Give Rolling Stone credit: when their story on sexual assault at the University of Virginia completely unraveled, they at least had the decency to admit their errors and apologize to their readers. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Florida’s Sun-Sentinel.
A few weeks ago, the Sun-Sentinel ran an error-filled editorial against educational choice. Since then, it has refused to run a retraction or even a correction of its numerous errors, including:
- Falsely claiming that the legislature enacted a “massive expansion” of the scholarship tax credit law this year;
- Mistakenly relying on the moot fiscal analysis of a dead bill;
- Misreading that analysis to report a “deficit” when it actually reports savings;
- Falsely claiming that a separate fiscal analysis by the legislature’s budget office relied on “information provided by [private] schools.”
That list does not include several additional misleading comparisons and crucial omissions that were also brought to their attention.
Last week, they ran a rebuttal by Doug Tuthill, president of the Step Up for Students scholarship organization. However, they subsequently published a bellicose letter from Wayne Blanton, the executive director of the Florida School Boards Association, which attempts to rebut Tuthill… by repeating the same errors as the Sun-Sentinel editorial.
Blanton opened his letter by accusing Tuthill of “attempting to deceive the public,” but not a single one of Blanton’s accusations has any merit. Indeed, Blanton’s accusation better describes his own letter. Let us address his claims in order.