PBS Caught Lying in Report on Democrat Who Supports School Choice

PBS News, which has a documented history of liberal bias, targeted a Democrat because she supports school choice—and deliberately distorted the facts of the story to do so.

PBS News Hour ran a feature on Oct. 12 about the Success Academy, a charter school network in New York City run by Eva Moskowitz, a Democrat who has a well-known feud with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and teacher’s unions over charter schools and school choice. The academy does incredibly well in terms of test scores, while most schools in NYC are failing. However, critics of the academy accuse them of of having allegedly harsh disciplinary rules and tactics, and have even gone as far as saying that the academy targets low-scoring students with the intent to push them out of the school to boost their academic levels.

In PBS’s story, they highlight accusations from a student, Jamir Geidi, and his mother about being suspended for minor reasons:

JAMIR GEIDI: I was suspended so many times, it was just like — it was just — it was like, why do I even come here every day if I just know that I’m going to get suspended?

[PBS reporter] JOHN MERROW: Jamir’s mother told us he was suspended three or four times his first year for losing his temper. She said she was also called two or three times a week to pick him up early.

Jamir also said students would receive infractions if their shirts weren’t tucked in or if they wore shoes that weren’t black. Geidi’s mother, Fatima Geidi, ended up taking Jamir out of the Success Academy and moving him into a school with different disciplinary measures.

“Yes, Jamir has had meltdowns. Yes, he has anxiety. Yes, he’s cried. Yes, he’s had outbursts,” Geidi told PBS. “But guess what? The school says, fine, you need a break. You’re going to go help one of the secretaries in the office. You are going to shred paper. You are going to go water the plants. You are going to do something helpful. When you are ready, you will come back. And guess what? He is getting his education.”

Merrow later cites anonymous sources–which he claims to be parents of former students at the academy–that tell him that the Success Academy used suspensions to increase their academics and that their attrition rate is twice that of another charter school network called KIPP.

PBS’s feature has Moskowitz responding to general questions about their suspension practices, but the report does not allow Moskowitz to respond directly to the accusations from Jamir and his mother.

The Success Academy published a series of emails between Moskowitz and Merrow showing that Moskowitz had asked to respond and Merrow told her she couldn’t. Moskowitz’s first email:

John,

Ann advises me that you intend to allow Jane Doe to speak on camera about our staff’s treatment of her son John Doe but then to refuse to allow us to tell our side of the story on camera because Ms. Doe is refusing to waive her son’s privacy rights.

That is obviously unfair. Ms. Doe should not be allowed to simultaneously use her privacy rights to prevent us from speaking while telling her side of the story. We object to your allowing this to happen. In addition, we would like to know what Ms. Doe is alleging because we have no idea what she is saying and therefore cannot respond to her factual allegations. This is the type of thing that leads to inaccurate news reporting.

Please advise me of your intentions in this regard as soon as possible.

Eva Moskowitz

Merrow responded:​

Dear Eva,

Our story is about out of school suspensions of very young students, not about Jane and her son. We would not air unsubstantiated accusations, and so her decision not to allow the release of John’s records was not material….

Respectfully,

John

Moskowitz pressed Merrow as to why they would allow Geidi on the air if their claims were unsubstantiated. Merrow responded:

Dear Eva,

Because Jane was unwilling to release her son’s records, we were of course unwilling to allow her to openly criticize the school. Her role in the piece is limited and should not be a cause for concern on your part.

Our piece also emphasizes—’celebrates’ might be a more appropriate verb–your network’s focus on science and the arts, its remarkable academic success and its widespread popularity.

Respectfully,

John

Jamir and his mother’s accusations against the Success Academy clearly turned out to be a huge focus of PBS’s piece.

Moskowitz pointed out that not only did the PBS piece diminish the network’s academic success by implying that it was only due to their disciplinary tactics, but the accusations from Jamir and his mother were completely untrue. She lists instances of Jamir “losing his temper,” including punching a teacher and only continued to do so after the teacher said, “You’re hurting me,” throwing another student against a bathroom wall and threatening, “I’m going to use your head like a soccer ball” and choking a teacher.

These incidents occurred regularly. Based on Moskowitz’s statement, it’s clear that Jamir was a threat to those around him and this should have been included in PBS’s piece.

Moskowitz also responded to Merrow’s allegation that sources told him that the academy suspends students to boost academic levels, saying, “the fact that he did not give us any opportunity to respond to them is particularly problematic given that he relied upon anonymous sources. We could have pulled the records of any student concerning these claims or Mr. Merrow could have demanded that these parents show him the suspension letters we always send that set forth the basis of our suspensions.”

PBS’s attrition rates claim was also false, according to Moskowitz, as she cited NYC’s Independent Budget Radio showing that their attrition rates are lower than the average district or charter schools in NYC.

PBS eventually gave an on-air apology for not allowing Moskowitz to respond; however, their apology did not include Jamir’s actions that resulted in his suspension. They also stood by their report, saying that calculating the data was “complicated” due to the academy basing it off the school year rather than the calendar year and that Merrow did the calculations on his own, meaning that the Success Academy’s attrition rates are higher than the average NYC schools and the network is suspending students to raise their academic levels.

Moskowitz sent another email to PBS saying that while she was glad the apology was aired, she did not like how the serious infractions Jamir committed were not included in the apology, and that PBS’s claims about the calendar year data were inaccurate, noting it wasn’t complicated at all since the data was publicly available. Moskowitz cited other journalists who disputed PBS’s report, and called the PBS report “false” and “unethical.”

“I have never heard of a media outlet acknowledging that it ignored relevant evidence and violated a basic rule of journalist ethics but then leaving its original incorrect story unaltered,” Moskowitz wrote. “Either take Mr. Merrow’s story down or correct it.”

Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party has become so radical that any member that deviates from the progressive orthodoxy will be excommunicated. PBS, being a liberal news outlet, couldn’t let Moskowitz take a different stand on school choice and chose to run a report that was clearly unethical and based on unsubstantiated claims. If PBS truly was unbiased, they would have looked into success stories at the Success Academy, such as this. But to them, kowtowing to the progressive line was more important than the truth.