violent extremism, unleashed cycles of retribution, and triggered mass migration that has brought Europe to its knees, turning countries like France, Germany, and Italy into absolute hellholes. In the two decades since the Iraq invasion, the New York Times has repeatedly chosen power and profit over truth—whitewashing government surveillance and selectively promoting stories that serve elite agendas.

The Washington Post fares no better. Despite its lofty claims of holding power accountable and preventing democracy from dying in darkness, its record tells another story. During the Russiagate frenzy, the Post uncritically promoted the Steele dossier—a baseless fabrication that fueled years of hysteria. This wasn’t just bad journalism; it was the spark that ignited Trump Derangement Syndrome, a phenomenon that destroyed rational thought. Families were torn apart, friendships shattered, and countless lives derailed as paranoia gripped a swath of the population, convinced the president was a foreign puppet. Half the country morphed into Joy Reid, spewing nonsense as if it were gospel. Even the more measured voices on the left, like Bill Maher, succumbed to TDS.

The Post didn’t just report the chaos; it profited from it, sowing division and leaving the public more fractured and misled than ever. Its failures run deeper. From aiding the Vietnam War narrative to obsessing over divisive cultural battles, the Post thrives on distractions that obscure systemic crises—corporate greed, skyrocketing living costs, and the economic devastation facing millions. Far from representing ordinary Americans, it alienates them. Yet media literacy programs hold it up as a paragon of integrity. Refusing to endorse Kamala Harris for president doesn’t erase its long trail of deceit and harm. 

There was a time when the Guardian championed fearless journalism, as with its Edward Snowden NSA revelations. Those days, however, are long gone. Nowhere is the Guardian's decline more evident than in its obsessive vilification of masculinity. I don’t use the word ‘obsessive’ lightly. Just Google ‘the Guardian masculinity’ and witness the fixation firsthand. As young men struggle with isolation, unemployment, homelessness, addiction, and rising suicide rates, the Guardian fixates on "toxic masculinity.” Teaching young boys to trust a source that deems their identity inherently flawed is perversely cruel. The Guardian deepens their disillusion and despair, offering condemnation instead of compassion.

Kamala Harris’s crushing defeat to Donald Trump wasn’t just a political loss; it marked the death of legacy media’s grip on the national narrative. Trump sidestepped these crumbling institutions, delivering his message directly through platforms like The Joe Rogan Experience, Theo Von’s podcast, and Adin Ross’s live streams. The result was a landslide victory.

Harris’s campaign, shackled to discredited outlets, was hopelessly outdated. Trump, by contrast, embraced the decentralized media revolution, connecting directly with millions who had abandoned traditional outlets as irredeemably biased.

This shift goes far beyond politics and exposes the failings of media literacy programs in schools. These programs don’t prepare students for a fractured media landscape; they condition them to accept narratives from institutions that have repeatedly betrayed public trust. Media literacy, as it stands, is an absolute sham. It doesn’t teach students to navigate the complexities of the digital age; it trains them to parrot the same failed institutions that misled their parents and grandparents. This isn’t just an educational failure; it’s a threat to democracy. A society that conditions its youth to blindly trust a handful of dishonest institutions is destined for ruin.

Of course, the solution isn’t to abandon media literacy but to transform it. Teach students to question narratives, expose biases, deconstruct agendas, and seek competing viewpoints. Critical inquiry, not blind trust, must be the cornerstone of media education. With Trump set to take office next month, now is the time to demand real change.