“The Weekly,” a new television program on the FX channel, premieres tonight with an episode dedicated to the New York Times’ investigation of TM Landry.
The Weekly is a new television program from the newspaper.
Here’s what the network website has to say about it:
The Weekly is a new documentary TV series from The New York Times, bringing unparalleled journalism to the screen. Each half-hour episode features a Times journalist investigating one of the most pressing issues of the day. With more than 1,550 journalists scattered across 160 countries, The Times produces 2,500 stories a week – investigative reports, political scoops, cultural dispatches. And each week, The Weekly chooses to tell one of these stories in a visual and unforgettable way. The Weekly is the first major foray into television news for both The Times and FX. The series premieres on Sunday, June 2 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX, with streaming available on Hulu the following day.
Here’s a link to the premiere trailer:
Here’s what the NYT website has to say about the show:
A school in Louisiana had become famous for its record of placing students at elite universities, broadcasting their success through viral videos. Then, The New York Times published an investigation, uncovering rampant abuse of multiple students, few classes and fake transcripts. The school’s myth burst.
The reporters, Erica L. Green and Katie Benner, found that the school’s founder, Michael Landry, “fostered a culture of fear with physical and emotional abuse,” and “mined the worst stereotypes of black America to manufacture up-from-hardship tales that it sold to Ivy League schools hungry for diversity.”
We spent weeks in Louisiana interviewing young whistle-blowers and their families, and filmed a confrontational exchange with Landry, who denied he had abused his students and lied about their grades.
The Times’ investigative piece about the school ran in November 2018. To read it, click here. After that, the school scrapped plans to expand to Opelousas and moved its entire operation to Lafayette. The opening of that new location was delayed by construction and building issues, but the school is now re-opened in a building on Moss Street.
The school’s executive board hired John Pastorek, who is a New Orleans attorney and also a former BESE member and state Superintendent of Education, to conduct an investigation into the allegations made in the Times article. Pastorek’s findings contradicted the article. To read our story about that, including a summary of Pastorek’s report, click here.
To read our stories about TM Landry, click here.
