Friday, May 4, 2012

PO Teacher Takes NY Post Reporter to Task

Next time use the NY Post
In our spirit of holding reporters accountable for stories they write, especially with what is left out in such a way as to taint the story one way, we present Pissed Off Teacher's  assault on

Yellow Journalism

A guy handed me a copy of the Post as I walked off the subway this morning.  It seems this rag is trying to increase readership by bombarding pedestrians in lower Manhattan with free copies.

I took one, stuck it in my bag and opened it up on the way home.  The headline AUDIT SHOWS TEACHERS REGULARLY WORK LESS THAN THEIR CONTRACT REQUIRES almost knocked me out of my seat.  
 
How dare he write teachers don't work enough?  Teachers are programmed by administrators and administrators suck every ounce of blood out of them.  If the teacher is not in the classroom, the teacher is performing some other duty, a duty that requires sometimes possibly twice the amount of time that would have been spent in the classroom.  I have seen the work teachers with comp time jobs do and, for that reason I never took one.  And, as for after school jobs, he clearly forgets to mention the adminstrators that are paid to sit around and supervise each and every per session activity, supervisors that barely leave their offices except perhaps to go out for coffee or to go home early.

Yoav Gonan is a shill of the system.  Several years ago he interviewed me.  He was doing a story on the overcrowding and trailer conditions at Packemin.  I gave him a tour of the trailer, pointed out holes in the walls, exposed outlets and sinks and thermostats that did not work.  I remember him asking me why I still taught in the trailer since conditions were so bad.  I told him that it beat working in the noisy building.  He wrote something to the effect "teacher likes working in trailer" and ignored everything else I said.  He called me again several months later with questions about something else.  I refused to speak to him.

The Post only cares about selling papers.  This headline is just another part of the yellow journalism they use to do it.  Next time, I am turning down their free paper.  It is not even fit to line a bird cage.
 
Hey, when are we going to see Reporter Data Reports published?

6 comments:

Pissedoffteacher said...

Thanks for the link and nice words. That guy is a real sleaze.

Anonymous said...

Norman I doubt that many schools still submit school based options or if they know about them in the schools the administration has created. But, SBO's include compensatory time positions such as dean of students, program committee,and grade advisor. These positions are voted on by the chapter and signed off by the principal. It then goes to the UFT and DOE who must approve of the positions. Any non teaching assigmnent is a quasi-administrative position so the Post story is way off base.

ed notes online said...

You mean Yoav who many consider a good and reasonably fair reporter compared to the others, left out information that might have ruined a good headline that makes it look like teachers are the ones getting away with something? I'm shocked, just shocked. Give this story a "zero" on the Reporter Data Report.

Anonymous said...

If you check out the comments under the article, you will see a comment from me as well as a reply to another comment. Not that the truth is important to the many readers or reporters. And for the DoE to release such a biased-sounding report!! On purpose of course.

SUPPORT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Anonymous said...

It's Yoav. Two things:

1. The article I wrote was based on the DOE's internal audits for 5 years. Perhaps I should have made it clearer that principals are responsible for scheduling, but that fact was included in the CSA spokeswoman's quote. I also included Mulgrew's explanation for why the audits might be misleading. (Headlines, as most people know, are not under a reporter's control.)

2. Fact check on pissed off teacher: Here's the article in which she claims I wrote "teacher likes working in trailer." It ain't in there.

http://nyp.st/L6L4dy

Pissedoffteacher said...

I reread the article and don't see the quote but i am pretty sure it was in the print edition. I apologize if I am wrong for that but not for everything else I wrote. The Post article mentioned nothing of the horrible conditions Gonan was shown. He made light of the real problems to get his point across. I made one little error in a nlog post. He has made a career out of reporting omissions and truth bending. BTW, I believe my error came from the phone converation we had when he called asking more questions and tried to explain away his awful reporting.