Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point
Arne Duncan has been a monumental flop as education secretary. Why is the Washington Post drinking his Kool-Aid?
JEFF BRYANT
For some years now, the term “The Village” has circulated throughout the Internet blogosphere as a shorthand description of the insular life of the Washington, D.C., policy makers and media mavens. As Heather “Digby” Parton explained in 2009, the term is a metaphor for how Beltway folks in policy circles and the press speak with great assurance about what is understood by “average Americans” without ever actually consulting anyone outside a tight circle of anointed “experts” or dipping their toes into the experiential waters of communities very different from their own.
Although thoughts attributed to The Village are most apt to be shared in discussions about economic policy, there is a form of Village narrowcasting in education policy discussions too.
That’s why, for instance, you almost always see news articles about education policy liberally salted with quotes by operatives from a very select few right-wing and politically centrist Beltway policy shops, such as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Education Trust, or Democrats for Education Reform.
When reporters want to “balance” that wonkery with another point of view, they might get a statement from a teachers’ union representative such as American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. But what’s extremely rare is to encounter arguments being made by people of color in communities such as New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia, or New York City – you know, the people actually most affected by the kinds of policies being talked about.
Maybe journalists believe ordinary citizens with firsthand experiences can’t be regarded as “experts.” But even when they look for validated expertise, their gaze rarely goes beyond the banks of the Potomac.
This is not to say that those inhabiting the education wing of The Village are dishonest people, lack credibility, or have any bad intentions – or that it may be arguable that people who report about education generally have more journalistic integrity than reporters on other beats. It’s just that when conversations about something as important as public education seem extraordinarily closed off to but an elite few, there are bound to be some completely unsubstantiated claims and atrocious misperceptions being reported by what normally would be considered reliable sources.
That’s likely the dynamic that caused Lyndsey Layton, a normally super-competent education journalist for The Washington Post, to lay this brontosaurus egg in that outlet.
The subject of Layton’s reporting, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was thebipartisan stud when the Obama administration debuted but has now devolved into the bipartisan flop as new bills in Congress seek to do all they can to neuter the secretary and make sure future secretaries never do what he did ever again.
Nevertheless, Layton does all she can to prop up assumptions of Duncan’s Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point - Salon.com:
