Brandy Zadrozny, a senior reporter at NBC News, is displeased with how American citizens have mobilized against critical race theory. Many are using open-records laws to obtain evidence of what public entities are doing with their tax dollars.
To Zadrozny, people who seek to hold government accountable via the Freedom of Information Act—passed by Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966—are participating in an “onerous” process. Well, is she in favor of governments keeping public information from the people paying for it?
“It’s hard for me as a reporter because I don’t want to put FOILs in a bad light, Freedom of Information Laws are wonderful things,” the writer preluded. “But it is in fact a tactic of national and just hyper and fast-growing local organizations to use onerous public records requests …Asking for all these record requests of ‘how much money did you spend on anything involving race,’ and then that is used to sort of frame again the school board as paying for CRT. Which, again, is just not the case.”
Did you ever think we would see so-called “reporters” like @BrandyZadrozny bemoaning FREEDOM OF INFORMATION and demanding the public only believes the official government line on everything?
WATCH THIS state propagandist who sounds like a valley girl. pic.twitter.com/7Jvox2r5me
— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) June 17, 2021
Should we be shocked that a so-called journalist is criticizing a legal process used by people to understand what their own governments are doing? Absolutely not.
After all, it was Zadrozny who earlier this week put on full display her lack of commitment to honest reporting when she declined to include a comment from CRT critic Christopher Rufo in a critical theory hit piece that mentioned him. While I am only an intern, journalism 101 is pretty simple on this: It is unethical to deny people you write about the opportunity to comment based on “disagreeing with on-record experts [and] activists.”
Zadrozny did not return a request for comment from The Federalist.
The NBC reporter decries the Freedom of Information Act then claims those who file FOIAs are operating under the erroneous impression critical race theory is a real phenomenon hijacking the school system. Along with many leftists, Zadrozny therefore pushes the idea critical race theory is a voodoo conspiracy Republicans have cooked up.
“Virtually all school districts insist they are not teaching critical race theory, but many activists and parents have begun using it as a catch-all term to refer to what schools often call equity programs, teaching about racism or LGBTQ-inclusive policies,” she wrote in an article jointly bylined with others. “Now, conservative activists are setting their sights on ousting as many school board members as they can, and local Republican Parties have vowed to help, viewing the revolt against critical race theory as akin to the tea party wave from a decade ago.”
A day later, Zadrozny thought she struck gold. She published a hit piece on Republican activists based on a Media Matters report decrying the idea that parents could also be political.
One of the people she discussed, Fight for Schools Executive Director Ian Prior, told The Federalist, “It says a lot that an NBC News ‘reporter’ thinks that moms and dads fighting for their children is a problem because they have appeared on Fox News or are conservative.”
“What these ‘reporters’ that are now writing hit pieces on parents fail to understand is that this is not political for any of us — it’s 100 percent personal,” Prior added.
If Zadrozny truly views FOIAs as “onerous” in the case of critical race theory, does she determine them to be in the case of those that were directed toward the Trump administration, or Oklahoma Republican Attorney General Mike Hunter over the 2020 presidential election, or the U.S. Department of Justice for communications ties to Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz?
It is safe to assume not. But apparently, either open records requests are for elite reporters only, not taxpayers, or critical race theory is not a worthy cause for people to seek pertinent information from elected officials.
“Onerous FOIA requests, school board meetings being showed up in mass and yelling at school board members, all of this is sort of a tactic,” said Zadrozny. “And it’s being leapt upon by national organizations from The Heritage Foundation to ALEC [American Legislative Exchange Council], to other groups that have popped up after the Trump presidency to sort of push this American first agenda. And it’s also being roundly embraced by news organizations. Like you mentioned, like Fox News, Breitbart, other right-wing organizations who are just covering this stuff in mass when it’s really just a local issue.”
The reason Zadrozny views concerned people reacting to critical race theory with FOIA’s and attendance at board meetings as “just a local issue” is that she bizarrely asserts the “anti-racism” doctrine these parents are mad about is not definable. Instead, the entire clash between school curricula can be chalked in her mind to a bunch of bigoted conservatives who are uninterested in learning about racial “equity.” But what anyone paying attention knows is that “equity” is a buzzword frequently used to usher in critical race theory.
A journalist angry that citizens are doing a better job than the entire journalist class on this issue of extreme public importance using open-government tools. That about epitomizes the American elites of 2021.
Source: The Federalist
