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| Photo source: 620wtmj.com |
Citing no credible evidence, Charlie Sykes, in the aftermath of last Tuesday’s squeaker of a Supreme Court election, alluded to the likelihood of “voter fraud” in Milwaukee. It was the explanation that the conservative WTMJ AM 620 talker proffered for why challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg appeared to have just narrowly edged out incumbent Justice David Prosser in the balloting.
At the time, we made a note to watch for whether the Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact would examine the basis for the voter fraud claim. As it turned out, of course, subsequent events all but buried that angle. Still, PolitiFact deserves credit for taking on another Sykes whopper – the claim that spending on Kloppenburg’s behalf outpaced that for Prosser by 3 to 1.
Just as with his previous PolitiFact outing, Sykes earned a “Pants on Fire” rating from the pages of his station’s corporate cousin. Unlike that earlier one, though, the conservative commentator and political activist didn’t try to defend himself to PolitiFact’s staff. The newspaper reports he didn’t even return phone calls. He did return to the issue on the air Monday, after the PolitiFact story was published, claiming among other things that he’d made the claim in “good faith.”
Meanwhile, of course, the far bigger story has turned out to be the last-minute reporting of thousands of previously missing votes from Brookfield that gained Prosser a net increase of about 7,500 votes.
Many things remain curious about that development. As has been widely noted, Republican claims of ephemeral “voter fraud” have suddenly gone silent when confronted with a discrepancy so monumental that in just five days, a Facebook community called “Investigate Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus For Election Fraud” has drawn nearly 6,000 “likes.”
Instead, after the Journal Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert offered an even-handed and cool-headed appraisal suggesting that the new numbers initially appeared to add up, scores of partisan commentators descended on his blog entry with the totally unsubstantiated claim that “liberals” were saying that Brookfield’s votes “shouldn’t count.”
But what is especially interesting is the line that certain conservative journalists – namely Christian Schneider (who works for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, the conservative think tank), writing at the National Review website, as well as Sykes – appeared to have on the news of those additional votes before the press conference late Thursday afternoon at which the information was officially made public.
Let’s be clear about this: Leaks from insiders are a staple of journalism, and in fast-breaking media like radio news, they are prized as a way to tease the audience to keep the dial right where it is. So there’s nothing particularly nefarious about Schneider and Sykes making the most of whatever inside dope they’ve gotten access to.
TMJ radio afternoon newsguy John Mercure also went on the air and on Twitter with early word of the development – again, not that surprising considering he’s a Sykes colleague.
But citizens, not just media junkies, might find it at least curious that someone inside the Waukesha County vote-counting process was willing to share the details of last week’s startling find with a couple of partisans well before the official announcement. That’s especially noteworthy considering that the hapless county clerk at the center of the controversy, Kathy Nickolaus, had developed a reputation for secrecy over the vote-counting procedures in her office since long before last week’s debacle. Add to that the Brookfield City Clerk Kris Schmidt’s statement that she didn’t know of the startling revelation until the news conference itself, and the leaks become even more troubling.
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Indispensible Me: Twitter was definitely the place to be as Thursday afternoon’s news began to leak out.
It also offered yet another case study and definition in real life of viral media, considering how often some of the tweets about the pending bombshell were retweets from others. Lefty filmmaker Michael Moore sparked a flurry of snarky tweets with the hashtag “#whatkathyfound” (Sample: BREAKING: Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus discovers Saddam’s WMD on her computer in Wisconsin #wiunion #whatkathyfound.)
But our favorite of the day didn’t come until sometime during the press conference itself, which TMJ’s Mercure followed back at the station:
“@JohnMercure John Mercure
Why the hell did no one ask her if she can be trusted and if she should resign? I need to be at all these press conferences.”
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Myths and Candor: Finally, two Washington Post stories in the last week caught our special attention. The first is an opinion piece on “Five Myths About the Future of Journalism.”
The second was a remarkable case of covering oneself with relative candor: a long Sunday business piece about the problematic nature of the Post company’s Kaplan Higher Education unit, a for-profit college operation accused of pushing government loans on low-income students who were at risk for default.
“The company was snared in a government sting that found Kaplan employees pushing students to take on loans without regard to whether they could afford them. It has been hammered by congressional critics, sideswiped by hedge fund investors and investigated by journalists. In the end, The Post Co. reluctantly conceded it would have to revamp Kaplan’s business model and turn away many prospective low-income students it once wooed.
“The challenges have never jeopardized The Post Co.’s survival, but they cast a spotlight on management decisions and raise a question: How did The Post Co. end up here?”
Diversification is supposed to be one of the keys to the survival of legacy journalism operations like the Post. Who knew it had to come with a touch of Diogenes?
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