JOHN LEO'S BLOG

Do you write a letter to the editor or phone up an education reporter for a quick argument? No. You assemble a genuine "study" or "report" that comes to the conclusion that you are right and your opponents are wrong. Though evidence on both sides of the issue may be quoted, the report should be shaped so the media will hammer home your opinion in clear and emphatic terms while discrediting the other side.

That has just happened with a "report" from a think tank named Education Sector, titled "The Truth About Boys and Girls." It dismisses the rising concern about boys by announcing that boys are doing well and they seem to be doing poorly only because girls are doing better. This ought to have provoked some interest on the part of the media, since virtually nobody has made this argument during the decade and a half of frenzy over the "shortchanging" of girls that produced the Gender Equity Act and other efforts to save the nation's girls.

But no, the media followed the general rule of thumb on polemical reports: If you hone your message down to a forceful one-sentence line, the headline and reporting will faithfully follow that line, whether it is true or not. So in this case we have the Monday CBS Evening News with Bob Schieffer ("New report finds it's a myth that boys are falling behind in school"). Lori Leibovich weighed in at Salon.com ("Shocker! 'Boy Crisis' in education is overblown") and Bonnie Erbé at Scripps Howard ("So much for the boy crisis").

The people at Education Sector hit the jackpot in the Washington Post. The "report," basically a long op-ed piece, appeared as an important Page One news story ("Study Casts Doubt on the 'Boy Crisis' "). Michael Gurian, an author who thinks boys are in trouble, is permitted a brief burst of muted dissent. He thinks the report "missed the cumulative nature of the problems boys face." The Post piece seems oblivious to the controversial nature of the "report." And it failed to note the rising backlash against attention to boys among feminists who have complained so long about the "shortchanging" of girls.

The Post might have contacted any number of writers who think feminists are afraid of losing media attention to the alleged plight of girls. Christina Hoff Sommers, Diane Ravitch, or Judith Kleinfeld should have been asked to comment. The blog "The Other Charlotte" said this: "Naturally the elites are pooh-poohing the 'boy crisis'—because it interferes with their victimologist view that the real 'crisis' facing boys is that they're not enough like girls."

A lack of curiosity among reporters who cover cultural issues is generally a problem. So is the fact that editors and reporters are generally predisposed toward certain arguments and findings. No wonder the media are so often seduced by polemical op-ed articles posing as breakthrough reports.