Media top headlines September 13
In media news today, an MSNBC historian uses 9/11 to campaign against Republicans, an LA Times columnist calls Larry Elder a 'very real threat' to communities of color, and the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler gets mocked for praising NYC's vaccine mandate
MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle claimed Monday that adults could simply work from home and teach their children if they were unwilling to get the coronavirus vaccine.
Ruhle made the remark while interviewing Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo about coronavirus vaccinations in the workplace, while also claiming that no one was being "forced" to take the vaccine.
President Joe Biden announced last week that his administration would be implementing a mandate for companies with more than 100 employees to require them to take the vaccine or else submit to weekly testing, declaring that it was "not about freedom or personal choice."
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"The White House has made its goal very clear. They want this country vaccinated, and they're not forcing people to do it. Now, I've called these mandates a work-around, which is not a negative term. It is a way to achieve a goal without violating anything, without forcing anything on anyone. A way to get a huge amount of people vaccinated legally," Ruhle said, openly advocating for the administration's policy before asking Raimondo how she viewed the mandates.
Raimondo agreed with Ruhle, calling the mandates "a huge step forward" in getting Americans back to work and recovering from the pandemic. She added that she was proud of Biden for making the decision.
"I'm puzzled by these people who continue to say they’re forced to get vaccinated here. There’s always been a choice. If you do not want to get vaccinated, you can work from home, you can home school your children, you can shop online," Ruhle said, failing to mention the inability of many American workers to have the option to work from home, or the ability to afford not working to homeschool their children.
"So where is this coming from, people saying, ‘I’m now being forced to be vaccinated?’ We never forced vaccinations on kids in school. If you didn’t want to vaccinate your kids, you could homeschool them, and people have done it for years," she added.
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A study in the early days of the pandemic found that there was a correlation between the ability to work remotely and high-wage positions, showing that it was harder for less well-off Americans to have the ability to work from home. Researchers found that just 37% of jobs in the U.S. could be plausibly performed from home.
According to Think Impact, an organization that tracks education and career related statistics, most recent federal data showed only 3% to 4% of school-aged children in the U.S. were home-schooled pre-pandemic. As a result of the pandemic, that number went up to 9% as of the fall of 2020.
A survey by EdChoice found that one of the top concerns parents have about switching to homeschooling their children is the ability to balance between the child's schedule and their work schedule, numbers that show a potential strain being placed on lower income families.
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There is also a stark racial divide when it comes to which families home school their children, with pre-pandemic numbers showing 68% of the students being White, 15% Hispanic, 8% Black and 4% Asian, suggesting an unequal burden could potentially be placed on minority families being forced to homeschool.
Fox Business' Megan Henney contributed to this report.