Less than 48 hours after Success Charters’ 11-page letter to the New York Times made claims that the Times was ignoring numerous incidents of NYC school staff who abuse children verbally or physically, the paper fired back with a new story that includes interviews with both the child and mother who were involved in the 2014 videotaped incident.
From a media perspective, the new NYT story suggests that the Times Metro staff is undaunted by the accusation that its coverage of the NYC public school system has gotten narrowed down over time, that it’s missing other more important stories by focusing so much time and energy on the Success story, or that it’s unfairly shaming an individual teacher for something that’s apparently systemic and taught to her in grad school.
What will be interesting to see is whether other outlets deem the story big enough that they have to follow the Times or continue to let the Times pretty much go it alone. It will be telling if other outlets — the Wall Street Journal, WNYC, AP, Washington Post — join in.
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