Note to Journalists

It seems that in the past two years we have seen nearly a hundred percent turnover in newspaper reporters covering the MCPS sex-ed controversy. There are new, mostly young, reporters at nearly all of the papers these days. So I thought it might be useful to put out a message to them.

These are some crazy times we live in. America is polarized like never before. Where there used to be a spectrum of conservatives and liberals, with some small number of people at the extremes, the political climate today has people on the far ends yelling at each other across a chasm.

I'm not pointing at any of you locally, but we must understand that the media have had an important role in creating this situation.

A kind of sensible-sounding philosophy of "fair and balanced" reporting evolved into a view of journalism as a kind of uncritical stenography -- taking quotes, writing them down, and reproducing them in the morning paper, basically taking dictation from the newsmakers. The sad effect of this was that the public had no way to distinguish the truth of a story.

We the people can't go to every event and observe it, we rely on you to tell us what has happened. And because you attend these events, you are in a position to evaluate them. At least, when a statement is made by a public figure, you are in the position to report the statement and the facts that it refers to; if these coincide, good, everybody's happy. If it turns out that the statement does not coincide with the truth, then it is not "partisan" to report the two side by side, and let the reader compare and choose how to interpret the statement.

You know where we stand on the sex-ed controversy. We're not asking you to take our side. Oh, we'll say something if you overemphasize the whiners, but that's just because we're in this fight to win it. We don't have to be nice, and in fact -- we don't have to be impartial, as you do.

OK, let me get to the point.

At this moment, the CRC and its little group of allies are churning out the noise. They have filed an appeal with the state, they're bombarding the email lists, they've brought in the American Family Association to get a lot of phone calls made, and now they're sending letters to the families of students at the pilot-test schools, trying to get them to keep their kids out of the testing. Oh, and of course, they are going to sue when the state refuses the stay they requested.

Here's what I ask you to do, journalists. Follow the links at the top of this page to our Resources page. At the top left, you will see the words New Curricula. Click there. A window will open up, containing all the lessons and supporting documents for the new sex education curriculum that is being pilot-tested, probably later this month.

Read it.

(If you'd rather read the whole thing in one big, 9-or-10 megabyte pdf file, you can access the same material at the CRC's web site, too.)

(Actually, I just looked over there -- I'd heard they had it, but I don't see it. It's probably there somewhere, in case you don't trust our copy.)

Then when you're talking to the CRC, and they're saying "the new curriculum tells students that homosexuality is healthy and normal," ask them to show you where it says that.

When they say, "The new curriculum encourages children to declare their sexual orientation at an early age," ask them where it says that.

When they say, "The new curriculum only allows one view of homosexuality, that it is perfectly moral," ask them where it says that.

When they say, "Students will not be allowed to express their views," ask them where it says that.

When they say, "The new curriculum discriminates against people who believe homosexuality is a sin," ask them where it says that.

When they say, "The new curriculum teaches students that anyone who disagrees with the school district is homophobic," ask them where it says that.

In other words, I'm just asking you to be responsible, as reporters, and familiarize yourselves with the actual curriculum. It is irresponsible to print a sentence like, "XXX from the CRC says 'The new curriculum insists that homosexuality is natural and normal,'" without noting that there is no such passage in the curriculum itself. The person's statement might be your news story, but it is responsible journalism to report the facts alongside the quote.

Remember -- your readers, the public, don't have enough hours in the day to look at every document related to every story in the newspaper. You're doing them a service if you report the facts they need to know, in order to understand the statements that are being made.

I'm just asking the journalists of the Washington, DC, area to inform themselves, as the schools approach their pilot tests and this controversy heats up again, and I'm asking you to be responsible in reporting the facts -- what happened, as well as what somebody said happened.