Oh please! There are just as many stories of abuse at schools. Those people who are abusing their children while supposedly homeschooling them were doing it when their kids were IN school, and in most cases were already known to the child welfare agencies.
It's just the media's attempt to paint all homeschoolers as right wing Christian odd balls who have no business teaching their kids. What's interesting is that there are just as many homeschoolers who are NOT doing it for religious reasons, but you rarely hear about them.
As for your contention that most people don't know enough to teach their kids, just how much to you have to know to teach a child to read? Not much. It's fairly easy to teach a child their math facts.
When the kids get older, and they've moved into subjects about which their parents know little, they can either teach themselves ( like our daughter did with Japanese), or we can hire tutors, the kids can take co-op classes with other homeschoolers, or attend a Community College, as our daughter is doing for Chemistry and Physics so she can have access to good labs.
So you think the media should repress information which reflects negatively on some "home schooling" since if it actually writes a truthful article it may show some real problems?
The story of the Dollars was not a media hit job just an example of how some creeps can hide behind the HS to cover up their crimes.
Home schooling is not perfect or 100% good. Nor is public schooling 100% bad though I realize such a statement will be met by howls of outrage.
No public school has EVER starved a child or beat them half to death. Not even in Nicholas Nickleby.
Attending Community College is NOT home schooling merely cherry picking public educational facilities. As I said beyond the simplest of beginning subjects the vast majority are incapable of adequately teaching. If you don't know a subject you can't teach it very well.