CBS Didn’t Do Homework on Teacher’s Gas Price Story

  • by:
  • 03/02/2023

Continuing her "Eye on the Road" series, CBS's Sharyn Alfonsi showcased a Washington, D.C.-area teacher who she says can't afford her commute due to rising gas prices.

But Alfonsi didn't do her homework. Her featured teacher is a retired Navy lawyer who said in 2003 that she could only afford working as a Catholic school teacher because of her military pension. What Alfonsi didn't say was that teacher Bonnie McGann made a conscious choice to earn less so she could give back to her church.

"This was the area where I could afford a home," McGann informed Alfonsi's viewers on the May 4 "Evening News." The CBS correspondent added that McGann's problem was the cost of the commute. "It's a burden for me now. It's something that I am unable to absorb," McGann added.

The picture Alfonsi painted was incomplete. McGann is a retired Navy Judge Advocate who says she went into teaching in Catholic schools for the emotional and spiritual reward of the experience. She could find higher pay in a law career or public school teaching. McGann, an alumna of Rowan University also holds a JD from from Cal Western, and a Masters of Education from Marymount University.

"I was only able to consider teaching in Catholic schools because I had a military retirement income," McGann, then the incoming principal at a Winchester, Va. Catholic school, was quoted in the December 2003 MUToday, a Marymount University publication in December 2003. MUToday added that "even coupling her teacher's salary with her retirement pay did not match" her Navy income but that McGann cited a "desire to give back to the Church" and felt that the “Holy Spirit guided" her into teaching rather than a civilian law practice.

While Alfonsi claimed in her report that McGann can't afford $1,000 more per year in gas costs, in 2003 the then-school principal donated $1,600 to 2004 perennial third-party presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche in two-month time span in 2003, according to CampaignMoney.com.       

[cross-posted to BusinessandMedia.org]

Image:
ADVERTISEMENT

Opinion

View All

'Girls' soccer team with FIVE trans players destroys team of actual girls 10-0 in Australia

Flying Batts FC won the pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup in Sydney, during which they won every game they...

JACK POSOBIEC: The government goes after MAGA and Trump while pedophilia in Hollywood is 'perfectly fine'

"Why would Nickelodeon employ people who had been already convicted of child sex abuse?"...

UK medical body claims preventing teachers from 'affirming' child sex change will 'cause distress' to students

The medical body told the UK Department of Education it does not think parents should always know if ...

Evan Gershkovich's detention in Russia extended over espionage allegations

The US ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, maintained that "the accusations against Evan are categoric...