Wilmington Star-News Stuck on Stupid

All children can learn, but can all newspaper editors?

Remember that old saying about how it's better to keep your mouth shut and have people suspect that you're stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt?

The editors of the Wilmington Star-News apparently never heard that one.  How else to explain this embarrassing fiasco masquerading as an editorial in Tuesday's on-line edition?  Here's a specimen:

"It is encouraging that the council includes educators from both the public and charter school worlds. The emphasis must be to ensure that charter schools are accountable to the public and that they be judged as harshly when they fail as the public schools their advocates deride."

and...

"It is equally important that the state not be an excuse to dismantle the public schools, which have made steady progress over the past three decades, by depriving them of funding that is shifted to charter schools."

aaaaaand...

"Unlike the state board, which oversees all public schools, the advisory council will be charged only with scrutinizing charter-school performance."

and if you can stand one more...

"Markley [that's superintendent of New Hanover County Public Schools Tim Markley] is open to new ideas and is interested in finding out whether the charter school concept can work within the public schools."

There are only two possible reasons why anyone in North Carolina who's able to read and write (Charter Guy assumes that description includes the editors of the Wilmington Star-News) would continue to refer to "public schools" and "charter schools" as if they were two separate entities.  The first, and most charitable explanation, is that the persons in question are just plain stupid.  It can't be simple ignorance mind you; the editors make their living in the information business, so we have to conclude that they have the facts regarding the public status of charter schools at hand.  So either the editors are too stupid to understand that charter schools are public schools, or...

...they are deliberately trying to mislead their readers. 

Naw, couldn't be that.  But just in case, Charter Guy is going to place the Wilmington Star-News on the watch list for the prestigious Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf Award for Excellence in Counter-Factual Reporting.