JOURNALISM: What Happens When True Speech Prevails Over False Speech? [View all]

Last edited Sat Mar 7, 2026, 07:24 PM - Edit history (1)

A journalism lesson from The Texas Tribune --when GP Bush was “staring down the barrel of academic probation”

by Susan Alyn on Medium.com - published in the "Curiosity Sparks" Medium publication

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Published in The Texas Tribune newspaper; yellow arrows and comments by Texas Tribune reporter Jay Root who’s now at The NY Times. Official undergraduate academic transcript of George P. Bush, a public record because he was a Florida public school teacher before being elected Texas Land Commissioner. Rice University.



Many years ago I happened to stumble upon a 2000 online article about George P. Bush, the son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Headlined “Gorgeous George” — with the subtitle “Everyone’s Loco for the Latino Bush They Call ‘P’ ”— it was published in The Austin Chronicle here.

The last paragraph raised a few questions for me:


The journalist who wrote the article did not inform his readers there was no independent verification of the claim that George P. Bush had applied to “Harvard, New York University, Columbia, and Yale law schools.”

Consequently, perhaps not realizing this claim has not been verified, some readers may have accepted this claim as true.

But was it? ....