The airwaves and interwebs are abuzz with talk about a Florida school district that allegedly banned thousands of books, including dictionaries and encyclopedias. Left-leaning media outlets are breathlessly reporting on this latest instance of “book banning” and clutching their pearls over what they describe as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Hitlerian push to limit information given to children.

However, there is a slight flaw in this narrative: It is completely false.

Escambia County School District made headlines after it made a move intended to comply with HB 1069, which “expands parental rights in education by prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in Pre-K through 8^th grade.” The legislation requires school libraries to ensure that they are not including material that could be inappropriate for children, which has prompted districts to conduct reviews of books in their inventory.

Axios reported that Escambia’s school district “has taken away over 1,600 titles for review, including five dictionaries and eight different encyclopedias.”

Not to be outdone, CBS News also published a report promoting the narrative.

One school district in Florida is looking to extend the state's book ban to an unexpected genre: dictionaries. According to a list obtained and published by the nonprofit PEN America, the Escambia County school district has included five dictionaries, eight encyclopedias and "The Guinness Book of World Records," in its list of more than 1,600 books that could soon be banned.

Predictably, the Washington Post also got in on the action.

Also investigated were the World Book Encyclopedia of People and Places, the World Almanac and Book of Facts, and other reference books on topics including science, mythology and the Bible, according to a list published by the school district and circulated this week by PEN America, a free speech group that has sued the school board over the removals.

That dictionaries were included in the review process and triggered the “sexual conduct” criteria for a second look demonstrates how sweeping the state’s new rules are and how fraught the climate in districts has become, said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program.

“This was just another example that illuminates the heightened atmosphere, the chilled atmosphere that we’re navigating,” Meehan said. “Librarians are feeling so pressured to err on such extreme caution that these are the types of books that are being pulled for review.”

Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?

But according to one of the district’s administrators, the truth isn’t quite as egregious as the activist media would have us believe.

In a statement to Newsweek, Escambia County Public Schools Superintendent Keith Leonard said: "I want to clarify that our district has not imposed a 'ban' on over 1600 books. Additionally, the dictionary has not been banned in our district. Any claims suggesting otherwise are inaccurate and should be disregarded."

In a further statement to the Pensacola News Journal, a district spokesperson clarified that the books included on the list obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project "have not been banned or removed from the school district; rather, they have simply been pulled for further review to ensure compliance with the new legislation."

So, to sum it up, the district is simply reviewing these books to ensure they line up with Florida law; they're not banning them. Yes, some of the books in question will likely be banned if they contain the sexually inappropriate material that progressives are desperately fighting to keep in schools. It seems reasonable to suggest that the dictionaries and encyclopedias will make the cut, so to speak.

Now, could one argue that even reviewing dictionaries and encyclopedias is a bit silly? Sure. But it sounds like the district is either trying to cover its bases or possibly going overboard to make the law look foolish. So far, the latter seems more likely. Either way, the media jumped on this story as a way to attack DeSantis and Florida’s Republicans for trying to ensure that young children are not exposed to inappropriate material in the classroom. And they still wonder why America does not trust them.