In our second recent piece on book bans, a veteran education reporter explains how to produce high-quality coverage without getting lost in the conflict.

By Ann Doss Helms

You’ve probably never been to Newton, N.C. But if you’re an education reporter, the scene at the Sept. 28 Catawba County school board meeting would have felt familiar.

One woman brought a hand-lettered sign bearing profanity-laced sentences from “Monday’s Not Coming,” a young-adult novel that was being challenged as inappropriate for high school students.

Some speakers talked about protecting children and tallied the F-bombs in the book.

One prayed aloud for God to help the board distinguish between good and evil.

Others talked about freedom, book bans, and the need to help students understand difficult realities.

A student arguing for access to challenging material held up her cell phone and asked, “If you’re going to put a phone in my hands, why not put a book in my hands?”

Afterward, I went out to the parking lot in hopes of lining up an interview with school board member Michelle Teague, co-founder of the Mama Bears of Catawba County. She had challenged 25 books before being elected to the board and after she lost on school- and district-level reviews, she was now voting on her own appeals to the school board.

As we spoke, a fellow Mama Bear came over and grumped, “I don’t see the media out here interviewing you.”

One of the others in the group grinned and pointed at me: “Actually, she’s the media.”

I explained that I was doing my best to ensure that I understood their perspective. But despite my efforts, none of them agreed to talk.

 

Despite my efforts, none of them agreed to talk.

 

Covering education these days is a bit like juggling knives, especially when it comes to the current culture wars.

For one side, hostility to mainstream media goes hand in hand with distrust of government schools and liberal administrators. They grouse that you don’t give them a fair shake even as they refuse to talk to you.

The other side may demand that you deny coverage to groups like Mama Bears or Moms for Liberty — essentially, expecting you to ban the book banners. All this at a time when anyone with a blog or social media account can take aim at us.

But someone’s got to do it, and so I’m offering some thoughts from my own experience on how to get past buzzwords and emotion to provide coverage that is fair without being naïve.

 

How to get past buzzwords and emotion.

 

I’ve covered education in Charlotte, N.C., and the surrounding area for 22 years.

Most of that was for The Charlotte Observer, and the last four years have been with WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR station.

In addition to news reporting, I do analysis in a weekly newsletter, which is where I wrote about the importance of context in covering Catawba County’s book battle.

Catawba County’s book challenge form asks whether the person filing the challenge has read the book and what they believe is the theme and purpose of the material being challenged. On the challenges she submitted, Teague consistently marked that she had not read the books — she instead used a website that groups across the country use to flag material they see as troublesome — and in the question about context she wrote “NA,” or “not applicable.”

But surely, I wrote, context does matter. It’s a point one speaker made at the Catawba County school board meeting when she read from Ezekiel 23:17-21, the story of two adulterous sisters. It includes references to lust, promiscuity, nudity, and men whose anatomy is comparable to donkeys.

Her point: It sounds awful when read aloud, but surely no one would argue that teens should be denied access to the Bible.

Context is also important for the educators and board members being barraged with complaints about classroom and library material.

I’ve written before that I think there’s room for legitimate debate over some of the material that’s turning up in school libraries. But setting priorities inevitably involves competition for time. And it’s far from clear that spending hundreds of hours reviewing books that only a handful of students have seen is the best use of energy in districts where far too many students can’t pass reading exams.

Last but not least, there’s also journalistic context. Context is essential for us as well, as we try to figure out how much time to devote to book battles and how to report them in a way that goes beyond social-media sniping.

 

Try to figure out how much time to devote to book battles.

 

Here are some points for reflection in your own coverage:

Help your audience understand the players. Catawba County has two homegrown groups: Mama Bears and Freedom Readers. The bigger cities here have chapters of statewide or national organizations, such as Moms for Liberty, Pavement Education Project, and Public School Strong. Instead of applying labels, describe when and how these groups originated, what you can figure out about their support and funding (that’s not always easy), and what they have in common.

I don’t use loaded phrases like “book banners” but have used the term “parents’ rights groups” and explained that they share a distrust of government schools when it comes to matters such as pandemic safety measures and discussion of race in schools.

Explain how the challenges originate. Most often they start not with students but with adults using sites like BookLooks.org, which provide “book reviews” with citations and page numbers for every passage they find offensive. The site has even added “slick sheets” with racy passages presented in ways designed to grab eyeballs. Most school libraries have searchable catalogs, which means an adult can look for titles on the challenge lists without ever setting foot in a school library.

Understand the established book challenge process. Book challenges aren’t new, and most (if not all) school districts had procedures in place long before this latest round of book battles began. But some will just skip the established process entirely and challenge a book in public. In Cabarrus County a school board member read aloud from an oral sex scene in a young adult novel and was then hailed on Steve Bannon’s podcast for her courage in taking on “radical librarians.”

If the challenge process is actually being used, check results and find out how much time it’s taking. I got lucky in Catawba County; the tiny district (about 15,500 students) was great at providing detailed records and time estimates on the school- and district-level panels processing Michelle Teague’s challenges.

Determine whether administrators follow their own procedures. Faced with the likelihood of being flamed on social media and protested at school board meetings, some school officials will try to placate critics by reacting quickly, regardless of board policy.

In January the newly hired interim superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools quickly whisked away a challenged book and launched her own review of more than 8,000 books ordered for new schools. It’s not clear whether she knew she was sidestepping board policy.

In October, with principals and librarians asking about how they could observe Banned Books Week, the CMS communications chief asked schools to cancel all related events and incorrectly warned that it could violate a new state “parents’ bill of rights” law. The district quickly backtracked, but not fast enough to avoid national and international coverage.

Avoid inflammatory rhetoric and simplistic generalizations. OK, that’s obvious, especially when it comes to people describing educators and librarians as pedophiles and groomers. But also be aware that the term “book ban” has also been applied to a range of more nuanced actions. Some groups truly want books removed from all school settings. Others want them restricted or labeled for access only with parents’ permission. Be precise.

Get past the claims.  I watched a Charlotte speaker hold up a sexually explicit illustration from a book that was briefly in a couple of high schools and ask, “Do you really want your third-graders exposed to this?” It can be tough on deadline, but try to document where challenged books were found – is it in middle school, high school, or elementary school? How often were they checked out, and what action has been taken?

Set your own priorities. Just as policymakers and educators have pressing priorities beyond book challenges, so do education reporters. Don’t feel like you have to cover every heated exchange or protest. A couple of pieces with context may suffice, allowing you to move on to the huge issues of academic struggle, equity, and school funding that play out in every community.

 

Don’t feel like you have to cover every heated exchange or protest. 

 

I’m aware that democracy and independent media are under siege. The idea of being a neutral or objective correspondent can feel naive. We all have strong personal beliefs about some of the issues we cover.

What I come back to is this: As a culture-war combatant, I’d be like a grain of sand on the beach. As a journalist with a reputation for integrity and objectivity, I bring a higher value to the community — even when it feels like everyone is angry about something I report.

Back in Catawba, Teague’s public remarks gave me enough for a story about the book challenge controversy, but I’d have been interested to hear what she hoped to accomplish on the school board beyond challenging books.

Some of my best interviews come from sitting down with someone whose views I don’t fully understand.

Ann Doss Helms is an education reporter for WFAE, the NPR news station in Charlotte, N.C. She started covering education in 2002 for The Charlotte Observer. She and a colleague won a regional Edward R. Murrow award in 2022 for coverage of pandemic school closings and learning loss. She wrote a 2019 piece for The Grade about her experiences switching from print to radio. You can follow her at @anndosshelms.

Previously from The Grade

A Texas librarian’s guide to book bans (Becky Calzada)
How to improve book ban coverage (by Cafeteria Duty)
‘Grapevine’; more than just another school culture wars clash? (Bekah McNeel)
The culture war is the easy, less important story (Nic Garcia)
Demand concrete examples & avoid ‘emotionalism’: How to cover school culture war stories (Alexander Russo and Colleen Connolly)