Media top headlines July 29
In media news today, the CDC gets hit by liberal media outlets for 'confusing message' on wearing masks, WaPo's Max Boot gets ripped for tweeting Saudi Arabia is 'more progressive' than the U.S. for vaccine mandate, and NBC's Tokyo Olympics coverage spurs 'advertiser anxiety' as viewers continue to drop
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten was ripped after hedging on whether or not U.S. schools would reopen in the fall during a Wednesday interview on MSNBC.
While having previously recommended that fully vaccinated individuals are not required to wear masks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed guidance following the spread of the new Delta variant of the virus, announcing that vaccinated people should return to wearing masks indoors and suggesting universal masking in schools.
Weingarten called the guidance a "curveball," before suggesting that school reopenings this fall are not a done deal.
TEACHER SLAMS ‘DEMORALIZING’ NEW CDC MASK GUIDANCE FOR SCHOOLS: ‘KIDS NEED TO GET BACK TO NORMAL’
"So the bottom line is, we're going to keep kids safe, we're going to keep our members safe, we're going to try to open up schools, and we're going to move through this political battlefield," Weingarten said.
Critics picked up on her comment about the reopening of schools because it sounded like backpedaling from when she argued in May that "we can and we must reopen schools in the fall."
"Conditions have changed," she said at the time. "We can and we must reopen schools in the fall for in-person teaching, learning and support. And we must keep them open fully and safely five days a week."
‘We’re going to try,'" - and she's citing the CDC mask decision as she wavers," Fox News contributor Guy Benson said following Weingarten's apparent flip flop.
CDC HIT BY LIBERAL MEDIA OUTLETS FOR ‘CONFUSING MESSAGE’ ON WEARING MASKS
Despite her claims that she had always advocated for the reopening of schools, Weingarten and teachers unions at large have been accused of dragging their feet. At times they said they didn't have the capabilities to safeguard either children or teachers during the pandemic, although schools have repeatedly been shown not to be danger zones for widely spreading the virus.
Uncovered correspondence in May also revealed the AFT had been directly influencing the CDC's school guidelines on the reopening of schools. For instance, the CDC was prepared to allow in-school instruction regardless of transmission rates, but appeared to backtrack on that guidance following a suggestion from the union, adding a provision that read, "In the event of high community-transmission results from a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, a new update of these guidelines may be necessary."
"Schools will open everywhere except where Randi has influence, just like they did last year," predicted New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz.
"This is par for the course for teachers unions," Corey DeAngelis, the national director of research at the American Federation for Children, told Fox News in a statement. "They have shifted the reopening goalposts every step of the way for over a year now."
And it's the unions who "benefit" from all the confusing guidance, he argued.
"Teachers unions benefit from this back-and-forth reopening chaos because they can leverage the state of disorder to lobby for even more resources from taxpayers to return to normalcy," DeAngelis said. "Teachers unions in some districts might try to hold children's educations hostage even longer by keeping schools closed so that they can continue to work from home with the same job security and pay while putting themselves in a better position to secure additional ransom payments from taxpayers."
Fox News contributor Lisa Marie Boothe wondered if anyone "outside of Fauci" had done more harm to the country during the pandemic besides Weingarten because of how kids have "suffered" from her agenda.
"If schools don’t open up in the fall, that’ll be one of the single greatest national self-owns I could imagine…" said Uriel Epshtein, director of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
Some politicians weighed in too, noting they weren't shocked by Weingarten's vague remarks on Wednesday.
".@rweingarten, do you need a refresher on the difference between TRYING to reopen schools and ACTUALLY reopening schools? I'd say you do," asked Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"The teachers unions are overplaying their hand - and if they keep it up they're only going to continue providing free advertising for school choice and homeschooling," DeAngelis said.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox