When a reporter becomes part of the story

After years of experience in journalism, I’ve learned that a reporter’s job is to tell stories and not become part of them.

But for the last several years, unfortunately, the journalism landscape has been littered with examples of reporters who have violated that basic principle of the profession.
Today, I want to discuss the story of Andrew Vanacore, a reporter at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

On July 15, 2011, Vanacore wrote a story about the Abramson Charter School in New Orleans run by the Pelican Education Foundation.

The Pelican Education Foundation was established in December 2005, primarily focusing on math, science and technology. This new concept and vision for education was developed through a workgroup comprised of professors from Louisiana.

In 2007 Pelican took over Abramson Charter School  which at that time was in a very bad situation in terms of dropouts and graduate rates and School Performance Scores (SPS).

After Pelican took over Abramson, the school’s successes gradually increased.

Abramson Charter School is located in one of the poorest neighborhoods of New Orleans, 99 percent of its students are African-American and in four years it has been a success story. The SPS scores increased from 38 to 78. They have also seen a significant increase in graduation rates and a decrease in the dropout rates. They earned a recognized academic growth rating for the 2009/10 school year. In 2011, Abramson was listed as the second most successful school in the region. Abramson has become the beacon of light for the African-American community.

And suddenly everything changed dramatically after Vanacore’s story came out.

Vanacore ignored all these facts in his story, only focusing on some unsubstantiated allegations of a few former teachers who were expelled from Abramson for several reasons. Andrew’s other main focus were the “Turkish immigrants” who pioneered this education system in New Orleans. As you may easily understand, there is a light racist tone in the emphasis. For example, would you dare to refer to the ethnic background if some Jewish-Americans pioneered some of the charter schools in the region?

It is noteworthy to mention that just several hours before the article was published, or 6:30 p.m. on July 15, the Louisiana Department of Education sent an email to Abramson stating that the school’s operation had been suspended and an investigation was going to be carried out.

A sudden transfer to other neighbourhood schools

The next day, Saturday, The Times-Picayune ran another story by Vanacore about Abramson. Right after that, Mr. John White, Recovery School District superintendent, immediately called the school’s officials, requesting all the students’ and parents’ names and contact details and stating that Abramson students would be transferred to other neighborhood schools. School officials were shocked because they had not received any official documents from the RSD yet and, like the rest of the public, they learned all these allegations from that story. They responded by saying that unless an official document comes from the department, they would not take any action to hand out the contact details of students and parents.

Some necessary background: Mr. White was a controversial figure in New York for his involvement in the controversial debate to push a Hebrew Language Academy charter school within Marine Park Middle School, serving a poor black and Hispanic community. The parentsacrossamerica.org website contains very serious complaints about Mr. White, including the following:

“In the views of many public school parents, he has consistently ignored our concerns about overcrowding and inequitable distribution of resources and space. See this account; for example, of the proposal to place the Hebrew Language Academy charter school within Marine Park Middle School. During the proceedings, he called the 150 children who would attend the Hebrew charter school the ‘jewels’ of the DOE [Department of Education], which hugely offended the parents of the 1,100 children currently attending Marine Park MS, as well as the community’s elected officials, including Rep. Anthony Weiner.”

His refusal to consult with parents and the Community Education Council led to a lawsuit when he was in New York.

In New Orleans, Mr. White is showing a similar lack of concern for families. He issued a press release declaring that Abramson students would be transferred to four neighborhood schools. In addition, the Louisiana Department of Education issued a press release stating, without a good cause, that another charter school operating under Pelican Educational Foundation was also included in the investigation. Upon meeting with their lawyers, the administrators of Pelican Educational Foundation were informed that the Department of Education had no right to suddenly revoke or suspend a school’s operating license. In order to do that, an investigation must first be completed.

Last Wednesday, the state board of education voted to revoke its contract with Abramson. None of the BESE (Board of Elementary and Secondary Education) members knew any of the allegations about the school before. In my interview with BESE President Penny Dastugue right after the board meeting, she also admitted that she had learned about the allegations right after the story came out.
It’s obvious that the decision was made on the basis of political concerns rather than academic ones. A failing school, unable to be helped by the white elites, was greatly bolstered by a group of progressive Turkish educators. Are these white elites of New Orleans truly looking out for the well-being of these African-American kids, or do they have political and personal biases against these “outsiders.”
Presenting the case against the school, Dastugue also stated that “there was ample evidence that there were very severe safety, health and welfare issues.” But she couldn’t explain how this success story could have been achieved if there were safety issues in this school.

Xenophobia a motivator

I would say there was another motivation both behind the story and behind the BESE’s decision, and it was definitely xenophobia even though 80 percent of the teachers in the school were Americans. We know that despite the promise of the 14th Amendment, most African-Americans did not enjoy equal protection under the law until the second half of the 20th century in America. What is happening right now is that some extremist right-wing circles are directing this racist xenophobia at Muslim Americans who are devoting themselves to peace and education.

What happened in New Orleans is quite a solid example of that.

Now let’s see how one of the parents explains why Abramson encountered such resistance in New Orleans:

“My name is Angelique Kaufman. I am a parent of two teenage daughters from Abramson. I want to know how many people live where I live. Who lives in the East to be so concerned? Ms. Tyler, this is my first time laying eyes on you. I have been at every meeting. I have listened to Mr. White ramble on plan A, plan B, but no answers. I understand that you all have your laws and everything, but these are my children. When it comes down to my children, that is all I have. These people have given my children a very good education. My daughters have been in the New Orleans Public School System since they were born and never have I had anyone from the school system, from a school, period, come to my house and say: ‘Ms. Kaufman, do you have school uniforms for your daughters? Do you need help with the uniforms? Do you need free tutoring? Free summer school? These things are unheard of and I feel like all of this is because you are intimidated by the fact that these people have accomplished in four years what you have yet to accomplish.”

While the positive comments come from Abramson parents, opposing comments only came from outsiders with no Abramson experience. An Abramson incident involving a parent whose 5-year-old child was allegedly involved in two separate sexual incidents did not reveal the fact that she still had two other children in Abramson. The parent said she took her child out of Abramson because she was not satisfied with how the school handled the situation. This was not correct. The fact was that her child no longer wanted to attend the school. If Abramson was not a safe school, why did she let her two other kids continue studying at Abramson?

What the BESE did last week was definitely a political decision. There are a number of horrible schools in New Orleans dealing with rape, teen pregnancy, gang and drug issues, but none of these horrible schools have been closed down.

I now want to bring to your attention another issue: the possible motivation of The Times-Picayune reporter.

Ms. Carol Serio, who has been working at Abramson as a special education coordinator, claimed that there was a romantic relationship between Vanacore and her former employee Mary Elise DeCoursey, one of the most important sources in the story and the one who initially started all the allegations against Abramson. These are the official statements of Ms. Serio in a handwritten letter by her:

“This past weekend on social network ‘Facebook’ there has been slander against school, administration, staff by former employees (who were involved in recent Times Picayune article). These who are doing slander are: Tiffany Steward, Kisha Davis, Mary Elise DeCoursey, Charm Baker, Tamica Duroncelay, Amy Comarda. These named are gloating online with remarks that are untrue. There has also been mention of friendship and a romantic involvement of DeCoursey and Times Picayune writer of article. Carol A. Serio, M. Ed.”

I always believed that a reporter should remain a reporter and not be personally involved in the story.
This, after all, is the most basic principle of journalism.

*Aydoğan Vatandaş is an investigative reporter based in New York and holds an MA in media studies.

Madeline Zavodny: Immigration Has No Effect on Jobs for U.S. Natives

Here is a research data that blows on the faces of those who think their jobs are taken away by foreign immigrants, especially by so-called Gulen charter schools mainly run by Turkish immigrants. The article was published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and written by two professors of economics, Dr. Madeline Zavodny and Dr. Pia Orrenius. A CNN news piece gives more information about the article.

Why do they lie about Fethullah Gulen? by Mehmet Kalyoncu*

For many of those who have admired the ideas of the scholar Fethullah Gülen and at varying levels took part in fulfilling those ideas for the service of humanity, it has been a lamentable fact that the international community does not know as much as it should about either Gülen or the worldwide Hizmet (Service) Movement he has inspired.

From a causality perspective, it was he who masterminded the idea of teaching the children of all nationalities, races, creeds and religions a common language of peace, love and harmony, so that as responsible adults of tomorrow they could build a better and more peaceful world. It was this idea and his selfless efforts that have led to the mobilization of millions of volunteers across the world to found modern and secular schools and intercultural dialogue centers as well as humanitarian aid organizations in more than 140 countries, including in impoverished and conflict-stricken places such as Haiti, Darfur and Afghanistan. Gülen was the first Muslim scholar to publicly denounce the Sept. 11 attacks as an act of terrorism, and going even further challenged its perpetrators on Islamic grounds by saying, “A terrorist cannot be a Muslim, nor can a true Muslim be a terrorist.” All in all, given the magnitude of his service to humanity, many believed that Gülen should have long ago been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, his strict principle of not promoting himself, accepting any credit for the good works attributed to him, and actually giving the credit to the volunteers of those works, has so far kept him away from the attention of the international community. In fact, many have been decorated with such awards for merely dreaming and speaking about global peace, while over the past several decades Gülen has been patiently laying the foundations for such peace to actually come about. Apparently, this will no longer be the case thanks to his opponents, who have been systematically flooding the Internet and print media with wild allegations about him and the movement. After all, who in his or her sane mind would hear such a wild allegation as Gülen being the “most dangerous Islamist on Earth,” and not bother to do a Google search for “Fethullah Gülen”? Then, what he or she will find, in addition to some more of those allegations, is rather scholarly research on Gülen’s thoughts and practice, some of which include Jill Carroll’s “A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gülen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse,” Helen Rose Ebaugh’s “The Gülen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam,” Muhammed Cetin’s “The Gülen Movement: Civic Service Without Borders,” and John Esposito and Ihsan Yilmaz’s “Islam and Peacebuilding: Gülen Movement Initiatives.” More importantly one would find Gülen’s very own writings and statements as well as the actual works produced by volunteers inspired by his ideals. So, bringing him to the attention of those who would otherwise not know anything about Gülen and the global civic movement he has inspired, Gülen’s adversaries are inadvertently making him ever more popular and well-known worldwide through their systematic defamation campaign. In this regard, one should expect Gülen soon to be recognized by the international community for his contributions to world peace. Then, one should also expect his adversaries to allege in self-denial that Gülen himself had designed this defamation campaign in order to attract global public attention. But the question is, why do they make such wild allegations about Gülen and the Hizmet Movement, which based on all available and credible evidence seem to be unsubstantiated and untrue beyond any reasonable doubt? Subsequently, in what ways do they carry out their defamation of Gülen as an individual and the millions of people from different nationalities, races, creeds and religions, whose voluntary service makes up what is called the Hizmet Movement? At this point, one should note that as Kerim Balcı of Today’s Zaman rightly puts it, those allegations take different, and often self-contradicting, forms depending on the perceived fears of the target audience. For instance, if the target audience is Russian, then Gülen and his initiatives are accused of being the US’s and more specifically the CIA’s designs. If the audience is Americans and Christians, then he is accused of being an Islamist terrorist aspiring to establish a global Islamic empire. If it is the audience is Jewish, then he is portrayed as being anti-Semitic. If it is anti-democratic Arab leaders, then he is argued to be not only a Turkish nationalist bent on reviving the Ottoman Empire, but also an agent of the Greater Middle East Project by the US, that foresees the overthrow of those leaders. In terms of methodology, just like John Mearsheimer describes the different forms of public lies, these allegations too vary from outright false statements to the true facts spun in a way that would lead the target audience to make erroneous conclusions about Gülen and the Hizmet Movement. In the American context, they lie about Gülen and his work, because the latter stands as living examples that repudiate the deliberately produced stereotypes of Islam being inherently violent and hostile, and of Muslims being a potential threat to the so-called “Judeo-Christian” nature of American society. This in turn threatens the socio-economic and political interests of those who have not only consistently injected such stereotypes into the American conscience, but also cashed in heavily on the fears fed by these stereotypes by manipulating America’s domestic and foreign policies accordingly. Defamation of Islam and demonization of Muslims in the American conscience As Edward Said puts it in his “Covering Islam,” for Americans, Islam and Muslims have been no more than mere elements within and of political and security concerns by the US; not because they are indifferent to learning about Islam and Muslims, but because the news coverage and the so-called expert analyses of the incidents taking place within Muslim communities had often engendered too simplistic and rather negative views of Islam and Muslims in the minds of Americans. According the prevailing discourse, Islam was, and according to a considerable number of Americans still is, a heretical religion/cult predominant across regions where the US has massive political and economic interests. It was the system that oppressed women, restricted freedom of thought and religion and encouraged its adherents to fight Jews and Christians. Academics like Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis, as well as commentators such as Daniel Pipes, built up such a skewed image of Islam inch by inch over the last several decades. When Lewis argued in “Islam and the West” that history was simply a struggle between Christians and Muslims for world domination and in “What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East” that Muslims are enraged by the West in general and the US in particular because Islam lacks the cluster of “Western” values such as democracy, human rights and freedoms, he was basically producing pseudo-academic arguments for the disposal of the like-minded academics, policy makers, journalists and opinion leaders. Along similar lines, in his book, “The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order,” Huntington coined the concept of “the bloody borders of Islam,” suggesting that at any given time most of the conflicts across the globe either involved, or took place within “Muslim” communities, because Islam was inherently violent and not open to pluralism. Following this line, Pipes and many other like-minded pundits/columnists in prominent American newspapers and analysts at influential think tanks have frequently written rather short “opinion” pieces as well as “policy” papers propagating the same argument. Consequently, the American public has to a great extent digested this false image of Islam and Muslims. In his recent opinion piece titled “Ambitious Turkey,” Pipes’ use of heavily loaded and defamatory descriptions such as “the tyrannical, Islamist, and conspiracist mentality generally dominating Muslim peoples,” well illustrates the case in point. So, for Americans, who have so long been bombarded with the violent images and perceptions of Muslims, Gülen and the work he inspires is an unexpected but most welcome surprise. However, for those who have for decades portrayed Islam as anything and everything that the so-called “Judeo-Christian” nature of American society is not, Gülen, his ideas, the people who are inspired by his ideas and the humanitarian-educational work that they have produced are understandably posing a threat. Such a threat exists not because of the very nature of the work that they produce, but because it defies the deliberately constructed and established image of the “Muslim” as a savage from the Middle Ages who is inherently against the Western way of life and eager to wage a “jihad” against Americans. Consider the following cases: (1) Following protests and Quran burning in the United States hundreds of “Muslims” in Afghanistan resort to violence, killing seven UN workers; and (2) “Muslim” civil society and humanitarian aid organizations, including both men and women, were among the first to reach “non-Muslim” Haitians immediately after the devastating earthquake, serving 40,000 Haitians hot meals and constructing a hospital in Port-au-Prince to meet the medical needs of impoverished Haitians. Or, (1) An “Islamic” leader vows to wipe Israel off the map (possibly by nuking it), as well as destroying its main sponsor, which he calls the Great Satan; and (2) An “Islamic” scholar publicly suggesting that any humanitarian assistance to Palestinians should be delivered through coordination with Israeli authorities and without breaching international law. Or, (1) “Muslim” children in Hezbollah camps in southern Lebanon are indoctrinated with fundamentalist “Islamic” ideology and receiving armed training with AK-47s in their hands; and (2) “Muslim” students in cooperation with their non-Muslim counterparts from around the world compete in the international science competitions and undertake research in such vital fields as curing cancer, eradicating poverty, preventing environmental pollution and overcoming global energy shortages. The latter example in each pairing is what Gülen and the movement engenders. Quite understandably, in a country like the United States, where the news is more of an instrument manufactured to manipulate public opinion to accept certain socio-economic and political practices, any development that challenges the established “negative” image of Islam and Muslims would be unwelcome by those who have a vested interest in the perpetuation of such a negative image. How they try to defame Gülen In this regard, there are two major allegations that are currently employed in the United States by Gülen opponents in order to discredit and cause fear mongering about him: One that the charter schools opened in various states by Turkish-Americans are connected to Gülen, and that they are spreading “Islamic fundamentalism;” and the other that Gülen is behind the ongoing Ergenekon investigation in Turkey, which has led to the detainment of many active duty and retired army officers as well as journalists. The first allegation begs the following question: Would the US authorities that have authorized and overseen these schools, not be aware of any such wrongdoing, if any? The second allegation is a mere distortion of the facts on the ground. Currently there are 26 journalists being detained in relation to the Ergenekon investigation, and none of them are being held because they exercised their freedom of expression, but rather because of their suspected involvement in verified coup plans that aimed to overthrow Turkey’s democratically elected government. In fact, it is similar to the case of The New York Times’ Judith Miller, who was sentenced to 18 months in jail in 2005 due to her involvement in the leaking of an active CIA officer’s identity. One wonders if anybody then opposed the court decision by arguing that she was exercising her freedom of expression as a journalist. Similarly, was a Hutu radio host exercising his freedom of expression when he incited his fellow Hutus to massacre Tutsis ahead of what eventually amounted to the Rwanda genocide? Furthermore, even if a prosecutor or a police officer who happens to admire Gülen and is involved in the Ergenekon investigation went rogue and broke the law, what does it have to do with Gülen himself or the millions of others who admire his ideals? In the final analysis, the real threat perceived by accomplices of Gülen opponents, in major capitals including Washington, D.C., actually seems to be the possibility of Turkey’s Ergenekon investigation inspiring and encouraging peoples of other countries, as well as investigating deep state arrangements that have long been running in the veins of their own societies. For them, the threat is clear and imminent: Apparently, Turkey is no longer the old Turkey, where it was easy to deal with the “real” owners of the regime, meaning corrupt military generals, bureaucrats and politicians; but with its growing civil society and strengthening economy, it is no longer easy or possible to manipulate Turkey. What if the same happens in other countries that have long been in the orbit of special interest groups within these major capitals? More importantly, what if their own masses mobilize to break the glass ceilings and claim their rightful share of political and economic resources that have traditionally remained under the monopoly of these special interest groups? Speaking of a so-called “Islamist” threat in the United States, the real questions that disturb the adversaries of Gülen are the following: What if Muslim Americans want to serve as judges on the US Supreme Court, and as senators and representatives in Congress? What if they want to command the US armies as generals? What if they want to manage giant American corporations? And, what if, one day, one of them were to become the president of the United States? What is at stake with the democratization of Turkey is quite high and critical for those whose interests have depended on it remaining an anti-democratic satellite state. It is only normal then that in all their despair, hopelessness and panic, adversaries of Gülen both inside and outside Turkey are trying to demonize him, for he and the millions inspired by him are in fact behind the democratization of their country.

* Mehmet Kalyoncu is an independent political analyst and author of “A Civilian Response to Ethno-Religious Conflict: The Gülen Movement in Southeast Turkey.”
Source: Today's Zaman