NY Times hoists Scott Walker on his dark money petard
On the same day that The Washington Post gave broad coverage to The Guardian's disclosures about Scott Walker's dark money direction, The New York Times offers a solid editorial that further spreads the word about Walker's secret financing machine:
And isn't it delicious that Scott Walker just wondered about "what kind of system do we live in?" The evidence is in.
Anyone looking for more evidence that politicians pay no attention to campaign contribution limits will find it in an astonishing trove of documents leaked to The Guardian, which published a report last week about the secret money that has recently flooded Wisconsin state politics.
The roughly 1,500 pages of emails, financial records and court filings — most of which have not been made public until now — were collected during an investigation of possible campaign-finance violations by Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign to beat back a 2012 recall effort.As I said earlier today, this is the Walker we know too well in Wisconsin, but it's good for the country to see what he and his donors have done to the state.
And isn't it delicious that Scott Walker just wondered about "what kind of system do we live in?" The evidence is in.
6 comments:
Most people in Wisconsin do not know this at all and I defy anyone to point to a major publication or broadcast media that has provided anything more than the most superficial coverage. It is shameful when we need to turn to NYT to get a truthful editorial - and remember - Wisconsin's largest newspaper has always endorsed Walker even when occasionally there are references to some of the criminality called out by the national & international sources you cite.
Please, there are people in Wisconsin that understand this, so your post is accurate in referring to people lime your informed readers, but across the state?
Pro-Walker propaganda continues to dominate.
To the MJS's credit, they did that story about the Guardian leak, however late it was. Nonetheless, the MJS's coverage of that issue basically stopped, whereas George Stanley should have ramped up and started running editorials encouraging the SCOTUS to hear the case (and started connecting Walker's dark money hoovering with the pay-to-play laws passed by the WisGOP Assembly and Senate caucuses.
Wonder why the story was leaked to the Guardian. Why not MJS or Wisconsin Journal? Seems like a Pulitzer winning newspaper like MJS would take this and run with it.
Oh wait. MJS could have done much with a lot less prior to this. They didn't.
Anon 5:00
Give MJS credit if you like, but remember -- against their overall narrative, even when the criminality of John Doe I was clear, THEY ENDORSED SCOTT WALKER in the recall and then again in 2014 (despite earlier proclamations that year that they would no longer endorse anyone).
Merely publishing a story, incompletely and without its full-context, is not honest journalism when the rest of the coverage from day-to-day supports and even regurgitate Walker talking points. But mark my words: In the near future, we will see MJS white wash even the small parts of the Guardian story they did cover.
This will begin with stories that deem Walker "teflon" and/or state that the public does not care about the crimes Walker and his cohorts commit. Then, they will directly or indirectly state that any future stories about these types of crimes is "old news" even though MJS nor no one else in Wisconsin's media actually covered the story of all crimes the released documents suggest.
Lastly, they will echo on a regular basis all the republicans screeching that the great crimes against our democracy mean little or nothing -- all that matters is that someone released objective evidence of their criminality.
This is how the media flushes truth down the memory hole. I am grateful for what national news organizations published today (even more grateful the Guardian stepped forward) and appreciate that James Rowen continues to hit this story.
Sue- The JS had millions of reasons (in GOP ad revenue) not to. Whoever leaked to the Guardian knew what he/she was doing, because the conflict of interest didn't exist there.
The Madison papers have been all over this, they have a good story today about how the IRS is now looking at Club for Growth for clear abuse of their tax-exempt status. But the national media is doing the good people of the rest of this state a favor by keeping it in the news, and shining the spotlight on the ugliness. SCOTUS has to take this case at this point, if they want any credibility.
Now we keep the pressure up and call out any attempts at false equivalency and rewriting history- like when GOPs try to claim coordination and money-laundering was legal without the "magic words". Fraud and knowingly circumventing campaign limits has NEVER been legal.
While Wisconsin State Journal potentially could spread real reporting across the state, they choose not to. Their markets include:
Madison Wisconsin State Journal
Beaver Dam Daily Citizen
Baraboo Baraboo News Republic
Portage Portage Daily Register
Racine The Journal Times
La Crosse La Crosse Tribune
Winona (reaches WI) Winona Daily News
Chippewa Falls The Chippewa Herald
Most of their honest Walker reporting is done under the banner of Cap Times and is just distributed locally. Isthmus does some coverage, though Milwaukee's Sheppard Express does more. The Wisconsin Gazette covers much of this -- but none of those tabloid-sized papers have the resources to do extensive coverage. WSJ is not actually doing reports that are any more in-depth than MJS.
Please remember, MJS & WSJ were once part of a morning/afternoon publishing cycles and each paper was available across Wisconsin. While each paper leaned right (morning) or left (afternoon), the coverage of issues was much better.
Local TV news does not exist to provide meaningful coverage of politics and radio is overwhelmingly right-wing talk. Madison's "The Mic", owned by Clear Channel/I Heart Radio (Rush Limbaugh's home), is no longer the "progressive voice" during morning or afternoon drive times (though the afternoon show is anti-Walker). While they still have the national "progressive" syndicated shows, they cannot give the recent document dump the attention it deserves.
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