Why should we, as Marxist educators, expend energy examining the news media's construction of education issues? In the UK vast quantities of education coverage emerge each year. Stories include hardy annuals, such as the predictable August uproar over exam results, perennials, such as the relative performance of boys and girls, and sudden sproutings of concern over, say, the fall in the numbers of undergraduates studying sciences or modern languages. Despite this, the body of academic literature exploring the relationship between the UK's education sector and news media processes is fairly modest. This is unsurprising. As with other public services, relationships between the education sector and largely right-wing news media remain fractious; the quality of education news coverage is generally held in low regard by educationalists. It is important, though, that our wariness of the media should not lead us to ignore the role of news coverage within contemporary capitalism's education settlement.