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Post Watch: Rhee Stiff-Arms Postie
By
Harry Jaffe
Published Friday, January 02, 2009
DC schools head Michelle Rhee has become a darling of the national media. Reporters for Time, the Atlantic, the New York Times, CBS, and other outlets have chronicled her brash crusade to fix the public schools; they all quote her at length. But search for Rhee’s comments in the Post and you’ll come up empty. Post education writer Bill Turque is at war with Rhee. She and her staff say he demanded preferential treatment and turned negative when it didn’t happen. For example, Turque has been questioning how Rhee has spent her weekends and a one-week vacation. Turque, who came to the Post after covering national politics for Newsweek, declined to comment. Relations have become so sour that Post Metro editor Robert McCartney has met twice with Rhee. He brought executive editor Marcus Brauchli along for the second private lunch. Says McCartney, “We asked for more timely and complete responses from the school system to our requests for information and access.” Turque, meanwhile, has been doing stories about school violence and the impasse in negations between Rhee and the teachers union. Rhee is still the darling of the Post editorial page, where writer Jo-Ann Armao has been a staunch supporter.
This article first appeared in the January 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here. More>> Capital Comment Blog | News & Politics | Society Photos
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Comments
I’ve been an education writer. When you do your job right, the supe have calls your boss and wonders why you and the paper are not on his side. Keep it up, Bill. Just don’t let this report bias you against whatever the district is doing. If you are an honorable reporter, you’ll keep telling the district’s stories, no matter how positively or negatively they reflect on your critics.
Posted by: Erin Schultz, Jan 04, 2009 08:57:29 PM
DCPS has been a horror show for a generation and Turque wants to spend his time attacking Rhee. Maybe he should spend some time looking at the people who created the problem. How about a few stories on what Marion Barry did to the school system?
Posted by: jay, Jan 03, 2009 07:01:43 AM
Very simple, Bill Turque is doing his job. Keep at it--and Post editors back up your writers!
Posted by: Lori Jablonski, Jan 02, 2009 11:49:55 AM
Harry, you spin this as though it somehow discredits Bill Turque, when it really reflects badly only on Rhee and her devotees. Rhee and her subordinates (and Fenty, her boss) want only unquestioning, celebratory, indeed worshipful coverage. They don’t want any hard questions asked, and they don’t want any critical evaluation of what they’re doing. They’ll work with sycophants who will write the stories they dictate; they’ll freeze out anybody who’ll dig for the real story at DCPS, like Turque and his predecessor at the Post, Theola Labbe. If it’s a choice between Turque’s stories and Jo-Ann Armeo’s three monkeys (see no, hear no, speak no evil) editorials about Rhee, there’s no contest; Turque gets it right.
Posted by: Gary Imhoff, Jan 02, 2009 10:16:14 AM
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12:00 PM/ET, 01/02/2009 in
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