Quote of the Day…Plus – Regarding serious errors and cover ups for the NY Times’ 1619 Project

“Correcting factual errors in their published works, of course, is an important responsibility of both the journalistic and scholarly press. But such corrections are typically and rightly made openly and explicitly. The author and the publisher acknowledge an error and correct it. That is not what happened in this case. Rather, the false claims were erased or altered with no explanation.”
Pulitzer Board Must Revoke Nikole Hannah-Jones' Prize, a letter from 21 Scholars to the Pulitzer Prize Committee, Posted October 6, 2020

The Plus

The NY Times’ 1619 Project has been controversial since its initial document was released in August 2019. Ever-growing numbers of scholars have publicly protested various claims in the Times’ original publication and the associated 1619 educational materials created since.

Articles criticizing the Times for initial errors and quietly changing material, such as “Goldberg: New York Times owes an explanation for 1619 Project reversal,” “Scholars are eviscerating The New York Times’ 1619 Project” and “BUSTED: New York Times quietly deletes revisionist history from discredited ‘1619 Project’ after getting called out by Trump” are not hard to find.

Despite all the controversy, the 1619 project is being used in at least one Kentucky school, Iroquois High School in Louisville, according to the Pulitzer Center Blog.

More generally, as of today the Kentucky Council for Social Studies still lists the 1619 Project as a suitable teaching resource for discussions about the recent protests regarding racial issues.

I wonder if teachers using this problematic material are at the very least exposing students to alternative viewpoints regarding the 1619 Project's claims.

In fact, in the end the most interesting and important lessons to be learned from the 1619 effort might be about how once well-regarded media sources now need to be considered with far more caution.