Time's Liberal Bias Taught in Schools

As if school kids didn't get enough liberal propaganda. Whether parents know it or not, millions of students across the country have been receiving biased news magazines in the classroom. Without adult guidance, children are at risk to take as fact the consistently liberal views of Time magazine.


Through Great American Opportunities, people can order magazine subscriptions and earn Time for Kids subscriptions for the school of their choice. Kindergarten through sixth-graders will then receive this publication free of charge.


According to its website, “The Time For Kids Program helps schools receive the best in current weekly classroom news magazines for students in grades K-6 at no cost. TFK delivers three weekly news magazines to over 3.9 million students.”


This program comes from a magazine that has published articles on how kids are bad for the environment. As CMI noted previously, Time's article on May 8 described this environmental problem:


“Want to wreck the environment?  Have a baby.  Each bundle of joy gobbles up more of the planet's food, clogs garbage dumps with diapers, churns through plastic toys and winds up a gas-guzzling, resource-consuming grown-up like the rest of us.  Still, babies are awfully cute.  Given that most people will intend to procreate, what's an environmentally conscious parent to do?”


Magazine orders may seem to be a simple way to keep children aware of current events. Subscribers and parents need to be aware of the cultural influences this may have on young children who are not aware of the biased articles.


Time for Kids, in its “Lights Out” article on March 20, encouraged participation in an hour of turning of lights and using less energy. They urge children to do their part for the green movement because, “As the planet warms, habitats are put in danger.” The magazine continues to state the disputed global warming theory as a fact.


Given the state of public education, students that saw the Time environmental issue cover on April 21 2008 may not have understood why veterans were outraged by the magazine's doctoring of the iconic Joe Rosenthal photograph to show the Marines at Iwo Jima raising a tree instead of the original American flag. And students would have no way of knowing that Time's managing editor last year dismissed as “fantasy” the notion that journalism should be objective.


That attitude has resulted in Time calling George W, Bush an “eco-villian” at a hundred days into his presidency while hailing Obama at the same mark, suggesting that readers “trash” a book on media bias, and providing Michael Moore with a forum to promote universal healthcare. Do kids benefit from a “news” source that eschews even the semblance of balance and actively promotes liberal ideology in its pages?

Iris Somberg is an intern at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.