A reader posted this comment in response to the article in the New York Times that was a profile of me:
I wrote to the Times public editor. The “portrait” twice quotes unnamed “critics”, a practice I believe is forbidden under NYT editorial rules. The language used is loaded. Her words on her blog are “barbed” and convey “righteous anger”. She displays a “quick temper” and “skewers” individuals. The evidence for that claim? Her new book “devotes a chapter to Michelle A. Rhee”. What does the chapter have to say? We aren’t told. Other “individuals” she allegedly skewers are education politicians in public office. We aren’t told what she had to say about them. Political office-holders have to endure criticism all the time. Is it common practice for the NYT to use such loaded terminology about political disagreements? Of course not. And of course, the darlings of NYT education reform cult don’t “skewer” their opponents ‘ they make reasonable arguments. But woe if you disagree with them, you are a mean-spirited loudmouth.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Point well made. Thank you, “reader.”
Totally agree. I also wrote the public editor asking him to look at the underling acceptance of Ed reformers framing of education that populates both the news and opinion pieces regularly published in his paper. It is thoroughly unprofessional and singularly wrong.
I agree, deutsch29, what a great point. Good, critical reading by “reader.” Hopefully he or she sent that same comment to the Times (letter to the editor or an email to the public editor.)
All media sources are owned by the same individuals. This is ultimately what they want education to look like a one size fits all federally mandated and controlled monopoly. This is bigger than money itself; the underlying purpose is control thus leading to money but more importantly power. The powers that be don’t want an educated populace because if that were to happen anyone would be able to see through lies that have been perpetuated upon us for over the last one hundred years. Furthermore, an educated populace would mean that the top income earners in this country would have to share a large slice of the economic pie with others and they would never let that happen.
I wonder how much Diane’s active and outspoken support for de Blasio for Mayor of NYC has influenced the NY Times recent fairly derisive articles about her?
They do not mention the fulcrum she has presented for the Nation’s educators to share information leading to resistance of free market Rheeform policies. Can so many highly educated and highly experienced educators all be only caught up in her glow?
Not likely…although she is so respected and actually beloved by so many of her peers.
What are the NYT guidelines for references to unnamed critics?
“The “portrait” twice quotes unnamed “critics”, a practice I believe is forbidden under NYT editorial rules. The language used is loaded. Her words on her blog are “barbed” and convey “righteous anger”. She displays a “quick temper” and “skewers” individuals. The evidence for that claim? Her new book “devotes a chapter to Michelle A. Rhee”. What does the chapter have to say? We aren’t told. ”
My thoughts, exactly. No examples. No names. We’re supposed to take the writer’s word for it.
I don’t worry so much about journalistic ethics, but I don’t like anonymous information in a news story. Let us know who said what. If information needs to be anonymous, please tell us why.
Diane has become a celeb and was treated as one by NYT’s Motoko Rich. I am a big fan of Diane, a retired teacher of civics among other topic and a longer retired journalist for a prestigious metro daily. My husband is the former top editor of 3 big newspapers and now professor emeritus of journalism at Quinnipiac. So I applaud different “takes” on the NYT short profile of her and her new book. But an important “take” missed in these comments is that she was “IN” the Times, not ignored. The fact that Diane is described as skewering the Waltons, Broads, Sec. Duncan, Pearson, the North Carolina Legislature and others should be viewed as signs of her courage not knocks by the NYT. Now more people know what we know, that Diane is an intelligent, proud, forceful voice for students, teachers, elected BOEs. A foe of privatization of public schools. For fairness in performance evaluations of educators and students. And against punishment by testing. When you reach the celebrity status Diane has, the price you pay can be rough. But the PR she got on the national stage is priceless. (Yes, the NYT does succumb to unnamed sources and critics and yes that is disappointing. Good to point this out to public editor (several of whom I know personally. But this was a short feature article and not likely bound to the strictest standards.)
Maybe you’re right that some publicity is better than none. Still, the article was a classic case of “poisoning the well,” one of the nastier rhetorical moves a writer or politician can make. The emotional subtext of the piece seems intended to discredit the substance of her book before it is even released.
Consider “folk hero to the left.” That epithet implies that her supporters are gullible left wingers. “Scourge of pro-business reformers” implies that she unfairly attacks innocent people who are doing good, and it implies that policies these people are promoting are by definition good policies.
“Her critics call Ms. Ravitch a shill for teachers’ unions and accuse her of cherry-picking data to condemn charter schools or test-based accountability.” No attribution, no backup.
“She calls the current formulas for evaluating teachers ‘bad science.’ And she says that closing schools solves nothing.” In three hours of conversation, is it possible that she provided no evidence for these statements? Doubtful, but here they’re presented as unsubstantiated claims.
“She has an army of new backers, but some of them say she can undermine her message when she criticizes with an overly broad brush or resorts to personal attacks.” Does the man she quotes by name represent a big percentage of her “backers?” Again, doubtful, but this sentence serves the purpose of chipping away at her credibility.
“Her critics call Ms. Ravitch a shill for teachers’ unions and accuse her of cherry-picking data to condemn charter schools or test-based accountability.” Again, no attribution or backup, no “on the other hand” to balance these three claims, which include namecalling and defamation (in the sense that the anonymous “cherry-picking” claim strikes at her intellectual integrity–sniping at that is an attempt to weaken the main arguments of her book.) And there’s more. The writer’s word choice is suspect from the word go.
Poisoning the well… both subtly and egregiously. Not my idea of favorable publicity.
And here is the Daily Howler’s take on Motoko Rich.
Here is an admiring portrait Motoko Rich wrote of a young “power couple” who run their life and parenting according to “input and output”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/business/economics-of-family-life-as-taught-by-a-power-couple.html?pagewanted=all
Predictably, Ms Rich has no background in education. Just what is her background, exactly? Who can say? She began as a real estate journalist and then moved to finance, apparently.
And here is the Daily Howler’s take on Motoko Rich:
https://www.nytexaminer.com/2013/01/michelle-rhee-yes-the-real-facts-no/
Oops, forgot to move Daily Howler (nyexaminer) link beside first sentence.
It’s always interesting which articles the online NYT chooses to allow comments on, and which they don’t.
You are very right. The Times (they love to capitalize both The and Times, by the way) deals with these questions in six different places, the primary of which is “Attribution”.
I quote the almost the entire entry on Attribution below. It takes up nearly one full page (pp 32 – 33 in the current edition). This is according to the current New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (which we use at Substancenews.net).
“attribution. Readers judge The Times not only by its accuracy record but also by what they can gather about its reporting standards. How authoritative are the people it interviews? Are they in a position to know? How directly? If the information comes from people with vested interests, does The Times acknowledge that?
“Ideally, any new disclosure in the paper would be attributed to someone by name and title. But solid newsworthy information is sometimes available only from people who are not free to let their names appear in print. That is most often the case in diplomacy and foreign intelligence. The newspaper’s choice is between incomplete attribution and omitting the facts, however authoritative the reporter knows them to be.
“At such times, a reporter’s duty is to bargain hard with the source for terms that conceal as little as possible of what the reader needs to gauge reliability. Blind attribution — sources said, for example — is more a tease than a signpost. Attribution should never amount to a truism: since source merely means a provider of information, one source said is the equivalent of somebody said. And informed or reliable source is no improvement. (Would The Times quote an uninformed or unreliable one?) The objection is not to the word source, but to its emptiness without a meaningful modifier: a Senate source, for example, may be acceptable — unless of course it is possible to tell the reader still more.
“Trail markers should be as detailed as possible. United States diplomat is better than Western diplomat, which is better than diplomat. Still better is a United States diplomat who took part in the meeting. And a lawyer who has read the brief or an executive close to the XYZ Company is far better than a person familiar with the case, a phrase so vague that it could even mean the reporter…”
I have already reported (at substancenews.net) that DFER attacked Diane and her book with a vivid but wildly silly comparison to Richard M. Nixon’s infamous “Enemies List.” They are obviously preparing to do both frontal and indirect attacks on “Reign of Error” because they are so fearful that the whole truth might actually make a difference as Common Core, Race To The Top, and the privatization through charters juggernauts are hitting large opposition across the USA.
I don’t think these silly attacks, or this kind of silly “reporting,” is going to work this time around. it was possible, a decade ago when I was fired and blacklisted, to get away with much of this stuff. That was before No Child Left Behind, then Race to the Top, and a thousand facts (and some decent studies, like the original one of charters out of Stanford) showed how this stuff is nonsense. That was before Arne Duncan’s inanities were assembled by many intelligent people whose response had to be, as the recent critique of his nonsense to AERA noted, WTF??!!
I’m sure if we had more notes from the days of the Pharaohs we would find that they, too, had their Arne Duncans and their New York Times reporters with their strange notions of sourcing. Whether it is Divine Right of Kings or Race to the Top (both of which share a strangely similar theological basis), in the post-Gutenburg era it’s nice we have ways to check and balance even those with billion dollar bribes and budgets to hire the preachers and professors and pundits to preach their prattle.
The NYT’s article on Diane was condescending and inaccurate. I was surprised at how poorly written and biased it was. The article refers to Diane as a ‘folk hero.’ She isn’t a folk hero, she is a real hero trying to swim upstream against the torrent of big money trying destroy public education. Diane has been the unifying voice of thousands of educators who know that high stakes testing (and all the other ridiculous initiatives introduced by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top) isn’t working. What amazes me (and was completely ignored in the article) is Diane’s resolve and bravery even when the ‘reformers’ pound public education from all directions. Thanks Diane. I would have left this same comment at the NYTimes, but they weren’t taking comments.
The New York Times does not respond to criticism of violations of their own standards of journalistic ethics. My sister wrote an NYT blog called ‘My Solution to the Driving Problem; Vandalism’ in which she claims she removed parts of the battery and put them in her pocket to disable a car. What parts? Does anyone believe this is possible? She took the keys away, nothing more, and nothing less. She also had a financial interest in the way she portrayed our mother, the driver. Worse, she was in disagreement with every other member of our family about the subject of the article. These are three fundamental NYT journalistic ethics violations.The New York Times did not respond to my numerous requests to various persons within their organization, including the editor of the New Old Age Blog where the article was published. This is a paper that has really dive bombed as far as ethics is concerned.