This article focuses on how five journalists arrived at their decisions about how to report policy, particularly educational policy. It is part of a larger study that takes the position that the media play a central role in educational policy-making and that educators need to understand the power that journalists working within corporate structures have to shape educational policy. I suggest that this power must be understood at two levels: at the level of the media structure and at the level of journalists' personal experiences of schooling and policy-makers. (Contains 2 notes.)