Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

406 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
be objective, but again we don’t know anything about genetically altered foods (Personal communication,
November 10. 2000).
The reader will note frequent use of the pronoun “we.” A common-sense understanding is that
if the reporter did not know about an issue, then “we” as a society also did not know and the
know-nothings include those people who may have a great deal of understanding and experience
but since they are not part of the “we as reporters” group, are therefore irrelevant. Knowledge is
again something based on one’s “nose for news” or “professional” ability to smell, hear, and see
the truth. Knowledge is not that which comes from critical reviews of relevant literature, debate,
or grappling with uncertainty, but from one’s direct experience in and of the world.
From my interviews, it became clear that pre-1997 reporters had read nothing to very little
about eating disorders beyond their peers’ accounts of the illnesses, yet they were confident that
they were helping build knowledge and therefore were providing a public education function.
When asked if there was enough evidence to write a piece about Montreux and its success,
McLellan, who sees herself as building knowledge, expressed her opinion of the absurdity in
waiting to tell what you know. “You could say that about any story—pollution—not enough
evidence. You have to wait for the final results to see if separation is really good for Quebec. I
think that there may have been positive stories written about her [Claude-Pierre] because she was
doing something new and there was no success in hospitals either.” Again, McLellan, the healthreporter,
is confident in explaining the absence of “no” success in hospitals and is thus setting up
Montreux as an alternative in which common sense dictated that recovery would prevail.
In 1999, ABC’s Goldberg explained to me that “If you press Peggy on the 100% she will
back off on it. Her success rate is probably closer to 80% or 90%.” From his armchair research,
however, Goldberg understood the failure rate in other facilities to be over 75%; thus his sense
that the success rate at Montreux was 80% to 90% was extremely newsworthy. While in an
interview in 2001, Goldberg seemed more cautious about providing a success rate but, he still
was comfortable in relying on his senses to maintain his belief that Montreux, at least when he
“discovered” it, had a “magic to it.” He was further convinced of Claude-Pierre’s success, given
that she told him that no client had died at her facility. This seemed remarkable to Goldberg who
had read that the mortality rate for people with anorexia was high. He was not aware that studies
around mortality demonstrate that deaths generally did not occur in hospital or treatment centers
where an anorexic was monitored, but rather when patients were out of hospital and at risk for
complications caused by prolonged starvation or suicide (Crisp et al., 1992).
Two of the women that 20/20 focused on as success stories have since died. After the death of
Samantha Kendall, Goldberg stated she had left before treatment was completed and therefore
could not be considered a Montreux failure because she had refused to finish the program. The
second death was that of Donna Brooks. Goldberg believed that Montreux had in fact helped her.
Seeing himself as witnessing Brook’s improvement, Goldberg focused on this past improvement
rather than on the reality that she had died, weighing as little at death as she did before arriving
at Montreux (Personal communication, July 10, 2001).
Research, available at the time when 20/20 and other media were preparing stories about
Montreux, strongly indicated that a person could not be considered to be “recovered” while still
in a residential program, given it was an unnatural setting (Garfinkel, 1986). Goldberg, though,
saw “recovery” and provided the visual proof of this to viewers. His interpretive framework did
not enable him to see discrepant facts in his miracle cure framework. He later found out that a
third patient portrayed on 20/20 required intensive care after leaving Montreux, but he stated that
Montreux still had helped her, articulating his “knowledge” that maybe there are some who just
can’t be helped. A lack of definitive information was taken by McLellan and Goldberg as either
implicit support or at the least not explicit opposition.