Touting the Leftist Crusaders Against ‘Book Bans’

Written by Tim Graham

The Left is in an uproar. Parents opposed to their indoctrinating ways are forming a resistance movement. One uproar is over books — assigned books in the classroom and available books in the school library. Disagree with the content of the books? You’re for “book bans.”

Technically, this is accurate inside the school, but the leftist press makes it sound like you’re banning books entirely from public view. They get to pose as the defenders of books and “book learning” and as compassionate defenders of the book-reading needs of the “marginalized.”

On its Twitter account, National Public Radio has repeatedly promoted a March 23 “Morning Edition” story headlined “Plot twist: Activists skirt book bans with guerrilla giveaways and pop-up libraries.” As usual, the lefties wearing their “Read Banned Books” T-shirts are merely “activists,” but you can tell who they are when they’re putting out the “banned books” at Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shops.

NPR’s tweet claims “a record number of book bans are expected this year.” Their reporter on this story was Tovia Smith. Her biography on the NPR website boasts, “Smith always pushes past the polemics, and advances the conversation with more thoughtful, thought-provoking, and nuanced arguments from both — or all — sides.”

That is false. This story runs 7 minutes and 18 seconds, and the conservative side gets 21 seconds of soundbites. The rest is dedicated to polemics from the Left, including Smith celebrating how some activist from “Foundation 451” explained how “one family came in with a (transgender) teen and picked up ‘This Book Is Gay’ and just cried. Their father held them, and they both thanked us so much.”

The lone dissenter was Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty. She explicitly pointed out that these people are pushing books with pornographic passages and/or images, and that adults pushing porn on children is illegal.

But nowhere in this story is there a single second of explaining the offensive content. Author Elana K. Arnold complained that the sexually explicit scenes in her books are considered pornographic, but this is “a gross misrepresentation.” But that’s not an explanation.

This is how the leftist media operate. They are all about channeling outrage about “book bans,” and they spend no time explaining the pornographic passages and images that stoke the controversy. It’s all posing and no disclosing.

In the same spirit, the Daily Beast ran an article plugging “The 100-Year-Old Woman Fighting Book Bans.” Grace Linn was touted for arguing to a school board gathering, “One of the freedoms that the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books they banned.”

In case it was unclear, reporter Michael Daly underlined, “She made clear that in her view what Florida has been attempting under Gov. Ron DeSantis is the dangerous stirring of an evil akin to what her husband set off to fight.” The whole story hammered the Nazi comparisons, and no dissenter was given one word in the “book bans” discussion.

This is part of what makes this kind of journalism hilarious. The Left hates dissent. They associate dissent with “disinformation.” They “ban” conservative ideas and advocates from many of their news stories. They call conservatives Nazis, and no one gets to tell them that’s atrocious.

The Daily Beast also highlighted one activist in Utah suggesting one sexually disgusting book is … the Holy Bible. Ironically, back in 2015, the American Library Association noted the Bible was one of the “most challenged” books. You can bet NPR wouldn’t do a story touting rambunctious activists and their “guerrilla giveaways” of the Bible.

Tim Graham is Executive Editor of NewsBusters and host of the NewsBusters Podcast. His career at the Media Research Center began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.