Media Literacy Now, an organization funded by the Biden Administration with ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and whose staff advocate for Critical Race Theory, is claiming to have successfully influenced education legislation in 20 states, including red states.
A new report from the Foundation for Freedom Online exposes Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit whose board includes the founder and CEO of Ad Fontes, a “media bias tracker” that overwhelmingly targeted conservative news outlets.
The purpose of Media Literacy Now is to advocate for “media and digital literacy” training in K-12 schools. These curricula — often written by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — instruct students which online sources to trust, and which to avoid.
Media Literacy Now’s founder has personally given comments to Learning for Justice, the media literacy provider of the SPLC. The ties to race radicals don’t end there: a Pennsylvania researcher for the nonprofit, R. Allen Berry, has written an academic tract making the case for “a media education program that will create an intersection between critical race theory, news literacy, and fake news.”
Media Literacy Now’s state leaders also have a track record of partisan comments. Via FFO:
Following the events of January 6th, the head of MLN’s New Jersey chapter, Olga Polites, authored an op-ed calling it a “Trump-inspired insurrection” driven by a “disinformation campaign regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 election.”
The op-ed further blamed the riot on disinformation spread by “Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, and radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin,” and accused The Daily Caller, a mainstream conservative news source of “traffic[king] in lies and conspiracy theories.” Polites only identified one conservative publication she considered credible: the establishment journal National Review.
Media Literacy Now was also directly backed by the Biden Administration, during which it received a $30,000 grant from the State Department to promote media literacy in Germany. It was also cited as a source of expertise by both the CDC Foundation and the Biden Administration’s “Information Literacy Taskforce.”
Despite all this, Media Literacy Now, which has 23 state advocacy leaders across the country, is making inroads across the board. Its impact page celebrates wins in more than 20 states, including a string of red states: Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Florida, Utah, Nebraska, Ohio, and Florida.
In a comment, Foundation for Freedom Online managing director Allum Bokhari said Republicans shouldn’t be fooled by media and digital literacy nonprofits presenting themselves as nonpartisan. “President Trump signed a day-one executive order ending censorship programs at the federal level,” said Bokhari. “In response, the people who want to control what online news sources are considered credible are targeting the states.”
Bokhari continued, “What’s being presented to legislators as harmless lessons to teach kids how to navigate the web safely is really just the political censorship industry trying to worm its way into schools – and, in the case of Media Literacy Now, with some critical race theory thrown in as a bonus.”
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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