In Australia and around the world there is increasing interest in the interrelationships between the media and education. This paper explores this interrelationship through an investigation of the connections between the policy on, and media coverage of, the National Assessment Program in Australia. The paper argues that both the media and education policy can be understood as public discourses. It employs critical discourse analysis to trace the interdiscursive connections between these discourses. Analysis confirmed the media as an integral part of the proliferation of discourses that constitute public debates on education policies and demonstrated the ways in which the media acted as a conduit, colluding with government to construct an authoritative public version of the national assessment program and of teacher quality.