PolitiFact Needs To Refocus

Erik Gunn, another one of the few remaining journalists in the area, wrote a thought-provoking piece about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's PolitiFact.  Like most of us, Gunn's not a big fan, and explains why:

The piece demonstrated the classic PolitiFact obsession with trees at the expense of understanding the forest, investing 800 words in the process.

Why not save space by simply showing the governor’s “cherry-picking” in a chart that presents the his quote and then lists conflicting business climate surveys and their findings?

Meanwhile, a much more far-reaching issue – and one that would have admittedly required much more investigation to reach a definitive judgment – would be critically examining just how accurate and predictive such climate surveys are, versus how much they are bent by ideology.

To Umhoefer’s credit, he didn’t ignore the frequent criticism that such surveys are ideologically bound and do more to promote corporate self-interest than community economic well-being. But having noted the criticism, the story kissed off the critics: PolitiFact wasn’t going to weigh in on that issue.

Yet those surveys can deeply influence political discourse, whether in a campaign or a legislative session. So assessing their validity would seem much more beneficial to readers and society than simply calling out a particular pol’s self-serving cherry-picking of those reports – especially when readers have no clue as to whether the surveys are even worth anything.

Why not a detailed assessment of the surveys themselves, looking at their conclusions and rankings when compared with actual, objective data on how states are doing in terms of economic well-being? Which surveys actually offer some value in predicting actual state performance and outcomes? And which ones are consistently wrong?

Gunn goes on with an exchange he had with Greg Borowski, the PolitiFact editor. Borowski takes a cop out on the issue, claiming that they put links on the online article so that people will investigate the issue on their own, if they choose to do so.

That explanation is unacceptable on a couple of levels. One is that the online links don't work well on the printed edition of the paper. That is hundreds of thousands of people that aren't getting those links daily and are not able to do their own investigations. This leaves them in a position of being forced to take what the paper gives them at face value.

Secondly, Borowski probably understands that not everyone is going to have the time, energy and/or ability to check out everything on their own.  Besides, they are the reporters and journalists.  It's their job to do the reporting, not just give some selected links and expect people to do their work for them.

While I understand Gunn's point, I think where the issue lies is with the fact that it's still the corporate media.  The Journal Sentinel's op-ed section is filled with the tripe that comes from paid corporate hacks like Christian Schneider and Mike Nichols.  They also pollute the place with ghost writers like Aaron Rodriguez who do nothing more than regurgitate some politicians or political party's talking points  in order to curry political favors.

And there are papers, including MJS, that will use the propaganda that is spewed by such front groups like Wisconsin Reporter, MacIver Institute and Media Trackers and treat it as legitimate news stories.

Until the mainstream media - whether it be print, TV, and especially radio - decides to reinvest in itself and get back to the job they are supposed to be doing, I wouldn't take anything reported as being objective.

Objectionable? Probably. Objective? Not so much.

Walkergate: Quote of the Day

Erik Gunn, writing for Milwaukee Magazine has a compelling and exhaustive look at Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm. Here's a rather tasty excerpt from this must read piece:

But one investigation has shone the brightest media spotlight on Chisholm. For more than two years, prosecutors under Chisholm’s command have been combing through Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure as Milwaukee County executive in a wide-ranging secret John Doe investigation. The probe has already produced criminal charges against six people, convictions of five, and incarcerations for two, with more expected.

Yet, in cases where the spotlight shines brightest, reality has sometimes been deeply distorted. Like so much else in these times of intense political polarization, the Walker investigation has spawned images of two fundamentally different universes.

On the left, Walker’s critics gleefully predict the governor’s downfall any day now. On the right, his champions point out that he’s not been charged with any crimes. Walker has stated publicly that he’s been told the investigation is not targeting him – a claim his opponents are unwilling to believe. For all the bravado of the governor’s critics, his allies are just as confident he will not merely survive, but thrive.

Conservative Republicans who back the governor, from talk-radio hosts to self-styled media watchdogs, have positioned the entire criminal probe as nothing more than naked politics. Chisholm, they note darkly, is a Democrat; the investigation, they insist, is nothing more than a partisan witch hunt, with Chisholm carrying water, in the words of Conservative Digest publisher Bob Dohnal, “to help his buddy Tom Barrett.”

Dohnal made the confident assertion last spring, not long before Milwaukee’s mayor lost to Walker a second time. That June recall election capped the long, fruitless campaign to oust the governor. But there are two problems with perceptions like Dohnal’s.

The first and most obvious is that the vote came and went without charges against the governor, despite the dire predictions of Walker’s supporters.

But that’s no surprise to the people who have known and worked with Chisholm over the last two decades. Because, more fundamentally, the other problem with the right’s Machiavellian caricature is that none of Chisholm’s large network of supporters see anything like him in it.

What they see instead is a relentlessly earnest and nonpartisan public official, regardless of his party label. Not a conniving prosecutor willing to indict the proverbial ham sandwich, but a sober student of history who wants to see law enforcement pay as much attention to prevention as to prosecution.

Chisholm shrugs off the attacks of Walker’s cheerleaders as the work of “propagandists.” “I don’t make decisions on whether a person’s a Democrat or a Republican or an independent,” he says. “I make decisions on whether I can prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Policing The Police Numbers

Last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel issued an extensive report regarding the way the Milwaukee Police Department categorizes crimes.  Their finding was that hundreds of cases were listed as less serious crimes than what they should have been.

Radio squawkers and right wing bloggers used this as grounds to attack Police Chief Ed Flynn and his boss, Tom Barrett.  Even Scott Walker, who one would think would not want to draw attention to cooked numbers given his made up jobs report, used this as a weapon against Barrett.

However, the police numbers that the paper reported are incomplete and could use some policing themselves.

Erik Gunn, writing for Milwaukee Magazine,  points out that the MJS story, and hence those that are using this story as a squawking point, is missing some vital information itself.

One has to wonder if the paper, which stated that it took them a year to get the information together to write their story, might have intentionally left out this information to give ammunition against Barrett or whether their reporting as just gotten that sloppy.

Wisconsin Reporter Fallout Hits Franklin Center

Last week, I laid out how the propagandist group that ironically calls itself Wisconsin Reporter is actually funded by the Koch brothers and has ties to Scott Walker's campaign.

The very next day, fall out started to happen and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin sent out a scathing letter informing news sources around the state alerting them to the fact that WR is not a valid news source but simply an extension of the Walker/Koch campaign.

Earlier this week, Erik Gunn, the reporter who writes "Pressroom Buzz" for Milwaukee Magazine, covered the story.  In his article, he pointed out some of the questionable stories that have come out of WR and posed the question if their work would not be better suited for the op-ed page.

Well, the story doesn't end there.

Gunn had shot off some questions to the Franklin Center regarding the story.  They came out swinging...and missing:

Jason Stverak responded to my question about blogger Chris Liebenthal’s linkage of the Franklin Center to a Scott Walker donor, through the Center’s ownership of the web domain IowaPolitics.com, by suggesting the connection was in essence out of date. 

Liebenthal, Stverak says, “is stretching to find connections that aren't there. Regarding your specific question, we purchased the website and domain name from WisPolitics Publishing LLC in 2011. We stand by our coverage and the integrity of our news organizations." 

Steverak also provided a link to this press release announcing the transaction. In short, he appears to suggest that the connections Liebenthal drew reflected ownership of the domain before the transaction. That may be so, but the information on record (via the WhoIs look-up) still reflects what Liebenthal reported. I’ve asked Liebenthal for his reaction and will post that in the comments here when he gets back to me.

And respond I did:

Liebenthal got back to me late Wednesday with this response to the Franklin Center's statement: "The funding source of the Franklin Center is well documented, not by just myself, but scores of sources. Likewise, the domain ownership was independently confirmed and clearly demonstrates the intermeshing of the Franklin Center, Wisconsin Reporter and Scott Walker's campaign. Their denial of these easily demonstrated and verifiable facts says more about their integrity and reliability as a news source than anything else." 

Given the track record of these two propagandist groups, the fact that David Koch was bragging about using his front groups to try to sway the recall elections and the fact that Michael Grebe, the head of the Bradley Foundation, is also Walker's campaign chair, I wouldn't expect any acts of integrity on their parts anytime in the near future.

That means it's up to us, the people, to play watchdog and call out our local newspapers that might be tempted to cite the glorified campaign literature that comes from these two groups as actual news reporting.

More Fallout For Walker's Supporters, Er, Wisconsin Reporter

Last week, I pointed out to the relationship between the propagandist organization that euphemistically calls itself Wisconsin Reporter and Scott Walker fund raisers and campaign consultants.

The very next day, Wisconsin Reporter experienced some fall out due to this revelation, when the Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a scathing letter to papers and other news media around the state asking them to be conscious of exactly who and what they are citing when they use anything from this group of campaign staffers in disguise.

Today, Erik Gunn, author of Pressroom Buzz for Milwaukee Magazine, writes about the developments in this story, with a mention of my exposé on them, in a must read piece.

Gunn finishes with these thoughts on this group:

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Reporter stories I’ve read usually seem superficial. Many do appear to be straight down the middle on controversial issues. But others have been questionable at best. An inexcusably thin one, for example, was hung on the claim of a pro-Walker talk radio host who says an unnamed fan e-mailed to tell her that someone had signed the host’s name to a recall petition. 

Then there was the $12,000 WR spent on an investigation that found just under 1,000 dead people still on the state’s voter rolls – barely three people in 10,000. There was no new evidence of dead people voting (five previously reported cases were mentioned), but that became the premise for a string of talking points on measures like picture IDs for voters. Meanwhile the story completely ignored countervailing arguments that such Republican-backed policies wind up disenfranchising Democratic voters. 

Flawed stories like those just heighten a much more critical concern: Who’s funding them?

Gunn finishes his article with some serious consideration to the relationship between the funding source and the reliability of the story, making points with which I agree.  Secrecy of the funding source, or having a heavily-biased and or partisan funding source doesn't necessarily mean that the media source is unreliable, but it should be treated with a healthy amount of skepticism.

The Media Coverage Of Labor Or Lack Thereof

Erik Gunn, who does the "Pressroom Buzz" column for Milwaukee Magazine, has a good piece up today regarding the sparse and biased coverage today's media gives to labor issues.

Besides his own experience on the issue, he also consults with distinguished experts like Mordecai Lee, Steve Jagler, Michael Rosen, and some fellow with the moniker of "capper."

It's well worth the read.