There have been precious few things more delicious than the White House Twitter feed exposing the hypocrisy of GOP legislators who were bashing student loan forgiveness while being forgiven of tens or hundreds or thousands of dollars under the PPP program.
Many local media outlets, unfortunately, have not learned the lesson from those Twitter takedowns.
While, to be fair, there are differences in the two forgiveness programs—and indeed, media outlets were hard hit with advertising losses during the pandemic—it’s interesting to see editorials in those newspapers criticizing the student loan forgiveness program while keeping quiet about their own loan forgiveness. And, it’s a darn good bet that your local news outlet applied for a PPP loan.
Adding to that lack of candor is that most of these local media outlets hire young reporters who have been saddled with debt in order to get that bachelor’s degree the media outlets require in their new hires. I’m sure those often underpaid young reporters are seething at their publishers and older editors bashing a forgiveness program that will help them pay their other bills.
So, if your local outlet has published an editorial against the student loan forgiveness program while never revealing their own loan forgiveness, call them out! Look up the media outlet holdings in your zip code (the ProPublica PPP database is most excellent), and write a letter exposing their lack of transparency, mentioning the amount of the loan they have been forgiven (you may want to look through the newspaper’s archive to see how they have covered/opined about the PPP program).
Of course, some of those outlets might refuse to publish your letter, at which point you should find other venues (like Daily Kos!) for your missive. And, in so doing, be sure to note that the dissemination of key information and the open debate of ideas are the very raison d’ etre of a newspaper—and that the newspaper’s suppression of both by rejecting your letter to hide an unpleasant truth for them represents a hypocrisy far worse than their stance on the student loan forgiveness program.