Eva Moskowitz, Doing What She Does Best, Plays Victim

Eliza Shapiro and Conor Skelding at Capital NY:

Success Academy C.E.O. Eva Moskowitz says this week's New York Times feature about her network of schools is "slanted" and "unfair."

"The article contains many inaccurate statements and unfair portrayals of our schools—scenes that could come straight out of a Dickens novel," Moskowitz wrote in an email to Success employees on Wednesday night, a copy of which was obtained by Capital.

...

"The reporter constructed a story around unverified but titillating anecdotes from anonymous sources," Moskowitz wrote.

Moskowitz and Success have regularly sparred with the reporters that cover her, including Capital reporters, often accusing them of bias. Press representatives have been known to call reporters "anti-Success" and to decline interviews and comment for articles.

It was a sentiment echoed in Moskowitz's email.

"This is not the first attack on Success Academy, nor will it be the last," she wrote.

Moskowitz wrote that "attacks" on her schools derive from an entrenched system driven by special interests, specifically the teachers' union, suggesting that news outlets are functionaries of that system. That claim has also been made by her spokespeople in response to stories that contain criticism.

"Let's keep perspective," Moskowitz wrote. "We are disrupters, we are changing the status quo, and that threatens a system that has existed more or less unchanged for decades."

She loves to play victim, doesn't she?

But the victims in this tale are the children soiling themselves at their desks because they're too scared to go to the bathroom during the all-mighty Sucess test prep.

The victims in this tale are the children sent to "effort academy" (i.e., detention and extra test prep) because their eyes didn't snap to attention quick enough when one of the teachers snapped her fingers.

The victims in this tale are the children who are meant to feel "misery" when their teachers feels they're not trying hard enough.

The NY Times article did read like something out of Dickens, as I wrote when I first posted about this story.

But that's not because the author, Kate Taylor, was making things up or "slanting" the piece, as Eva charges.

That's because Success Academy is a Dickensian nightmare where the children are subject to stress, misery and physical and emotional abuse.

With that part of the "Success" story getting out into the mainstream, Eva is finding it harder and harder to play the victim.

Not that she won't try.

But notice how the media coverage of Eva is changing these days.

The Albany rally in March didn't get the same vaunted coverage it got last year.

Now she's got a front page Times story she needs to spin away.

Looks like Eva's just going to have to double down on her spin efforts.

Lucky for her Campbell Brown, Governor Cuomo and a whole host of Wall Street/hedge fund people are going to raise millions for her in a couple of weeks.