Journalists should report the news, not tell us what to think

Relating to yesterday’s post about KHOU-11’s stories on HISD testing materials, reporter Mark Greenblatt appears to be sending out a form letter in reply to HISD teachers who have written to him protesting the stories:

I sincerely appreciate you writing me. Please check out our response to HISD’s letter that it sent you in your HISD enews update: http://www.khou.com/images/0511/response2.pdf
This contains critical information about what we confirmed in HISD’s own documents before airing our report, and that you were not told about in the enews letter the district’s press office sent out.

In addition, we have posted online a campus by campus listing, according to official state and HISD documents, of all the missing tests we reported about. Neither HISD nor the state dispute these secure tests are missing. You can download the documents and see for yourself what the documents say here: http://www.khou.com/news/defenders/investigate/stories/khou051109_jt_mis
singtests2.43f265db.html

I truly appreciate you taking the time to write in, and encourage you to continue to offer feedback and to gather all the facts for yourself on this very important issue.

Kind Regards,

Mark Greenblatt
Investigative Reporter
KHOU-TV

Greenblatt says in his response to HISD’s letter (first link in the letter above) that the percentage of recovered documents is not important. Greenblatt says the “absolute number of tests lost” is what’s most important.

What I find interesting about this is how selective the media is about percentages. The other day when KHOU was reporting that Mayor White had been reelected, it didn’t feel the need to state the actual number of voters who voted for the mayor — 165,447 out of a population of two million plus. What WAS important in that story was the percentage of votes — 91%.

Yet, suddenly KHOU says the percentage is not important, as it relates to HISD’s testing documents. Now it’s the actual number that’s important.

What Greenblatt’s effectively doing is advocating a view, not simply reporting. Instead of just reporting the data and letting us decide, he’s telling us what it means. Again I’ll ask: is that really the job of a professional journalist — to tell us what to think?

Of course not.

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