Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Jersey Jazzman: Who "Created" Michelle Rhee? John Merrow Did.

Jersey Jazzman: Who "Created" Michelle Rhee? John Merrow Did.:


Who "Created" Michelle Rhee? John Merrow Did.

John Merrow, education reporter for PBS, has blown the lid off of the Washington, D.C. cheating scandal. It's quite clear that then-chancellor Michelle Rhee was informed that there were potentially large-scale problems across the district with test scores, and that she did little to address the problem.

Merrow is to be commended for his dogged pursuit of the truth; but it's also true that he, perhaps more than any other journalist, was responsible for turning Rhee into a national figure. His coverage of her was not all laudatory - far from it. But he did spend an inordinate amount of time covering her tenure in Washington, culminating in aFrontline episode this past January, The Education of Michelle Rhee.

The program appears to be, at least in part, a digest of Merrow's total reporting on Rhee, which he describes as: "... twelve (!) pieces about her efforts over the 40 months — about two hours of primetime coverage. That’s