Saturday, April 11, 2009
Newspaper covering for corrupt politician
Spotted on AngryJournalist.com
Here’s why I’m angry, latest installment:
Bureaucrat running in a state superintendent of schools election uses government resources (emails from his government office) for campaign purposes. And not a little bit. Blatantly. As in, with a “please forward this to all your friends and ask them to vote for me” type note attached. And the email trail goes straight back to his state office. Slam-dunk, misappropriation of state resources for political advocacy of a candidate, by the candidate himself (the guy’s an idiot, seriously).
And it’s not like I’m the only one to get the email, everybody in the newsroom got the email.
But can we do a story about it? Statewide candidate personally violates campaign rules, in a blatant and stupid manner?
Nope. No story. He’s “our guy.” Da fix is in, see? The PTB of the paper say no way, no story, youse didn’t see nuttin’, ’cause it ain’t gonna be a story in dis paper.
No story. We don’t even investigate it. Nothing.
So the next day, the most obnoxious local right-wing radio talkshow host in the state is all over it. He tells the whole story. He reads the entire stupid email on the air (of course he got it too). Spends half an hour on it, raking the idiot candidate over the coals, calling for an ethics investigation, yada yada yada.
And then he spends another half-hour, reaming out our newspaper (which he of course hates), mocking us for not breaking the story ahead of him, bragging how he knows we had the story but refused to run it. Taunting his listeners about why would anyone be dumb enough to pay for our paper, where we purposely don’t run real news stories, when they can listen to his show for free, where he actually breaks news stories like that one.
I feel like hammered crap. And I’m angry.
You should be angry, partner. We all should be.
A cursory search suggests that this angry journo is referring to Jeff Dickert, the teachers' union preferred candidate for the Wisconsin Superintendent of Schools. Badger Blog has more.
Splash, out
Jason
Here’s why I’m angry, latest installment:
Bureaucrat running in a state superintendent of schools election uses government resources (emails from his government office) for campaign purposes. And not a little bit. Blatantly. As in, with a “please forward this to all your friends and ask them to vote for me” type note attached. And the email trail goes straight back to his state office. Slam-dunk, misappropriation of state resources for political advocacy of a candidate, by the candidate himself (the guy’s an idiot, seriously).
And it’s not like I’m the only one to get the email, everybody in the newsroom got the email.
But can we do a story about it? Statewide candidate personally violates campaign rules, in a blatant and stupid manner?
Nope. No story. He’s “our guy.” Da fix is in, see? The PTB of the paper say no way, no story, youse didn’t see nuttin’, ’cause it ain’t gonna be a story in dis paper.
No story. We don’t even investigate it. Nothing.
So the next day, the most obnoxious local right-wing radio talkshow host in the state is all over it. He tells the whole story. He reads the entire stupid email on the air (of course he got it too). Spends half an hour on it, raking the idiot candidate over the coals, calling for an ethics investigation, yada yada yada.
And then he spends another half-hour, reaming out our newspaper (which he of course hates), mocking us for not breaking the story ahead of him, bragging how he knows we had the story but refused to run it. Taunting his listeners about why would anyone be dumb enough to pay for our paper, where we purposely don’t run real news stories, when they can listen to his show for free, where he actually breaks news stories like that one.
I feel like hammered crap. And I’m angry.
You should be angry, partner. We all should be.
A cursory search suggests that this angry journo is referring to Jeff Dickert, the teachers' union preferred candidate for the Wisconsin Superintendent of Schools. Badger Blog has more.
Splash, out
Jason
Labels: education, Media, Politics
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