Media Spreads Uniform Narrative on Parental Rights Law
April 11, 2022 Updated 9:06 A.M. ET
TALLAHASSEE (FCV) – Over the past week, media outlets across the nation were hard at work demonizing Florida’s freshly passed Parental Rights in Education law – H.B. 1557 – seemingly in a coordinated fashion.
Christina Pushaw, Press Secretary for Florida Governor Ron Desantis (R), tweeted a compilation of various well known media outlets running disturbingly similar headlines.
MSNBC described Republicans’ defense of the bill as the “GOP Smears Political Opponents As Pro-Pedophile.” The Washington Post released an article in their education section titled, “Teachers who mention sexuality are ‘grooming’ kids, conservatives say.”
Not only are these titles regarding the GOP’s defense of the new law incorrect and misleading, but they also point to a mainstream media complex working to establish an almost identical narrative across the board.
Vice News even revived the now completely debunked ‘Don’t Say Gay’ narrative surrounding the Parental Rights Law in their article entitled, “Conservatives Are Smearing “Don’t Say Gay Opponents as Pedophile ‘Groomers.’ This narrative completely fell apart after weeks of the mainstream media parroting the phrase failed to shift public opinion.
After all, the law simply bans gender and sexual identity from being instructed grades K-3. It does not mention the word gay and because of that, Republicans pounced on the idea that Democrats were essentially in favor of this gender and sexual identity instruction taking place for young elementary school students, something that not only a majority of Floridians oppose but also Americans nationwide.
In order to destroy the GOP’s defense of the bill, media outlets have drowned the news cycle with articles that seemingly sound very similar to each other, so much so that external parties seem to constantly echo each other rather than present original ideas or counterarguments.
