MediaWatch: April 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: April 1994
- A World Destroyed by Capitalism in Need of Higher Taxes, More Government
- NewsBites: Embarrassing Eleanor
- Revolving Door: Baer To the Rescue
- No Such Media Concern During Iran-Contra, Wedtech, Sununugate...
- America, Full of Hatemongers
- Good Money After Bad
- Times Says Post Suspended Reporter
- Janet Cooke Award: All Four Networks, Newsweek Distort Studies of Hunger in America
Good Money After Bad
In order to improve school facilities and attract white students back into the inner-city schools, in 1986 a federal judge ordered the Kansas City public schools to correct, regardless of cost, funding disparities between urban and suburban districts.
In a February 27 piece on 60 Minutes, CBS reporter Lesley Stahl asked the question, "Is money the answer?" In Kansas City, with nearly 1.2 billion dollars, "Old schools were demolished all over town, and new ones built. They stocked them with the latest materials and thousands of computers. They gave teachers huge raises, and mandated that no class could have more than 25 kids. They did just about everything recommended by the reformers."
Seven years later, Stahl revealed: "To everyone's astonishment and dismay, academic achievement has hardly improved at all. Junior high and high school test scores in reading, writing, and arithmetic are exactly where they were before, way below national averages."
The spending jump has not succeeded in attracting more white students either. Stahl confronted the superintendent of schools: "You cannot deny that system-wide, the desegregation numbers are a disaster. I mean, there are...proportionately fewer whites than there were when the money started coming in." In closing, she pointed to a successful alternative: "One school in Kansas City that is making an impact is Martin Luther King Middle School, and they didn't spend through the roof. They didn't get a new building, just a facelift. There's no exotic theme, just a basic curriculum. But the kids wear uniforms...Test scores at King used to be the worst in the system, now they're just about the best."
Carlson on the Cardinal
After the sexual abuse lawsuit against Chicago's Joseph Cardinal Bernardin was dropped, Time's Margaret Carlson took the media to task for failing to check plaintiff Steven Cook's unsupported allegations. In her "Public Eye" column in the March 14 issue, she reported: "The plaintiff's lawyer had rushed to file the suit in hopes of having it included in an imminent CNN special on priests and sex." For the special, which aired November 14, "Cook's charges were added to the program and used to promote it."
Carlson explained: "CNN was not alone in giving Cook the oxygen of publicity. But when the only hook for a story is a lawsuit -- which only takes one person convincing one lawyer to go forward -- the media are under some obligation to check out the accusation." As for the allegations, Carlson noted: "Repressed memory is controversial to begin with, and the hypnotist who jogged Cook's memory is in the graphic artist business and not a licensed psychologist. The evidence is flimsy." As for the exonerated Cardinal, Carlson concluded "CNN gave the Cardinal a quarter-hour on Friday night to try to allow him to recover what was taken from him. Is it enough? Is it too late?"
