.JPG)
...selective exclusion and the Newspapers
Excerpts below from a piece that most graciously explains why most of the best letters and papers written to newspapers about issues in education will never be printed in them.
Its research base was Virginia, and although it is directed by a particular interest (in the issues of charter schools, home schooling, vouchers, and tuition tax credits,) the article does a damn good job of decribing the "big" newspapers' resistance to including the "little" voices of advocates, parents, and other "outsiders" on educational issues.
I know that our little local paper and our big Washington Post have followed the recipe, excluding the voices that radically differ from their own agenda or interest.
The following are excerpts from:
Society's Watchdogs
http://www.choices-k12.org/Society's_Watchdogs.htm
Americans today rate daily newspapers less “believable” than local and national television news, and a majority think newspaper reporters are out of touch with mainstream society.This study, based on telephone surveys of education print reporters and analysis of 403 education-related articles published over eight months by four daily news publishers in Virginia, suggests the criticism may be warranted when it comes to daily newspaper coverage of elementary and secondary education.
Newspapers’ education news coverage is largely a conversation of, by, and for the public school industry.
• 65% of published articles related to topics of foremost interest to the public school industry, namely,
public school funding, public school staffing, and public school wage and benefit proposals (261 of
403 articles).
Other topics of public interest received substantially less attention:
• 22% addressed student achievement/state Standards of Learning performance (88 articles);
• 7% discussed the federal No Child Left Behind Act (28 articles);
• 3% were related to miscellaneous matters such as school boundary proposals (14 articles);
• 3% addressed public education reforms and innovations such as charter schools, home
schooling, vouchers, and tuition tax credits (12 articles).
• 95% of all sources cited in all articles were government/public school-affiliated sources (1,364 of
1,438 sources); 5% were non-government/public school-affiliated sources (74 articles).
Newspapers disenfranchise other constituencies with a stake in the public education service and an interest in reforms and innovations to deliver the service more cost-effectively and better.
Taxpayers who bear the cost of the public school service received scant attention from newspapers.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), arguably the most complex and least understood federal accountability initiative ever undertaken,10 was the subject of 28 news articles (7%).
(10 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup’s 2004 annual poll reports that 68% of Americans say they know “very little” or “nothing at all” about the federal NoChild Left Behind Act (www.pdkintl.org)
Asked what most commonly triggers an education story by their news organization, nearly two-thirds of the journalists surveyed (63%) said “an announcement/press release by a federal, state, or local education agency.”
Yet taxpayers rarely have a voice in newspaper coverage of school funding issues. Of 938 sources cited in 261 funding-related articles, public school officials were quoted 535 times (57%) and public school advocacy groups were cited 154 times (16%). Individual taxpayers were
quoted six times (less than 1 percent), and taxpayer advocacy groups were never cited.
Newspapers generally look to public school Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) for parents’ perspectives on education-related issues, but no one organization can adequately represent the diverse perspectives of all public school parents.
....unlikely to see her viewpoint reflected in the news pages of her local paper—or ever have a reporter ask why she thinks the way she does—may help to explain why Americans believe newspaper journalists are out of touch with mainstream society and newspaper readership
continues to decline. She is invisible to them. Newspapers can blame readers, as Columbia Journalism Review publisher Evan Cornog suggests, for no longer caring about traditional community and civic institutions that newspapers cover so effectively. Or they can see readers as victims, as Cornog does, of changing political winds that seek to “reduce government’s role in American life” and of public school reforms that place too much attention on raising achievement for a competitive marketplace and too little attention on raising good citizens for a consensus society.23
Such an assessment, writes blogger Tim Porter, leaves “newspapers not as chroniclers of the community but as curators of a civic museum without patrons,” and fails to consider “the leadership newspapers can play in defining, supporting, and engaging new communities—communities of interest.”24
Those new communities of interest exist. They may be less sophisticated in media relations than the public school industry, but they are citizens whose conversations about education practices, policies, reforms and innovations are progressing. Engaging in those conversations should come naturally to a newspaper industry that built its reputation publishing complex, contentious policy ideas at the dawn of a new nation.
(23 Evan Cornog. “Let’s Blame the Readers: Is it possible to do great journalism if the public does not care?” Columbia Journalism Review,
January/February 2005 http://cjr.org/issues/2005/1/cornog-readers.asp)
(24 Tim Porter. “Should We Blame the Readers? Not If We Want to Survive,” First Draft, January 21, 2005 www.timporter.com/firstdraft/)
Journalists’ First Loyalty--“We should expect proof that the journalists’ first loyalty is to citizens …This means stories should answer our needs as citizens, not just the interests of insiders, or the political or economic system.”-- Citizens Bill of Journalism Rights, Project for Excellence in Journalism
Newspaper coverage is largely a closed conversation of, by, and for the public school industry, which disenfranchises other constituent groups and citizens with a stake in the public education service and an interest in improving that service.
Newspapers look to public school and government sources to set the education news agenda, while the public’s views are increasingly influenced by reformers and innovators.
Society’s Watchdogs
Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute
Spring 2005
Its research base was Virginia, and although it is directed by a particular interest (in the issues of charter schools, home schooling, vouchers, and tuition tax credits,) the article does a damn good job of decribing the "big" newspapers' resistance to including the "little" voices of advocates, parents, and other "outsiders" on educational issues.
I know that our little local paper and our big Washington Post have followed the recipe, excluding the voices that radically differ from their own agenda or interest.
The following are excerpts from:
Society's Watchdogs
http://www.choices-k12.org/Society's_Watchdogs.htm
Americans today rate daily newspapers less “believable” than local and national television news, and a majority think newspaper reporters are out of touch with mainstream society.This study, based on telephone surveys of education print reporters and analysis of 403 education-related articles published over eight months by four daily news publishers in Virginia, suggests the criticism may be warranted when it comes to daily newspaper coverage of elementary and secondary education.
Newspapers’ education news coverage is largely a conversation of, by, and for the public school industry.
• 65% of published articles related to topics of foremost interest to the public school industry, namely,
public school funding, public school staffing, and public school wage and benefit proposals (261 of
403 articles).
Other topics of public interest received substantially less attention:
• 22% addressed student achievement/state Standards of Learning performance (88 articles);
• 7% discussed the federal No Child Left Behind Act (28 articles);
• 3% were related to miscellaneous matters such as school boundary proposals (14 articles);
• 3% addressed public education reforms and innovations such as charter schools, home
schooling, vouchers, and tuition tax credits (12 articles).
• 95% of all sources cited in all articles were government/public school-affiliated sources (1,364 of
1,438 sources); 5% were non-government/public school-affiliated sources (74 articles).
Newspapers disenfranchise other constituencies with a stake in the public education service and an interest in reforms and innovations to deliver the service more cost-effectively and better.
Taxpayers who bear the cost of the public school service received scant attention from newspapers.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), arguably the most complex and least understood federal accountability initiative ever undertaken,10 was the subject of 28 news articles (7%).
(10 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup’s 2004 annual poll reports that 68% of Americans say they know “very little” or “nothing at all” about the federal NoChild Left Behind Act (www.pdkintl.org)
Asked what most commonly triggers an education story by their news organization, nearly two-thirds of the journalists surveyed (63%) said “an announcement/press release by a federal, state, or local education agency.”
Yet taxpayers rarely have a voice in newspaper coverage of school funding issues. Of 938 sources cited in 261 funding-related articles, public school officials were quoted 535 times (57%) and public school advocacy groups were cited 154 times (16%). Individual taxpayers were
quoted six times (less than 1 percent), and taxpayer advocacy groups were never cited.
Newspapers generally look to public school Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) for parents’ perspectives on education-related issues, but no one organization can adequately represent the diverse perspectives of all public school parents.
....unlikely to see her viewpoint reflected in the news pages of her local paper—or ever have a reporter ask why she thinks the way she does—may help to explain why Americans believe newspaper journalists are out of touch with mainstream society and newspaper readership
continues to decline. She is invisible to them. Newspapers can blame readers, as Columbia Journalism Review publisher Evan Cornog suggests, for no longer caring about traditional community and civic institutions that newspapers cover so effectively. Or they can see readers as victims, as Cornog does, of changing political winds that seek to “reduce government’s role in American life” and of public school reforms that place too much attention on raising achievement for a competitive marketplace and too little attention on raising good citizens for a consensus society.23
Such an assessment, writes blogger Tim Porter, leaves “newspapers not as chroniclers of the community but as curators of a civic museum without patrons,” and fails to consider “the leadership newspapers can play in defining, supporting, and engaging new communities—communities of interest.”24
Those new communities of interest exist. They may be less sophisticated in media relations than the public school industry, but they are citizens whose conversations about education practices, policies, reforms and innovations are progressing. Engaging in those conversations should come naturally to a newspaper industry that built its reputation publishing complex, contentious policy ideas at the dawn of a new nation.
(23 Evan Cornog. “Let’s Blame the Readers: Is it possible to do great journalism if the public does not care?” Columbia Journalism Review,
January/February 2005 http://cjr.org/issues/2005/1/cornog-readers.asp)
(24 Tim Porter. “Should We Blame the Readers? Not If We Want to Survive,” First Draft, January 21, 2005 www.timporter.com/firstdraft/)
Journalists’ First Loyalty--“We should expect proof that the journalists’ first loyalty is to citizens …This means stories should answer our needs as citizens, not just the interests of insiders, or the political or economic system.”-- Citizens Bill of Journalism Rights, Project for Excellence in Journalism
Newspaper coverage is largely a closed conversation of, by, and for the public school industry, which disenfranchises other constituent groups and citizens with a stake in the public education service and an interest in improving that service.
Newspapers look to public school and government sources to set the education news agenda, while the public’s views are increasingly influenced by reformers and innovators.
Society’s Watchdogs
Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute
Spring 2005
posted by annie | 8:56 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home