John Doe Says No

After Scott Walker won the recall election I can understand why his most obsessed followers experience delusions about him joining Mitt Romney on the presidential ticket.  But to have prominent members of the media actually speculate about this delusion is truly ridiculous.  For example CNN's Piers Morgan made it the highlight of his entire pathetic interview with Walker last week. (eat your heart out Fox News)

With the sad exception of John McCain in 2008, most presidential candidates thoroughly and completely vet potential running mates.  Does anyone seriously think that the Romney campaign and the establishment Republicans are going to allow Scott Walker to join that ticket with the John Doe investigation still hanging over his head and while Walker is still spending money hand over fist from his criminal defense fund? Nope. Not going to happen. Scott Walker knows it, why doesn't the media?

Media Distractors

The right wing Republican front group Media Trackers exists to unfairly taint the opposition and to distract an already tabloid-prone media. Based on everything that they have done in their relatively short existence, that much has been abundantly clear. It seems that some in the media are finally noticing the pattern of deception employed by Media Trackers while others still blindly promote their smears.

Legitimate news outlets should be referencing Media Trackers record before even considering mentioning them, much less amplifying their distractions. Frankly, their record is rather embarrassing and is filled with little more than innuendo, partisan rush to judgement and willfully negligent"research".

Here are some of their distractions that stand out to me and they should give at least a moment of pause to legitimate members of the media:

The Underage Girls that Weren't: Remember when Media Trackers promoted video of what they described as underage girls signing recall petitions? They even suggested that the African American girls were being compensated with cigarettes. The only thing that they had was video and their own wild speculation. Certain members of the more tabloid-prone media (WTMJ) quickly amplified the innuendo but the claims were quickly and easily proven to be false. Confirming the wild speculation would have only taken an extra layer of research but they were not interested in accuracy, only in distracting the larger media and attempting to taint the recall process.

Trying to Tarnish Senator Taylor: Late last year Media Trackers targeted a vocal Walker critic and major voice in the recall effort, Senator Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee). Once again, the group found enough information to quickly publish a smear on Taylor but not enough to actually make a legitimate case against her. They targeted a property owned by Taylor but run by her mother as a ministry to the homeless. They suggested that there were illegalities because homeless people actually registered to vote and listed that shelter as their residence. They further embarrassed themselves after finding out that one of the residents had been convicted of a felony once upon a time. Again they quickly ran with blind allegations of a felon voting without bothering to check if he was still on paper (he wasn't and was perfectly eligible to vote).

Public Smears vs. Sworn Statements: Another Media Trackers failure was the debunked "BBQ for votes" nonsense. They claimed that a progressive coalition's get-out-the vote effort engaged in "illegal election behavior." They suggested that the coalition exchanged free BBQ for votes. Their star witness to these wild allegations was one of their own staff members. When questioned under oath, he was specifically asked if anyone told him that he had to sign up to vote to get the food. In spite of Media Trackers public statements and vile innuendo on the matter, their star witness under oath was forced to admit that they were essentially baseless. No one ever told him that he had to sign up to vote to get BBQ.

Judicial Commission FAIL: More recently Media Trackers has been engaged in a coordinated effort of intimidation that would have made Joseph McCarthy blush. They have been steadily trying to tarnish anyone that dared to sign recall petitions against Walker. Not long after the Judicial Commission filed an ethics complaint against angry partisan Justice David Prosser, the smear machine went desperately fishing for what they perceived to be dirt on commission members. Again the group rushed to judgement over-hyping what they thought that they found. The group claimed that a number of commission members signed Walker recall petitions and were thus overly-partisan (an absurd argument in its own right). However they wrongly identified one member and the others no longer even served on the commission.

Targeting Walkergate Investigators but with Faulty Aim(s): Now, with cult-like fervor, the smear machine is continuing to target more people that exercised their constitutional right by signing a recall Walker petition. This time they are spewing their vile brand of innuendo at the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office. Once again their efforts are so easily transparent. Something in the Walkergate investigation must have them and/or their funders worried. They have identified several dozen employees, out of the hundreds that work in the office, that signed the Walker recall petition. Some of the people that signed are support staff like secretaries and others. However not a single one of them are actually involved in the Walkergate investigation itself. The group's effort is clearly to taint the Walkergate investigation and the entire district attorney's office.

The pattern with this right-wing smear machine is abundantly clear. Why any member of the legitimate media would even consider citing this group is beyond me. They have repeatedly proven that they play fast an loose with the truth only to serve very narrow and nasty political aims. Apparently they are of the mind that the ends justifies the dishonest means. That kind of relativism is a peculiar approach for people that self-identify as being "conservative" and as having "traditional values".

They call themselves "Media Trackers" but their real goal is to simply be a media distractor.

Smear Machine Mission Accomplished

Two weeks ago right wing front group Media Trackers made wild accusations against Senator Lena Taylor for which they provided no real evidence. Most informed observers instantly approached it with extreme caution. Unfortunately too many divisions of Journal Communications Inc apparently didn't see that clear fact and they ran with the story. To their credit, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting today that the primary point of Media Tracker's smear against Senator Taylor was not accurate after all.

This and other recent examples of Media Tracker's false claims reveals that they are all about smearing the opposition and getting negative stories in the media about their political opponents. It seems clear that they have no concern for facts or reality as long as they accomplish those goals. You can really see how this pattern played out in the baseless smear against Senator Taylor.

• They played some twisted version of "Six Degrees of Separation" by trying to somehow link the Senator to voters that temporarily lived at her mother's ministry to the homeless.
  
• They found one homeless guest at the ministry that had a felony on their record and that voted in the spring elections.
• They rushed to promote the smear on Senator Taylor, feeding it to their friends at Journal Communications Inc without taking the time to confirm that the man in question wasn't actually eligible to vote.

All of these steps show you that the real intentions of Media Trackers was not to do honest research. It was only to find something, ANYTHING that they could even remotely tie to a political enemy. If they really wanted to find out if the primary person that they focused on in this smear was actually eligible to vote they could have easily done so and without much effort at all. They could have clearly read his sentencing information such as his Judgement of Conviction. They could have called Probation and Parole to find out if/when he was on "paper". They could have also placed a simple call to the Milwaukee County Sheriff's office. Given the dishonesty that they were promoting through Journal Communications Inc, they clearly didn't bother to do any of those very basic checks.

This very clear smear job of Senator Taylor comes on the heels of their lying attacks on two African American women who signed recall petitions in Milwaukee. The same basic Media Trackers pattern applies.

• They take video of the two young women signing the recall petition in Milwaukee.
• Someone at Media Trackers apparently fancies themselves as an age expert and determines that these young women are underage.
• Rather than taking the next logical step of a responsible investigator (trying to actually confirm the age of the women), Media Trackers again uses their friends at Journal Communications Inc to quickly perpetuate the lie.

In both of these smear jobs Media Trackers essentially followed the same irresponsibly disingenuous pattern. More problematic is that Journal Communications Inc was so easily and/or willingly drawn into both baseless smears and served as the primary promoter of them.

In both of the aforementioned cases critics were immediately skeptical of Media Trackers smear and once someone actually bothered to look at the actual facts, those critics proved to be correct on all counts. However even after Media Trackers false accusations and innuendo-based efforts were fully debunked they remained unapologetic. The likely reason? Because their goal was never to illuminate, objectively report or to properly investigate the issues that they raised. It was to simply find any possible hook (real or imagined) to smear their political opponents and to use the larger media as an "accessory" to the baseless smear. Whether their accusations were eventually debunked is immaterial because for many people on the right it has already become conventional "wisdom".

Mission Accomplished.

UPDATES: One Wisconsin Now's Response
Senator Taylor's Response
New logo for Media Trackers?

A reoccurring fraud on the media

Almost without exception, when we approach a major election in Wisconsin, Republicans trot out phony accusations of fraud. They make over-the-top unsubstantiated claims and feed the lies to each other via elected officials, their radio propagandists, blogs and special interest front groups. So the proper question is never, "will they make these kinds of false accusations?" Instead the important questions are "when will they" and "how badly will the traditional media fall for it this time"?

In the face of a statewide grassroots effort to recall extremist Scott Walker, all of the usual suspects are out making unsubstantiated accusations of fraud. Recall petitions, I might add, that are being signed at a blindingly fast pace (over 105,000 in four days). So naturally we have to endure the right wing's phony "fraud" claims.

Again, this kind of thing is totally expected because they run the exact same libelous drill every single time. What is always much more disappointing is how many in the traditional media give a measure of credibility to such unproven (and usually false) accusations. For example,I've already seen at least two Milwaukee-area TV news departments reporting on allegedly under age people signing recall petitions. They have raised these right wing questions without providing a proper level of evidence (no, a simple video obviously does not suffice).

Apparently some tabloid prone members of the media just can't help themselves. At some point you would think that they'd learn. We certainly know that there is a long history of these kinds of baseless accusations. The media rushes to report them and then later it is discovered that the accusations were dubious at best.

Who can forget the wild right wing accusations of voter fraud that were actually squashed by the Bush appointee and former U.S. Attorney Biskupic? He investigated hundreds of the Republican claims at that time and found "no widespread voter fraud" (much of the same result that was found nationally). The hyperbolic voter fraud rhetoric was simply not backed up by facts or by reality. Wisconsin Republicans only relied on innuendo, right wing urban legands and wacky conspiracy theories. Yet their false accusations were reliably reported in the media at the time.

There was also the epic example of false accusations that actually took place in the form of a press conference in front of the residence of the falsely accused. The libelous press conference included Wisconsin Republican officials, operatives, elected officials and others. As it turned out, the falsely accused was a young man that was studying for the priesthood and he had not committed voter fraud. None of that stopped the over-the-top and libelous accusations from the right wing who didn't even bother offering as much as an apology.

Wisconsin's recent history is filled with such false and over-the-top accusations of voter fraud. Yet it seems that many in the mainstream media just keep falling for the right wing shtick every single time. It seems that if there is any significant level of "fraud" happening it is the reoccurring right wing "fraud" that is occurring on unquestioning members of the media.

UPDATES (from Journal Communications Inc):

Charlie Sykes, ex post facto equivocator

Jeff Wagner Makes Outrageous Claim on TMJ Radio Today

And then there is @TodaysTMJ4 still promoting the original lie

Fox 6 and CRG "Colluding" Against Senate Dems?

On Friday I highlighted the various ways that our 14 Senate Democrats are being harassed for taking their courageous stand to slow down Scott Walker's extreme agenda. One of the elements that I included in that blog posting was that they have received extensive open records requests from the Walker-enablers at Citizens for Republican Responsible Government. They also received very similar open records requests from Bryan Polcyn from Milwaukee's WITI Fox 6 News.

Originally I noticed that both CRG and Fox 6 submitted their extensive and similar requests on the same day but I didn't originally read anything into that fact. But after seeing the report that Fox 6 produced based on their open records requests, I'm having second thoughts.

• The Fox 6 item prominently features the spokesperson for CRG (remember he is the one that admitted in 2009 that he wanted to see Scott Walker become governor)
• Not only did they prominently feature CRG but then they gave them air time to broadly speculate about alleged "collusion" without a real basis.
• Fox 6 admits at the top of the story that their extensive open records requests of Dem Senators didn't reveal any real premeditated plan for the Dems to leave town. However by the end of the story they use CRG's wild speculation to strongly imply otherwise.

So if CRG and Fox 6 are going to join together to question and speculate about Senate Dems, maybe someone should be asking them some serious questions. Last week I emailed Bryan Polcyn asking him if he had any comment about his extensive open records requests to Democratic Senators. I also asked him if he had submitted similar requests to Scott Walker's office or the offices of the Republican leadership in the Legislature. In his report today he seems so concerned about why Democrats tried to slow down the "budget repair bill" process, so was he as interested in how Republicans were plotting on how to speed it up? I don't know because he didn't respond to my questions. So if Fox 6 wants to air reports with partisans broadly speculating about who is "colluding" with whom, I want to know if they are "colluding" with CRG and against the Senate Democrats?

Attention Media: Don't Miss the Real Story!

I've read, watched and listened to many reports in the media about Scott Walker's "budget repair bill" (which is anything but) and I'm noticing an incomplete theme. Too much of the focus in the reporting is being put on the prospect of wage and benefit reductions. Don't be misled into thinking that this is the major point of the backlash against this bill. After all the public employee unions were already prepared to give $100 million in various concessions but Walker refused to negotiate at all. So the unions have made it clear that they are not adverse to carrying their fair share of the burden in terms of wage/benefit concessions.

The real outrage is Walker's unprecedented attempt to take away basically all collective bargaining rights. That wipes out basic rights that workers have had for over 50 years in Wisconsin. That includes the loss of the right to address things like workplace safety, seniority, grievance procedures and just about anything else for that matter. These drastic and unprecedented actions are bad enough but trying to do so in the space of one week is downright diabolical. This is not to even mention the fact that the bill very deliberately tries to weaken and undermine public employee unions organizationally.

It is right to highlight this bill's proposed cuts to workers pay and benefits because those things are very real and they are significant. But don't get stuck in the right wing talking points so deep that you leave the discussion only in that one rut. Continue to report the full amount of damage that this bill will do not only to workers' pay and benefits but also to their most fundamental rights. If you've missed that major detail then you have missed the real story.

Will Bad Walker Polls Get The Doyle Treatment?

Public Policy Polling has released the results of a favorability poll of Scott Walker. The results are certainly less than flattering as nearly half of the respondents have an unfavorable view of Walker. The Chief, the Brawler and others have already commented on the lousy Walker numbers in this poll and how they are fairly consistent with a recent right wing WPRI poll.

Such favorability polls were almost like crack for Journal Communications when they were focused on Governor Doyle. It didn't seem to matter who put the poll out or what their agenda might be, it was almost always given top tier treatment. So only days into Walker's administration where is the frenzied reporting on these pathetic numbers for Walker? The only place in all of the Journal Communications media monopoly that I can find the results of this poll is on its "Wisconsin Voter" blog.

There is no doubt that Governor Doyle's poll numbers were terrible in his last year but rarely have I read about them in the context of the millions of dollars that were spent attacking him (even though he was not on a single ballot) and without a response. The impact of the Great Bush Recession certainly took a toll on Doyle's approval ratings but if you ran millions of dollars of unanswered attack ads against anyone for a year plus chances are likely that their numbers wouldn't be pretty. But that context didn't stop the media in general or Journal Communications in particular. So will they give the same kind of treatment to every bad poll that comes out for Scott Walker?

After the attack ads on Governor Doyle were already well under way, the research and "policy mill for the state GOP" over at WPRI published a poll showing 43% favorable and 49% unfavorable. This current PPP poll of Scott Walker shows 41% favorable and 49% unfavorable while he is only a few days into his administration. He already has such high unfavorable numbers and he has not even decimated shared revenue, BadgerCare or Education yet! Will the media characterize this current poll (and the ones to come) in the same aggressive fashion that they did for Governor Doyle? We will find out the answer soon and perhaps it will give us a glimpse of the sorry state of Wisconsin's media giants.

Afterthought: In this poll Scott Walker's approval is even lower than Ron Johnson, which apparently means that if you make little to no news, you are still more popular than Walker.

Chuck Todd Out Reporting Wisconsin Media Via Twitter

It happens every election cycle, so we should really be use to it by now. Tommy Thompson ever so slightly flirts with the Wisconsin media and they dutifully respond by running front page stories about it. This little game apparently goes beyond just Thompson flirting directly, because the Wisconsin media also treats polls conducted by Thompson cronies as legitimate news. The Thompson-obsessed Wisconsin media has defaulted to substance-free reporting on anything Tommy related.

I couldn't help but notice NBC News correspondent Chuck Todd out reporting the Wisconsin media and doing so by way of a simple Tweet.

Will Tommy Thompson, if he even runs, be the SEN candidate who has hardest time
running against #hcr? http://bit.ly/9WFTOr

Chuck Todd's link points to a difficult issue that Thompson will have to face on health care reform, if he actually decides to run for anything. Although Republicans and their extreme base are attacking health care reform largely based on the individual mandate, many of them "forget" that this was also a big Republican idea. In fact a Miami paper actually cites Tommy Thompson, when he was working for George W. Bush, as promoting the idea himself. I wonder if Tommy's support of individual mandates would play well with the tea party types?

Thank goodness we have Chuck Todd's 140 character reporting to rely on! How else are we supposed to find out about these kinds of important and deeply relevant issues? Obviously, when it comes to Tommy Thompson, the Wisconsin media is leaving the heavy reporting to Chuck Todd and his Twitter account.

Is MacIver Trying to “Indoctrinate” the Media?

The same week that brought false accusations from the right about "indoctrinating" students, we also may have witnessed what a real attempt at indoctrination looks like. Ironically it was a right wing organization that appeared to be trying their hand at the indoctrination of the media. Last week when the MacIver institute announced their plan to produce political news reports, their executive director and former Scott Jensen Chief of Staff, Brett Healy made several gag inducing comments about their new plan. He claimed that his right wing organization was merely trying to "help fill a void in locally-produced news coverage and analysis that grows larger by the day as news operations are scaled back for economic reasons." Yeah, and where was that bridge that you were trying to sell us?

At the beginning of this week we got our first taste of exactly how this group of right wing partisans planned to "help fill a void". Apparently the main ingredient of that "filling" was a healthy dose of deception. The Wisconsin State Journal reported on Sunday that the used-to-be TV reporter that MacIver hired was deceptive with the subjects of his first two interviews. He walked into interviews with cameras from a local TV station but didn't bother telling the public officials that he actually worked for MacIver and that the footage would also be edited to fit their ideological fancy.

The MacIver institute and their fake reporting are partially funded by one of the traditional sugar daddies of the extreme right wing, the Bradley Foundation. Just last year this foundation gave grants to many extreme right wing groups including those of the Astroturf variety that are trying to stop real health care reform (Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity). Likewise the Bradley Foundation reported giving MacIver a 2008 grant of $50,000.

With right wing sugar daddies like the Bradley Foundation throwing that kind of money at MacIver, why couldn't they afford to provide their used-to-be TV reporter with his own equipment? They certainly could afford it couldn't they? Why did he have to "borrow" equipment from the real media? Heck, if the MacIver Institute and the Bradley Foundation cared so much about the lack of resources for local political reporting, why didn't they just donate the funds to local media?

The fact that MacIver "borrowed" equipment from the local media and then misrepresented what was actually going on suggests an awful lot about their real motivations. It seems clear that they are merely trying to blur some very important lines between the real media and those with a clear right wing agenda. Thus far it seems that their real goal is to "indoctrinate" and/or infiltrate the local media and produce reporting that more resembles Fox "News" than it does objective journalism.

MacIver Punks Press, Pols and Public

Poor MacIver Institute! All that right wing money and they still can't get it right. We here at Eye on Wisconsin are all too familiar with the rocky start that MacIver got when they prematurely launched. They had an organization with an invisible staff and many questions about their affiliations that never really got straight answers. The serious questions about this latest right wing organization only increase as time goes by.

In the beginning some flak for the organization (and apparently the only semi real staff person) publicly denied former speaker Scott Jensen's involvement in the organization. Almost right after those declarations, we found that actually Scott Jensen appeared to be writing MacIver's press releases. Apparently he was not too busy preparing for another criminal trial and apparently the truth was too much to ask for from MacIver. As if Jensen secretly writing the press releases wasn't enough of a tie, then the group hired his former chief of staff as its executive director and even put Jensen's favorite media guy in charge of communications.

Then rather than picking a right wing blogger of any substance, they went with the one that is about as extreme as they come. He was barely on the job cross posting between his own blog and MacIver's when he got a little uncomfortable attention. He made Dan Bice's Journal Sentinel column after he put out a string disgustingly racist comments on his Twitter account. MacIver didn't bat an eye about what most would consider unwelcome attention.

Now MacIver is getting some well deserved scrutiny over the latest in a series of questionable antics. Their latest hire is a former TV news guy that has decided to cross all sorts of lines in the name of MacIver. According to the story in the Wisconsin State Journal, Bill Osmulski (formerly of Madison's WKOW Channel 27) interviewed two Democrats and apparently pretended to be from a legitimate news operation while completely failing to notify them that the interview would also be used for right wing MacIver propaganda. Even MacIver's own communications person admits that now-fake TV reporter Osmulski should have been truthful with the elected officials and disclosed exactly what he was doing.

Given its track record in its very short life, I'm not exactly surprised at this latest development. I am however surprised that someone in the traditional media would actually accept and use Osmulski's report as a real news story. The fact that it was generated by a right wing organization powered by extreme ideology and a questionable track record, should have given them pause. But who really knows, maybe MacIver "punked" the media outlet just like they did with two of our public officials. Hopefully the majority of the media in the state will take the advice that we gave way back in early March when we wrote that the "Shady Organization Requires Real Reporting". Hopefully they will look extra close the next time that MacIver releases some "study" or "poll", and keep them from "punking" the public next.

Shady Organization’s Shady Start Requires Real Reporting

On Saturday a full array of right wing madness will be on display in downtown Milwaukee at the “Defending the American Dream” summit. According to the listed agenda the opening session will not only include all sorts of right wing politicians but will also include the 2nd official announcement of the Maciver Institute. Perhaps they will be hiring folks to fill their apparently vacant staff spots. One thing that we do know is that they will be releasing a poll.

In their first official introduction via sudden press release on Wednesday, they state that they will be releasing “results of a statewide poll on Governor Doyle’s proposed state budget, the economy and Wisconsin politics” on Saturday. But before the media just swallows up the talking points and simply reprints poll results, I certainly hope that they do their due diligence. The bottom line is that this already appears to be a shady organization that is off to a shady start. Many questions need to be asked and answered before the media just jumps on the bandwagon.

First, who is the executive director for this new organization? It has been reported that Scott Jensen was involved with starting this organization and Bruce Murphy has reported seeing documents that show a possible $120,000 salary for him. So if these documents do show that, then why is he not listed in their official launch press release or on their website? By the way, wasn’t Jensen ordered to repay the taxpayers of Wisconsin some $190,000 for legal costs associated with his first criminal felony trial? If he is involved in this group how can they have any credibility on issues of taxes, spending and personal responsibility?

Another important question that some in the media should be asking is of themselves, particularly the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Wisconsin State Journal. Bruce Murphy has also reported that several reporters from both papers were recruited to take a research director job at Maciver. Is this true and is this why none of them have reported a single thing about the start of this organization? If this is true, how is it not a conflict to now carry their poll and their activities without having some sort of conflict?

It is pretty clear that the major thing that Maciver has done at this point, apparently without a staff, is produce a poll. Again, before simply reporting the results of this poll, the media has a responsibility to ask some questions and point out some facts. Based on Maciver’s own description of the poll, it is pretty clear that it will serve as little more than an attack on Governor Doyle. Should this be a surprise when the President of this shady organization is Fred Luber, former Finance Co-Chair of Scott Walkers failed 2006 run for governor and major GOP bagman? If there is going to be any reporting at all on this poll, shouldn’t this be very clearly stated?

One of the other major set of questions that the media must ask about this organization is who are their funders? We know from Mark Block’s Twitter account that there is supposed to be some “very important” meeting on Saturday involving the Bradley Foundation’s Michael Grebe and former Governor Thompson disciple James Klauser. What are their roles in this? Is the Bradley Foundation funding this new right wing operation? Did they pay for this poll? Does the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the other papers just print the results of any group’s poll in the paper without knowing such things?

How can the media treat this organization or their poll as legitimate without first asking all of these very important questions? So far this has proven to be a shady organization that is off to a very shady start and if the media doesn’t ask the important questions before reporting its talking points, then the are abdicating their most basic responsibilities and they are just as shady as all the rest.

So what have you been complaining about?

I try to catch Mike Gousha’s Up Front program every Sunday. In my opinion, it is the best Wisconsin-based political program on television. Yesterday Gousha interviewed Randy Koschnick regarding his run for state Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the interview brought out more questions for me than it answered.

Although Koschnick has made 3 percent of his opponent's campaign contributions a major plank of his campaign, he admitted on the show that there was nothing illegal about them. This did not surprise me because even he could not be so absurd as to make such a claim. I did, however, expect him to make some lame ethics argument based on the judicial code. When asked that specific question, to my surprise, Koschnick admitted that this nonissue that he has been hyping for weeks, was not even an ethical violation. So the obvious follow up question is, “So exactly what have you been complaining about for the last several weeks?”

As much as I like Mike Gousha and his program, I was surprised that he didn’t follow up on such an obvious point. I was also disappointed that he, like most others in the traditional media, did not question Koschnick about his own campaign donations. Since I genuinely like Gousha and his program, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was simply an issue of time and the fact that he tries to pack almost too much substance into a mere 30 minutes. If there is a case to be made for a full hour of Up Front, the Koschnick interview on Sunday could serve as Exhibit A.

Koschnick Double Talk and the AWOL Media

Jefferson County Judge Randy Koschnick has been talking out of both sides of his mouth on multiple issues. I’m not sure which is worse, that a candidate for the high court would repeatedly do this or that the traditional media would just run his talking points without questioning him on any of them.

Koschnick has made the main point of his entire candidacy a manufactured controversy over campaign donations to his opponent that represent only 3 percent of the total raised. He does this even though when he was running for judge in 1999, he accepted cash from lawyers that went on to have cases before him. Those donations to Koschnick represented about 40 percent of the total that he raised at that time. Unfortunately no one in the traditional media has asked him to square this circle so he just keeps talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Koschnick apparently can’t wait to repeatedly talk about “the bloody shirt” in the Knapp case, even though he himself threw out a pair of bloody shoes in the case. As many times as he has talked about this case, he has never explained why the defendant’s rights mattered with one piece of evidence and not the other. But then again, as far as I can tell, he has never been asked that question.

Koschnick talked in the last debate about not being partisan and repeatedly has accused his opponent of compromising her impartiality. He makes these repeated comments while at the same time appearing at just about every Republican event in the state. To their credit, at least the Wausau Daily Herald pointed out the double standard.

While Koschnick has been talking about clean campaign pledges, he has authorized fundraising letters that make the same old nasty attacks that we have come to expect. Reading the letter, one would think that his opponent was freeing all the criminals in the state and planning some sort of coup in Madison. It appeals only to the most paranoid on the right, yet he faces no accountability for it. The letter also takes a not so subtle swipe at the Chief Justice’s age, which I find particularly offensive. Is this what he means by a "clean campaign"? Perhaps someone should ask him to provide us with his definition.

Aside from the lead paragraph in the Wausau Daily Herald, the state’s media has largely given Koschnick a pass in all of these areas. Many times, they have gone well beyond just giving him a pass. At times they have printed his list of talking points and then acted as if that was legitimate news. Before April I certainly hope that more people start noticing the Koschnick double talk. You can’t act all sanctimonious about the state of our judicial elections and then do absolutely nothing to challenge this kind of behavior.

Media Fumbling Facts for Koschnick

After watching the first debate between Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Jefferson County Judge Randy Koschnick, I was shocked at how most of the reports in the media simply restated Koschnick’s empty talking points and illegitimate attacks. With all of their “outrage” over the nastiness of the last race, one would think that the media would actually do their job – report the facts. They can complain about nasty campaigning all that they want but if they don’t hold candidates accountable, they themselves are part of the problem.

During the debate Koschnick repeatedly threw around the old meaningless “activist” label. The press seemed to take his name calling and run with it, printing it in most of their stories about the debate. Yet, given his repeated use of the word “activist” none of the reporters saw fit to mention one of the most compelling moments in the entire debate. The Chief Justice started reading off several cases where Judge Koschnick had been reversed by the court of appeals. There seemed to be a common theme from the higher court, repeatedly saying that Koschnick exceeded his authority and ruled in ways that ignored statutes. If there is a definition of an “activist” judge, some of the appeals courts descriptions could have served as such. Somehow this pot/kettle moment was either totally missed or deliberately ignored by the press.

In addition, the media has known for a while that Koschnick was going to wave around the bloody shirt from the infamous Knapp case. He brought it up repeatedly during the debate and the media reported his comments. What neither he nor the media did bring up was the fact that in the very same case, he himself ruled that a pair of bloody shoes should not be allowed as evidence. The only thing that the media had to do was search their own past reporting of the case and they would have learned about Koschnick’s ruling on the shoes. They didn’t do that and settled with simply carrying his one sided and disingenuous commentary.

In the absence of real reporting and basic fact checking, bloggers quickly began to point out the whole picture about the Knapp case. Only then did the state’s largest paper finally run an online item reporting about Koshnick’s ruling on the bloody shoes. But even after finally reporting the fact, they still could not get the information completely correct, making a very fundamental mistake in its reporting which later had to be corrected.

The idea that no one at this newspaper association debate was familiar enough with the basic facts of the Knapp case, when they knew it was going to be used, is irresponsible. Equally troubling is that reporters simply repeated Koschnick’s name calling without making him answer for his own record. Not only did the media completely abdicate their responsibilities in the reporting of this debate, but they showed a disturbing propensity to completely and totally fumble the facts.