Which Tennessean do we believe?
Do we believe their top editors when they endorsed Will Pinkston in the District 7 school board race against Jackson Miller a few weeks ago? Or do we believe them this morning, a day after publishing what could charitably be called a hit piece on the front of their biggest circulation paper, the week of the election?
That Sunday story by Jason Gonzales, which described Pinkston as a bully, interviewed a lot of critics. It quoted a former director of schools that Pinkston stopped from getting a contract extension, an innovation director who routinely fought with Pinkston and other board members and a paid political operative working for Miller.
Of course, none of those disclosures were in the story.
Jesse Register, the departed schools chief, spent the first part of 2014 quietly seeking an additional year or two tacked onto his five-year deal, which was set to expire in 2015. But after relations with the board, and Pinkston in particular, went south, he announced that he would retire at the end of his term. Whether you believe that it was Register’s switch on some charter school issues or an increasing number of underperforming schools, Pinkston and others on the board cost Register money. That context is notably absent.
Alan Coverstone, as director of charter schools for MNPS, regularly clashed with Pinkston and others over everything from school applications to information about student movement to closure of problem charters to long-term fiscal impacts. It’s fair to say that roughly half the board — whether you want to call them charter skeptical or anti-charter — viewed Coverstone as problematic to work with. As a former school board member himself, he was well aware of the politics in play in this situation and when he gave his quotes to the paper. (It would be helpful to know, as a reader, if Pinkston had a chance to respond to the first quote in the story, where Coverstone implies that Pinkston was going to physically harm him, for example.) Coverstone also applied to succeed Register and was not a finalist. Again, this is context that would be helpful.
Jason Egly, a former district teacher now working for a charter school, is actually on Miller’s payroll, according to the most recent campaign disclosures that came out on Friday. At best, that seems like relevant information that was omitted; at worst, it seems like journalistic malpractice.
Was it that hard, in a several-thousand word piece, to add this context for readers? Each of them described a threatening Pinkston. All of them may be right, but what’s missing from that story, particularly in the case of Register and Coverstone who weren’t just MNPS employees but leaders, is the dynamics of their relationships. Anyone who has watched MNPS, charter schools and the school board over the last five years knows that there are no innocents here.
And when some of the anecdotes in question are years old, that makes the timing particularly problematic. If the only news in there is that Will Pinkston is an asshole — ground that was covered by the editorial board on July 11 when they said that he “used his platform to bully, demean and intimidate” when they chose him over Jackson Miller — then using the paper with the biggest possible reach comes off as an attempt to affect the outcome of the election. A story in that position ahead of an August 4 vote, particularly one that could have been written on April 30, May 30 or June 30, looks an awful lot like an attempt to drop an October Surprise on July 30.
(Compounding this is the fact that paper's website ran a big, red “BREAKING NEWS” banner with a headline about the story on Sunday. If Will Pinkston’s temperament is breaking news, I don’t think the paper is capable of surviving a Trump presidency.)
So, which one do we believe, The Tennessean in mid-July or The Tennessean at the end of July? The information is the same, but the presentation and the conclusions are completely different.
