Mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman and his NJEA-funded New Jersey Public Education Coalition (NJPEC) are once again trying to bully a local school board and enlisting a compliant New Jersey press corps to help them do it. It’s not the first time that Gottesman — a proven, serial bully and a proven, serial liar — has brought the NJEA-funded resources of his statewide organization into a local school district in an attempt to intimidate a local school board. And it’s not the first time that a New Jersey reporter has complied with Gottesman’s urgings. This time it’s Amanda Oglesby of the Asbury Park Press (APP) who dutifully answered Gottesman’s call with an entirely one-sided version of events. Why the bias, Ms. Oglesby?
Gottesman is a proven, serial bully who tries to intimidate local school boards. Fresh off of going after high school freshmen in Freehold — and having InsiderNJ‘s Fred Snowflack flack for him (again) — Gottesman and NJPEC alerted the New Jersey press corps and NJPEC members to a “Parental Bill of Rights” introduced by the Colts Neck school board. These are much-used tactics by Gottesman to intimidate school boards.
As he did in North Hunterdon-Voorhees, Gottesman seeks to mobilize NJPEC members and outsiders to attend the meeting to pressure the local school board: “Critics of the parent’s rights bill are expected to gather … at the Colts Neck Board of Education meeting,” says the APP.
As he has did before, Gottesman has contacted state authorities (the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights) about the Colts Neck resolution in an effort to further intimidate the school board (per the APP).
And, as he did with Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapters in New Jersey high schools and at Rutgers, Gottesman’s email to enlist the New Jersey press corps (provided by a friend of Sunlight) used inflammatory language to describe the proposed bill of rights as “a continued attack by right wing extremist board of education” that will “put the safety of student members of this [LGBTQ+] community at risk.” Using inflammatory rhetoric to enlist the press corps to help him intimidate his opponents has become Gottesman’s go-to tactic. Unfortunately, it looks like he succeeded (again).
The Asbury Park Press‘s Amanda Oglesby dutifully complies with Gottesman’s request. But what makes Gottesman’s bullying even more problematic is the complicity of the New Jersey press corps. As with Snowflack and NorthJersey.com’s Mary Ann Koruth, Amanda Oglesby of the Asbury Park Press, dutifully wrote a totally one-sided article on the Colts Neck situation. We know from earlier alerts to the press that Oglesby was on Gottesman’s contact list, so we can safely assume that she received Gottesman’s November 17 email alert. As if on cue, Oglesby’s article was published on November 19 — just in time for that evening’s school board meeting.
In all-too-typical fashion, Oglesby’s article contains extensive quotes from a senior director of Garden State Equality (“the state’s largest advocacy organization for LBGTQ+ rights”) and from Gottesman, whose goal is described as “to resist so-called ‘right-wing extremism'” — the same wording as Gottesman’s email alert. Oglesby further quotes Gottesman: the Colts Neck school board members “seem to disregard any concern about that (risk to students)” and “totally disregard privacy rights of the students” — again mirroring the wording of Gottesman’s email alert. Oglesby then goes on to cite data about the suicide risks for LBGTQ+ teens from The Trevor Project, which is hardly an unbiased actor. That’s three sources from one side of the argument, and ZERO from the other. Why the bias, Ms. Oglesby?
And then there’s Oglesby’s substantial reliance on the mendacious Gottesman, a proven, serial liar, who got his moniker “Hundreds of Millions” because he blatantly lied to the Star-Ledger. He recently penned an op-ed in NJ.com, to which the estimable Laura Waters of NJEdReport responded: “None of this is true.” And she was right. Sunlight’s analysis also concluded that, true to past form, Gottesman resorted to falsehoods to make his (mendacious) case. The facts show Gottesman is a proven, serial liar. We would ask Ms. Oglesby, a veteran APP reporter, why the unquestioning reliance on a proven, serial liar?
Three reporters make for a pattern of press bias. That now makes it three reporters who have written news articles that read like NJPEC press releases, and three reporters that have unquestioningly relied on the words of a proven, serial liar. Meanwhile, Gottesman and his NJEA-funded NJPEC are free to bring their substantial resources to bear against local school boards. It’s telling that not one reporter has seen fit to explore the NJEA’s funding for Gottesman and NJPEC or the impact it has had on New Jersey school boards. This pattern of bias is a sad indictment of the state of the current New Jersey press corps.