PBS'S "NATIONAL DESK":
PBS reaffirms its commitment to public affairs programming with two new episodes of National Desk," the PBS website boasted in an overview of public television's featured March roster. But one of these episodes, "Education--A Public Right Gone Wrong," is a one-sided attack on teachers' unions and public education, featuring imbalanced sourcing, factual errors, and undisclosed relationships between the show's sources and funders.
The program, hosted by conservative talkshow host Larry Elder, focused on the "school choice" debate--that is, the controversy over whether public money should fund private education via public vouchers, charter schools, scholarships, and tax credits.
But viewers hardly heard a debate at all--38 of the program's 42 sources supported the premise that the "business" of teaching children should be redirected away from government and "failing" public schools, and toward a privatized industry where students and their families are "customers," and education is a "market."
Privatization proponents, voucher advocates, and supporters of charter schools are painted as grassroots freedom fighters trying to give disenfranchised minority children hope by way of a strong, often religious education. Opponents are dismissed as union fat-cats, detached administrators, and "really bad teachers" more interested in protecting their jobs than in the educational needs of poor children.
This is ironic, since National Desk is characterized by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as a series in which "issues are examined from an objective and reflective point of view," and defended by PBS as giving voice "to all sides" of the issues it covers.
While four sources, including National Education Association (NEA) President Bob Chase and NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin, are brought on as defenders of public education, no source ever makes the obvious point that education in poor communities might suffer if public money is diverted from already under-funded public schools to subsidize religious or for-profit education ventures.
As if the sourcing wasn't slanted enough, host Elder wraps up by telling viewers: "Will the control of our children's education be with government and unions, or with parents? I for one vote for the parents."
"Education . .. Gone Wrong" is also peppered with factual errors. Daniel McGroarty (identified as an author, not as a Bradley fellow at the Institute for Contemporary Studies) claims that 50 percent of high school students drop out of public schools. In fact, according to Education Week (1/27/99), the public school graduation rate reached 70 percent by 1996-97. When Americans ages 25-29 holding GEDs are included, the number of public high school graduates climbs to 87 percent.
Similarly, Milton Friedman (identified as a Nobel laureate economist, but not as a fellow of the right-wing Hoover Institution, on whose board sit both Richard Mellon Scaife and Olin president William E. Simon) insists that "we have a higher level of illiteracy today than we had a hundred years ago." But according to the National Center for Education Statistics' 1992 study of adult literacy, not only do more Americans read today than ever before, but modern standards of literacy are far more rigorous than they were a century ago.
A close look at the undisclosed relationships between the series' sources and funders reveals further breaches of journalistic ethics. National Desk is funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley, John M. Olin, and Sarah Scaife foundations, along with PBS and the CPB. Over the past decade, the Bradley, Scaife, and Olin foundations have heavily financed litigation, lobbying groups, and media and publishing efforts to create the appearance of public demand for school privatization, as documented by the Wisconsin Education Association Council's report, "Anatomy of a Movement: Wisconsin Vouchers and the Bradley Foundation" <www.weac.org/resource/1998-99/nov98/anatomy.htm > and by People For the American Way's report, "Buying a Movement" <http://www.pfaw.org/issues/right/rw/>.
"Education . . . Gone Wrong" plays like a "Who's Who" roster of the school privatization activities Bradley, Scaife, and Olin have supported over the years. Of the 38 "school choice" supporters interviewed by National Desk, at least 33 have direct or indirect financial or institutional ties with Bradley, Scaife, or Olin.
For example:
--Brother Bob Smith, president of Messmer High School, repeatedly extols the virtues of Catholic education for low-income, minority children. Viewers never learn that Smith sits on the board of the Bradley Foundation-or that Bradley recently donated millions of dollars to Messmer High.
--Mikel Holt, who likens pro-voucher legislation to a "second emancipation proclamation" for African Americans, is identified as the editor of the Milwaukee Community Journal, but not as a board member of Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE), which receives Bradley funding. Nor are we told that Holt is the author of a pro-school privatization book co-published by the Bradley- and Scaife-funded Social Philosophy and Policy Center.
--Clint Bolick, a national pro-voucher litigator with the Institute for Justice, contends that the public education "monopoly" is "focused not toward serving the needs of kids, but serving the needs of the unions and other special interest groups." Viewers are not told that Bolick's institute is funded by Bradley, or that Bradley reimbursed the state of Wisconsin $350,000 for the legal services of Bolick and Ken Starr, who argued before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in favor of the use of public vouchers for religious schools.
This is not the first time that National Desk has come under fire for inaccuracies or for undisclosed conflicts of interest between funders and sources. Last year, FAIR organized the ad hoc Feminist Coalition on Public Broadcasting in response to an April 1999 National Desk series on the so-called "gender wars," which contained so many problems of inaccuracy and conflicts of interest that it resembled an infomercial for its right-wing underwriters. The one-sided "gender wars" programs, like "Education . . . Gone Wrong," were presented as serious journalistic programs that "give voice to all sides" of the issues. For more background on FAIR's National Desk campaign, please see: <www.fair.org/feminist-coalition.html>.
FAIR strongly believes that public television should present a wide variety of views, from both the right and the left. But no programs should misrepresent or distort facts, and shows with a clearly partisan political perspective should not be packaged as "objective and reflective" journalism.
ACTION: Please ask PBS why they did not disclose the relationships between a majority of sources in "Education-A Public Right Gone Wrong" and National Desk's conservative underwriters, and why they continue to package such a partisan series as impartial journalism.
Contact: Sandra Heberer, Director, News and Information Programming, PBS, <sheberer@pbs.org>, fax: (703) 739-5295
Please cc <fair@fair.org> with your correspondence. As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone.
For more information on National Desk, PBS or school vouchers, see:
--Background on FAIR's PBS critique: <www.fair.org/media-outlets/pbs.html>--National Education Association's information on vouchers: <www.nea.org/issues/vouchers/index.html>--WEAC's "Anatomy of a Movement: Wisconsin Vouchers and the Bradley Foundation" report: <www.weac.org/resource/1998-99/nov98/anatomy.htm> --PFAW's "Buying a Movement" report: <www.pfaw.org/issues/right/rw/>--National Desk official web site: <www.nationaldesk.com> --PBS's description of National Desk: <www.pbs.org/whatson/press/winspring/nationaldesk_march.html>