The coverage of incumbent state Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s race against challenger Randy Koschnick has, if nothing else, been good for occasional laughs.
Consider last week’s cover story by the Shepherd Express. Koschnick claims he has a list of 70 cases in which Abrahamson’s rulings show she is out of the mainstream. Not so, counters reporter Lisa Kaiser. A “closer examination of those rulings” actually proves Abrahamson “is a stickler for details in legal gray areas so that each side receives a fair hearing in court.”
Wow. I’ve never known a reporter to go through 70 legal cases to cover the campaign. That’s impressive.
Er, maybe not. Because Kaiser actually never quotes any details from the cases. That “closer examination” turns out to be pure assertion, backed up by a quote from Abrahamson.
It’s pretend journalism. The story includes a quote from an unnamed lawyer who accuses Koschnick of “deliberately manipulating the facts and blatantly pandering to people’s fears.” Easy for you to say, Mr. Anonymous.
And the fawning cover headline, “Staying Above the Fray – Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s Independent Streak,” could have been written by her campaign, which boasts of her “fierce independence.”
The Madison weekly Isthmus offers a radically different take by its news editor, Bill Lueders. Lueders is a knowledgeable, passionate observer of the Supreme Court, but his story is, well, bizarre. Sure, Lueders notes, Abrahamson is a “brilliant jurist and phenomenally hard worker,” but darn it, she offered only pabulum in her answers to him, while Koschnick was voluble and quotable.
Well, yes. This is what Supreme Court incumbents who are ahead in the race do: They take no chances and offer wise-sounding banalities while criticizing the opponent for prejudging an issue by daring to discuss the specifics of cases. That time-honored strategy may make Abrahamson boring to journalists, that might even make her less of a candidate than Koschnick, as Lueders contends (though I’m dubious). But don’t readers want to know who would be the better justice serving us in the state’s highest court?
Lueders mostly sticks to his game plan of quizzing the candidates, and even suggests Abrahamson undercuts her appeal by running away from her record of progressivism. Really? In a state where the last two Supreme Court races saw liberals defeated by tough-on-crime candidates? One thing is clear: No one will be hiring Lueders anytime soon as a campaign consultant.
Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has barely paid attention to the campaign. Increasingly, it is the campaign operatives and bloggers, both liberal and conservative, who are driving the coverage. Thus, it was the liberal group One Wisconsin Now that found Koschnick had heard 1,830 cases from 19 lawyers who had donated $1,345, or 13 percent of the campaign dollars, when he ran for Jefferson County Circuit Court. This completely undercut Koschnick’s criticism of Abrahamson for not recusing herself in cases involving lawyers who donated to her campaign. The research triggered a JS story.
Then there’s the matter of the “bloody shirt.” Koschnick has repeatedly complained about a case in which a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, including Abrahamson, twice overruled him about whether a bloody shirt could be included as evidence. But in fact, the accused in this case was ultimately convicted. And as it turns out, it was Koschnick who erred by leaving in the bloody shirt but excluding a bloody shoe that was critical to the case. All this was adroitly explained by liberal blogger Bill Christofferson and then duly covered by the JS, except in this case only in one of its blogs , which get far less readership than the newspaper. Given Koschnick’s frequent attacks on Abrahamson on this case, don’t all readers need to know the full details?
Talk radio’s Mark Belling has actually contended that Koschnick has no credentials as a tough-on-crime candidate because he defended cop killer Ted Oswald. Perhaps, but Koschnick is surely no liberal: As Lueders reports, he doesn’t believe in evolution and is backed by Wisconsin Right to Life and the NRA. So for all those who care only about ideology, the choice in this election seems crystal clear.
For those who care about who is the smartest, most qualified and hardest-working judge, the choice seems equally clear. Abrahamson’s work ethic is legendary, and her outstanding reputation is suggested by the Milwaukee Bar Association’s survey of attorneys, in which 94 percent found Abrahamson qualified for the job and just 24 percent felt Koschnick was qualified. In a similar survey of Dane County attorneys, 90 percent rated Abrahamson as qualified and 44 percent felt Koschnick was.
Abrahamson is a nationally known jurist who was picked as one of the top 100 judges in American history by Great American Judges: an Encyclopedia. In a survey by the Wisconsin Law Journal, she was picked as the best state Supreme Court Justice, winning more votes than her six colleagues combined. She’s hardly perfect (she’s never been very good at relating to colleagues), but she’s an intellectual colossus.
Koschnick? As an analysis published in the Wisconsin Law Journal found his decisions from 2000-2008 were more likely to be overturned than those of most circuit court judges in the state. This finding, which has yet to be covered by the JS, isn’t as damning as it sounds. It may simply show that Koschnick is an average judge. But he is running against a legend.
Another Journal Sentinel Buyout
Word has it the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will soon be announcing another layoff of staff – its third in less than two years. The company’s bleeding has continued: Journal Communications Inc. lost $223 million during the fourth quarter of 2008, and its revenue was down by 9 percent compared to the same quarter in 2007.
Meanwhile the company’s stock has been in a free fall. Under the old system, employees borrowed money to buy stock and the loan was paid off painlessly as the stock (as it did for more than six decades) appreciated in value. The stock’s meltdown has left some reporters with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, as an excellent story on the decline of state newspapers by Marc Eisen reported.
I’m told management wants to cut $1.2 million in salaries. At average pay rates, this could translate into 18 jobs. As it did in the past, the company may go after veteran journalists with higher salaries. And as before, it may offer voluntary buyouts to soften the blow.
Despite the past cuts in staff, the newspaper has been doing some of its best enterprise journalism in memory. But local coverage and beat reporters have been getting cut back for years, and that’s a loss to the community. More reductions will mean more triage.
The Buzz:
-Legislative aide Kevin Fischer has managed to annoy readers of all ideologies, as our Pressroom column of last May documented. Meanwhile, his boss, state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), is becoming less and less believable as she claims to have nothing to do with Fischer’s writings. Here’s the latest on Mr. Multiplicity.
-I understand why the JS must cut back coverage in print, but how is it that the Web site of the St. Paul Pioneer Press offers the most complete version of an Associated Press story updating the investigation of Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman? Gableman defeated Butler after running a “Willie Horton-style ad” that wrongly accused incumbent Louis Butler of having gotten a black criminal off on a loophole, but that Gableman’s lawyer has insisted was accurate. But the Wisconsin Judicial Commission has found that Gableman sat on the ad for a week, considering revisions, before deciding to release the ad with no changes.
-Milwaukee Film has announced a full-fledged film festival for next fall, which would seem to put the final end to the tug-of-war between Shepherd Express Publisher Lou Fortis and Chris Abele, a key funder of the festival who basically took it away from the Shepherd. Fortis was running the festival with a board that included himself and just one otherShepherd staffer. Milwaukee Film has an 18-person board that includes Mayor Tom Barrett, Greater Milwaukee Committee honcho Julia Taylor, Milwaukee County Parks head Sue Black and Marcus Center director Paul Mathews. Fortis has vowed to do his own festival next fall. He was not available for comment, but Shepherd staffer Dave Luhrssen, who served as “executive director” of the film festival under Fortis, said he was not aware of any plans for a Shepherd-run festival.
And, grr, did Missouri cheat its way to victory over Marquette? The Sports Nut is not a happy camper.
