The American Federation of Teachers will sponsor protests against ABC News reporter John Stossel's January 13 broadcast, "Stupid in America," in cities across America where AFT has local affiliates.
AFT decided to nationalize a rally the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) planned to hold outside ABC headquarters. UFT will hold its demonstration on March 8 at 4 p.m. and will deliver petitions it collected decrying the program's "misleading picture of the UFT and New York City's hard-working educators." AFT affiliates will hold concurrent rallies elsewhere in New York State, in Chicago, Providence, Atlanta, Detroit and Gary, Indiana.
By the time March 8 rolls around, most of the public will have to be reminded what the Stossel report was about. Indeed, UFT representatives are handing out VHS and DVD copies of the program to members.
I'm hard-pressed to see how a business that requires eyes on advertising to make money will suffer from having its show passed around, talked about, and protested about, with mountains of free news coverage.
I suspect Stossel is already thinking about another special report, this time on how teachers' unions try to manipulate media coverage of themselves. His producers can start their research here
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