Legal Commentary

Taking the Washington Post to School

By Jonathan H. Adler

Today?s Washington Post features a story by Michael Birnbaum on the controversial new Texas social studies standards.  As characterized by the Post, the standards sound quite bad.  Ann Althouse was concerned by the story, so she looked at the Texas materials (for which the Post had declined to provide a link) and was appalled.  ?Virtually everything cited in the article to make the curriculum seem controversial is misstated!? She summarizes:

If you?re going to criticize the new social studies curriculum adopted by the Texas Board of Education, you?d better quote it.  Or at least link to the text. And if you choose to paraphrase and not even link, and I have to look up the text myself, and your paraphrase is not accurate, it is my job to embarrass you by pointing that out.

Based on what Althouse reports, Birnbaum and the Post should certainly be embarrased.

UPDATE: Just so there is no confusion, neither this post nor that by Ann Althouse is a defense of the Texas standards. However bad they are, news outlets should report on them accurately.  What Althouse shows is that the Post utterly failed in this regard.  Criticizing the Texas standards should not require misrepresenting them.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on May 23, 2010 (boomark / email).