The in box. IEA finally responds to the ABC Big Lie. “We left a voice mail.”

48 hours after the ABC Big Lie story, repeating the talking points of the anti-union Illinois Policy Institute, the IEA finally responds.

Colleagues:

We wanted to provide information about a particularly bad pension story aired by the top TV news operation in Chicago this week.

On Wednesday night<x-apple-data-detectors://0>, in what was claimed to be an “investigative report,” WLS-TV/Channel 7 broadcast the lie that has been peddled for months by the “Illinois Policy Institute” — that teachers generally pay little or nothing toward their retirements.

This is a charge IEA has countered many times in the last year, in interviews or in letters to the editor. Heres a story from last October http://www.myjournalcourier.com/articles/teachers-35839-pensions-shell.html 

What was unusual about the TV story this week was the failure of the reporter to seek a comment from IEA, IFT or TRS. Any representative would have explained why it’s false to claim teachers aren’t making their payments.

There was other misinformation in the “news” report. Much of it, frankly, was nonsense. You can read it here.http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/iteam&id=8646860 

We left a voicemail for reporter Chuck Goudie on Thursday, as he was unavailable. He apparently spoke with a TRS official after the first report aired. However, a follow up report on Thursday did nothing to clarify the issue or the facts regarding pension contributions.

That report can be read here: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/iteam&id=8647489 

We will continue to try to reach Goudie and his managers. Meanwhile, the labor coalition sent a message to all Illinois news outlets on Thursday warning them that there is misinformation being peddled about pensions and they should be checking with the unions representing impacted employees if they’re considering stories on pensions.  Contact information for IEA, IFT and other key employee organizations was included.

Also, the coalition made Rich Miller at Capitol Fax aware of the IPI report on which the TV story was based. Miller understands issues better than most reporters and he posted an outstanding knockdown of the report:

http://capitolfax.com/2012/05/03/the-big-lie-on-teacher-pensions/ 

The news media cannot be compelled to recant bad reporting, but we are monitoring all coverage and considering other possibilities for impacting the news organizations.

If you learn of a report that distorts the facts or fails to include the perspective of impacted education employees, please contact me Charlie.mcbarron@ieanea.org<mailto:Charlie.mcbarron@ieanea.org>

Thanks, Charlie Mc Barron — IEA Director of Communications