Blog Watch: Eye on CBS

By WORLD's press time the most-read blogs had not picked up on one story of big media bias, but Joanne Jacobs (joannejacobs.com) and other bloggers were critiquing last week's remarkable CBS "Eye on America" attack on homeschoolers. The Oct. 13 evening news story began, "The school bus never stopped at the secluded trailer on Hickory Crossroads here in rural North Carolina ... because for five years Nissa and Kent Warren homeschooled their children. Then county workers got an anonymous tip: Better check on those kids." The CBS reporter showed a local district attorney's reaction -"I was stunned at the squalor that I saw. There was rotting food, animal feces on the floor"-and then asked, "Is this a location where you could expect somebody could be learning lessons and going to school?"

The story, titled "The Dark Side of Homeschooling," told of how one of the homeschooled children had killed two of his siblings and then himself, and went on to call for more government regulation of homeschooling since "children nationwide have been put in danger, even killed, while homeschooling." The Home School Legal Defense Association noted that CBS did not report that "Social Services had contacted the family 11 times, were well aware of the condition of the home and had been working with the family." HSLDA accurately labeled the story "a shameless attempt to smear an entire community of committed, dedicated parents." WORLD next week will detail the blogosphere's response.