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April 17, 2002 Last updated at 9:30 am est
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The Sun's lead story concerns the possibility of budget cuts for charter schools, and the paper's interests in giving it such high priority couldn't be more parochial. The piece concerns a new budget report from Mayor Mike Bloomberg's office that would eliminate funding for charter schools — private educational initiatives funded by government and corporate grants — but fails to mention any of the other items facing serious cuts, such as new police hires, the sanitation department, and the NY Public Library. The city is facing an almost $5 billion deficit thanks to unfulfilled promises of state and federal aid. But you wouldn't know that from the Sun piece, which reads as if the Bloomberg administration is singling out the charter school program — considered by many to be still an experiment, and in any case a tiny fraction of the city's overall educational spending. Not only does it not mention the other areas facing drastic cuts, but it makes the elimination of charter funding sound like a done deal — which it most assuredly isn't. The report is just that, a report, and it's still long from decided as to what will actually get the ax. At the end of the article, Bloomberg even says "Maybe we can go back and do it — I'm not opposed, and my positions on charter schools have been well known." The piece, by Rachel Kovner, talks to Bloomberg, but the rest of the material comes straight from various charter-school movement hacks: William Phillips, executive director of the New York Charter Schools Association; and Peter Murphy, president of the Charter School Resource Center, for example. One wonders why Ms. Kovner wrote the piece at all — they could have simply used the CSA's press release and saved on the effort. The Sun's intentions are clear — drum up support for charter schools for when the budget debate gets going. Which is fine — no one said this was going to be an objective news source. But it's too bad the public library doesn't have a daily advocate with a 60,000-copy press run.
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