Thursday, April 28, 2011

Latest Huffington Post blog: Gutless media has failed American public schools

One of the more ridiculous things I have noticed over the past couple of years is how the media tends to label anyone who attacks teachers, teacher unions, or public schools as "courageous" and anyone who wants to gut public education is termed a "reformer."

In my latest Huffington Post blog, "Gutless Media Has Failed American Public Schools," I explore the failures of the media when it comes to reporting on education. The blog includes the following passage:

While there are exceptions, the coverage of today's education is being colored by reporters who have never sat in a classroom at a public school, never interviewed a teacher, and consider their reporting to be balanced because they talked to politicians on both sides of an issue and sought a quote from a representative of the teachers union.


That's not reporting, that's stenography.

For reporters and columnists to keep referring to grandstanders like Michelle Rhee, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker as "courageous" because they are willing to take on the "firmly entrenched teachers' unions" is lazy reporting and that is being charitable.

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