Graham Holdings chairman and CEO Donald Graham, in an op-ed, does a really nice job of pushing back against a Miami Herald series attacking for-profit education. From the op-ed:
reporting on a story that has more than one side, the Herald's reporter wanted to know only one. Every word of his series reeks of this. Every charge — from plaintiffs' attorneys, former employees who were fired (though the Herald's readers were not permitted to know they were discharged) and lifelong critics of the industry — is treated reverently. The few scraps of evidence of another side are treated contemptuously. If a politician doesn't agree with the critics of the industry, it must be because he or she has received a microscopic percentage of his or her campaign contributions from those connected to us...
I would like to say a last word as a longtime journalist. When a reporter writes only one side of a multi-sided story, such a reporter is normally kept in check by editors. Good editors demand that a reporter get both sides of a story. They do not publish blatantly unfair work. That wasn't done at the Miami Herald.
The editors of the Herald deserve far more blame for this wretched work than the reporter. It is as if the words "for-profit education" made everyone at the Herald believe that there was no further reporting to be done.