Yesterday, legacy media and liberal commentators teamed up to spread a patently false story about a new "book ban" in Florida schools.
Politico, Axios, the Daily Beast, the New Republic, and All In With Chris Hayes all published stories claiming that the poem Amanda Gorman performed at Joe Biden’s inauguration was “banned” from a Miami-area school after a parent complaint. A liberal Twitter user with 970,000 followers tweeted, “Now the poem that Amanda Gorman read at President Biden’s inauguration, entitled ‘The Hill We Climb,’ has been banned from curriculum through 5th grade in Miami-Dade County, for not being suitable for elementary students.” He received almost 30,000 likes.
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The only problem with the story is that it is completely untrue. It started when Gorman herself tweeted out a statement claiming that she was “gutted” because her book was banned from a school in Florida. The tweet received nearly 50,000 likes, and most of these news outlets wrote stories simply parroting what Gorman said.
However, at least one outlet, the Hill, reached out to the district, which clarified that “no literature (books or poem) has been banned or removed.” The Hill paraphrased the rest of their statement, writing that the district explained “Gorman’s poem is better suited for middle school readers and that the poem has been shelved in the middle school section of the school’s media center.”
In other words, a school moved a book to a different section of their media center — and it became a national story.
Even after the district’s statement, outlets such as the New York Times and NBC News have published pieces on the story, only slightly editing their wording but keeping the central message unchanged. The New York Times described the poem as being “restricted” by the school, while NBC News claimed the school “limited access” to it. But a fair observer can see that these characterizations are intellectually dishonest ways of describing a book simply being moved to a different section than it was previously in. Additionally, many of the articles from other outlets are still up in their original form — continuing to misinform readers.
The unquestioning obedience in reporting this fake story is quite telling. It also raises serious questions about the rest of the reporting on a wave of books allegedly being “banned.” Credible doubts have already been raised — labeling many of the reports as “fraudulent” — and it seems that many of the “bans” simply consist of schools changing what books are in their curriculum or removing sexually explicit, pornographic books from their libraries.
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Moreover, the fact that the media is sticking to the original narrative despite new facts showing that what really happened is something completely unnewsworthy is concerning. When the media becomes more concerned with narrative than fact, they cease to be the invaluable resource that ordinary citizens can count on to be their window into what's happening in the world. Their conduct is not just outrageous, but the consequences of them are also tragic.
The media often revels in how important their job is. And they are right: good journalism is indispensable to a free society. However, when they begin to abdicate their responsibility, they are taking part in tearing down that society.
Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.