To: San Diego Union-Tribune
From: Fran Zimmerman
Subject: Sunday's "Insight" Section
Date: 10/28/02

The Union-Tribune's "Insight" section on Sunday, October 26, tests the intelligence of your readership to distinguish full-bore flacking from genuine journalism. Up to yesterday, "Opinion" belonged on the editorial page and "Insight" usually offered two sides of an issue.

Sunday's "Insight" was wholly devoted to cheerleading for two business-backed Bersin-friendly School Board candidates, for the failing Superintendent himself and for his draconian "Blueprint for Student Success," which has left 140,000 San Diego children without access to a quality comprehensive public school education.

For the occasion you invented a brand-new rubber-stamp organization, the so-called "San Diego Achievement Forum," to lend credibility to your one-sided exposition, and you ran a nearly life-sized photograph of the U.S. Secretary of Education – a man who works for the voucher-loving Bush crowd and has been a recent frequent visitor – to shore up Bersin's fading credibility.

Frances O'Neill Zimmerman
Board Member, San Diego City Schools