Over the past several weeks, Arizona 12News reporters Craig Harris and Joe Dana have repeatedly, falsely, claimed that 20% of the use of the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program consists of improper “unallowable” purchases. Now, as their narrative implodes under public scrutiny, an actual statistical analysis conducted by the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) shows program misspending is less than 2% (with actual “fraud or egregious purchases” totaling just 0.3%).
Yet rather than retract their false claims, 12News simply recruited “a Princeton education researcher” to bail them out—featuring her in a subsequently unveiled news segment to proclaim ADE’s analysis illegitimate: “Quite frankly this would not fly,” she declared of the department’s analysis. “This would be a failing grade if it was a paper.”
12 News’ Craig Harris promptly laundered her claims as established fact, proclaiming, without any ambiguity:
“The ADE released an audit today by one of its employees who says 2 percent of purchases are unallowed. However, the research is largely skewed, has a miniscule sample and underrepresents two key areas… The data was significantly skewed to lower the unallowed/fraud rate.”
Indeed, citing supposed evidence of a major blunder in ADE’s analysis, 12News’ Ivy League academic confidently assured the network’s audience:
“The innocent explanation would be that this is simply an error on the part of the [ADE] analyst. The impolite explanation is that this...
Over the past several weeks, Arizona 12News reporters Craig Harris and Joe Dana have repeatedly, falsely, claimed that 20% of the use of the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program c...