When It Comes to Day care, You Can't Trust the Media
Eisenberg, Sherri
When It Comes to Day Care, You Can't Trust the Media BY SHERRI EISENBERG IF YOU HAD SCANNED THE HEADLINES OF the nation's major newspapers this past April, you would have thought that eight...
...Politicians have shied away from this politically charged Pandora’s box for years, resulting in a pathetic absence of public policy...
...There’s a sort of grab what you like and disregard what you dislike, and we’ll call this science-but it’s really politics...
...Both the study and the press’s widely varying responses to it open a window on how media bias and government spin prevent parents from getting honest, useful information about the impact of child care...
...Never has that information been more vital...
...Good Day Care Found to Ad Cognitive Skills of Children,” declared The New York Times...
...None of the [study’s] findings suggested that children thrive in day care,” wrote Duin...
...But despite her blatant one-sidedness, Duin deserves credit for ferreting out bad news...
...Impact of Child Care is Mixed,” reasoned The Wall Street yournal...
...In the case of the NICHD study, the media’s bias wasn’t limited to headline choices...
...Sitnilarly, as a result of the subject’s divisive SHERRI EISENBERG is an editorial assitant for The Washington Monthly...
...There was a proclivity to treat these findings in an un-evenhanded manner,” explains Jay Belsky, a Pennsylvania State University professor and one of the investigators who conducted the study...
...And nearly everyone over-simplified the findings...
...The Associated Press story that ran in The New YOyk Times started off with a great big smiley face of a lead: “High-quality day care, where adults give lots of attention to children, enhances early language use and the ability to think...
...Media coverage of child care has become a political Rorschach test, and even journalists who ordinarily demonstrate great discipline check their objectivity at the newsroom door when it comes to this debate...
...Today, more than 60 percent of America’s kids spend their days with someone other than Mom...
...Given these statistics, you’d think both the government and the media would be doing everything in their power to help parents understand the impact of day care on children...
...And as new welfare rules force thousands of poor mothers into the workplace, that number is expected to grow...
...Most reporters buried the study’s negative findings-if they mentioned them at all...
...Had Richard Lacayo’s piece in Time, entitled “The Kids Are All Right,” focused more on accuracy than the “hip quotient,” Lacayo wouldn’t have been such an easy target for conservatives like Arriana Huffington and The Orlando Sentinel‘s Kathleen Parker, both of whom railed against the article’s lefty bias...
...Ever since the sexual revolution sent women off to pack their briefcases, mothers have been plagued by the fear that child care will harm their children...
...Day Care Study Provides ‘Cautionary Note’ to Mothers,” contended The Washington Times...
...Julia Duin of the conservative Washington Times focused solely on the negative...
...Believe it or not, the papers were all referring to the same research, as presented in a just-completed report by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD...
...Reporters selectively picked through the study’s results, churning out stories that seemed driven more by their personal opinions than by the study itself...
...When It Comes to Day Care, You Can't Trust the Media BY SHERRI EISENBERG IF YOU HAD SCANNED THE HEADLINES OF the nation's major newspapers this past April, you would have thought that eight new studies on child care had just been released: “Day Care Study Offers Reassurance to Working Parents,” announced The Wshington Post...
...nature, objective reporting on it has become almost impossible...
...They’re not...
Vol. 29 • June 1997 • No. 6
