JOHN LEO'S BLOG

That's an excellent lead. It's straightforward, active, and packs a lot into one sentence. Best of all (my personal test), you can't tell how the reporters feel about the subject. Readers want information from reporters, not attitude.

Now here's the Associated Press lead:

About 150 high school students walked out of class to protest a decision to put a teacher on leave while they investigate remarks he made about President Bush in class, including that some people compare Bush to Adolf Hitler.

This lead is all wrong. It highlights the teacher's supporters, omitting news that some students—we don't know how many—wore "Teach, Don't Preach" T-shirts as a way of protesting Bennish's lecture or monologue or rant or whatever it was. Also, it's hard to tell why the AP had Bennish saying that "some people" compared Bush to Hitler. The comparison came from Bennish, according to the Rocky Mountain News: "He said that in Bush's State of the Union speech, the president was, in effect, 'threatening the whole planet.' ... He told students he was not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same. 'But,' he said, 'there's some eerie similarities to the tones that they use.' "

Those quotes are from a 20-minute, 40-second tape a student made of the teacher's remarks.

Also missing from the ap account: It was a geography class, an odd place for a teacher to examine a State of the Union address and such subjects as sweatshop labor, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War ii, whether the United States and Mexico would go to war (he thought they might), and whether the United States is the most violent nation on Earth (he believed so).

The student who recorded Bennish's comments said he had grown tired of the teacher's lectures, which "happened pretty much daily." Bennish said his aim was to provoke the students to think for themselves. The AP account was much shorter than the one in the Rocky Mountain News, so some information had to be omitted.

Even so, readers of the AP might be forgiven for thinking that a school district was arbitrarily cracking down on a liberal teacher. What the school district said in explaining the suspension was that Bennish's comments were inappropriate and did not allow "adequate opportunities for opposing points of view." I read this as saying that if the comments had anything to do with geography, and if the students in the class had a chance to talk back, the school would have had no problem.

The UPI report of March 3 was shorter and worse than the AP's. The lead: "The investigation of a Denver teacher's critique of U.S. President George Bush has raised concerns that classroom discussions could be stifled." This leaves the impression that academic freedom is being compromised by the suspension and investigation of Bennish. Is this what happened, or is the reporter offering us his personal attitude about the stifling of teachers?

No feelings, please. Just tell us the facts.