What’s the threshold for reporting claims and allegations produced by someone furthering a partisan agenda? That question surfaced again last week when Media Trackers – a conservative outfit that investigates liberal politicians and probes for evidence of liberal bias in the media – posted a piece accusing State Sen. Lena Taylor of being a party to voter fraud. Earlier, the same group had pushed what turned out to be a phony claim of fraud in the signing of election recall petitions.
The nugget of truth Media Trackers offered for this latest story was the fact that 36 voters listed their home addresses a home kept by Taylor’s mother. Taylor denied any wrongdoing, describing the facility as a homeless shelter.
Both the Journal Sentinel and Channel 4 WTMJ TV ran with stories about the claims, and the sibling news organizations played it down the middle, giving ample space for Taylor to respond to the allegations. (Channel 4 went so far as to say Taylor “refuted” them – a term that I think goes overboard because it implies that she definitively proved them false. The frequent misuse of that word in that way is a particular copy editor’s bugaboo of mine.)
Of course, right-wing radio talker Charlie Sykes pumped up the claims, but given Sykes’ explicit role as a media front man for the GOP, is that any surprise?
Channel 4 appears to have been the only TV station to have covered it (if you have evidence to refute that, feel free to send it my way or post it in the comments). There’s a strong argument to be made that both the station and the JS should have held back on the story until they could have done further digging to sort out the many unanswered questions it raised.
And there’s also the question of perspective: Supposing, for argument’s sake, that all 36 registered voters claiming the home as their residence were fraudulent? In a city in which more than 100,000 ballots were cast in last April’s election, frankly, would it have made a significant difference? Look, I’m not condoning real voter fraud (for which precious little evidence even exists), but the way it has become a mindless meme in some quarters that is being used to drastically change our state’s system of easy registration and high voter participation is disturbing.
Critics of Media Trackers had a lot of fun with the group’s innuendo-laden attacks. As Democratic activist Cory Liebmann noted:
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.
Yet by itself, I’m not convinced that the paper’s coverage of the story is an instance of bias on the part of the JS. When One Wisconsin Now last year publicized its claim of a massive plot to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters, the JS covered that, too [warning – possible pay wall] –although perhaps not playing it as strongly. And OWN didn’t benefit locally from the sort of guaranteed promotion of its story that a Sykes offers MT.
As an aside, Sykes’ high profile at the paper’s corporate cousin doesn’t help the JS as it tries to shield itself from accusations of partisan bias. For liberals, it’s proof of the paper’s craven rightward slant; for conservatives, it’s irrelevant to the paper’s obviously liberal leanings.
But a more insidious problem, to my mind, is what the Taylor story really illustrates: namely, how journalistic conventions continue to bias mainstream media coverage in favor of prematurely airing sensational claims if they are made by someone with a media infrastructure, like Media Trackers or One Wisconsin Now. Indeed, in this era of an infinite number of media channels, some of them with an explicit, partisan agenda, the established news outlets might feel even more pressure to run stories about such claims, if only as a counterweight to those agendas.
It’s frankly disappointing that there’s no indication that OWN‘s claims were subjected to deeper reporting that could have either lent veracity – or clearly poked holes – in them. And I’m pessimistically resigned to the likelihood that Media Trackers’ claims won’t be subjected to such independent scrutiny, either.
It would be beneficial to readers, and the public discourse in general, if journalism organizations could be brave enough to ignore sensational claims until they could thoroughly vet them themselves. But don’t expect it to happen any time soon.
Rest In Peace, Tim: I was sad to see news last week of the death of Tim Cuprisin, former Journal Sentinel TV/Radio columnist and subsequently a media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. I knew he’d been ill, but only barely – his column at OMC only made passing reference to his condition.
Except for a friendly email argument a decade ago (I was obsessively criticizing a local TV station’s equally obsessive use of a bit of car-crash footage for its story on a dangerous stretch of Milwaukee street), Tim and I didn’t stay in touch after I left the Milwaukee Journal in 1995. I regret that.
But I did find his column an entertaining and often energetic update on the broadcasting industry, particularly popular TV. And as I noted a few weeks ago (last item), I especially liked his recent observation about the rash of phony candidates in the GOP presidential nomination race.
OMC‘s founder Andy Tarnoff has a moving reminiscence of Cuprisin here, while the OMC obit of Cuprisin is here. His former employer covered the story here.
Over the line? A few weeks ago an ad turned up on TV encouraging us to buy from local, small businesses for the holiday season. We happen to be huge fans of buying locally as a concept, so the ad caught our attention. But who was it for? Turns out, anything but a local business. American Express produced the ad, encouraging viewers to use their AmEx card when they buy locally.
But there’s more. Allied with that campaign is another in which AmEx teamed up with the Gannett newspaper chain, which put articles about local businesses in its papers across the country. While some of those stories were placed and identified as advertising or “advertorial” material, papers weren’t consistent from one to the next in so labeling, and at least some used the stories – complete with the plug for AmEx – directly in their news pages. Jim Hopkins tells the story at his Gannett Blog.
Not-so-public broadcasting: It’s a few weeks old, but still worth reading. Free Press, a group promoting better and stronger public media as well as more diversified and less corporately-controlled private-sector media, took a look at how states have been cutting back support of public broadcasting. Some states have all but wiped out funding for public TV and radio, while others (including Wisconsin) have reduced but not eliminated it.
Perhaps foundation and, yes, corporate grants, can partially fill those gaps, but I can’t help thinking we’re a little poorer as a result, whatever pittance we may save the public treasuries.
This just in: Journalists have been of two minds about WikiLeaks – looking askance at some of its methods, yet, in the case of some major news organizations, partnering with the outfit. Now the Australian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes has put its imprimatur firmly on the “WikiLeaks-Good” side. This week the Walkley Foundation gave WikiLeaks an award for its “outstanding contribution to journalism,” declaring it had shown
a courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency and that …by designing and constructing a means to encourage whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange took a brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency that has empowered people all over the world.
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