Media Trackers or Miserable Hacks?

Media Trackers is one of the myriad of pseudo-news agencies serving as nothing more than front groups to spread and try to legitimize the propaganda of their sponsors, folks like the Koch Brothers and the Bradley Foundation.  They are, for all practical purposes, identical with McIver Institute, Wisconsin Reporter or WPRI.

Or in other words, they are nothing more than glorified right wing blogs, with all the vitriol, irresponsibility, racism and inaccuracies one could expect from Real Debate Wisconsin, Wigderson's Library & Pub or Boots and Sabers.  Which explains why so many of them end up hiring bloggers to do their dirty work.

The point that these are not legitimate news agencies was brought home in a very strong way on Monday.

Media Trackers ran with a video that showed some young people signing the petitions to recall Scott Walker and Becky Kleefisch. They then insinuated that the young ladies were not of age and were being offered cigarettes to sign the petitions.

However, they never checked the IDs of the young ladies, so they didn't really know how old they were.  Nor did they show any causal relationship of their signing of the petition and one of the young ladies getting a cigarette from some unidentified person.  Maybe they just presumed that fraud was being committed because the young ladies in question were African-American. (See what I did there? I used their own methodology against them!) They sure had nothing substantial to go on.

As one could have easily guessed, they were utterly wrong.

The impeccable Emily Mills, who is a true reporter, and knows enough not to publish based on pure speculation and without verifying her facts, looked into the allegations.  She actually did look at the IDs of the two women and verified that they were adults and thus could sign the petitions.  She also stated that there was no evidence to suggest that the signatures were cajoled from the young ladies with a bribe of a cigarette.

Once busted out in their lies and libels, Media Trackers couldn't even bring themselves to admit that they were in the wrong, but petulantly stated that they were going to keep pushing to try to prove that bribery was going to happen.

So why did they do this?  Why did they risk their already tarnished reputation on something as lame as making a false report and then refusing to admit they were wrong?

They answered that question in an email to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Brian Sikma of Media Trackers said the group brought the issue to light because of concerns of unethical behavior.

Well, in that sense, they were successful.

They sure did expose some seriously unethical behavior...their own. What really needs is for the authorities to investigate these groups for their violations of the tax laws and their misrepresentation of themselves as credible news agencies. They are neither credible nor a news agency.

Sadly, even after all that, they still haven't learned their lesson and are at it again. But instead of attacking two young women, they are now after the homeless.

These people are becoming really sick degenerates in their desperation to support Scott Walker from the recall he so richly deserves. I wonder if they think they're even helping anymore.