{"id":5463,"date":"2023-09-07T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5463"},"modified":"2023-09-07T18:00:31","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T18:00:31","slug":"the-journal-sentinel-gets-its-comeuppance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5463","title":{"rendered":"The Journal Sentinel gets its comeuppance"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/the-journal-sentinel-gets-its-comeuppance\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Local paper\u2019s smear of Moms for Liberty noted in Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

A recent one-sided smear by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of the parental rights group Moms for Liberty was so egregious that even the Wall Street Journal took notice.<\/p>\n

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\"Signage<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Tunku Varadarajan, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted in a recent commentary<\/a> in the Wall Street Journal that the first words in the Journal Sentinel\u2019s August story were, \u201cMoms for Liberty, a group designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist antigovernment organization\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The Journal Sentinel\u2019s odd reliance on the SPLC and its insulting bias against Moms for Liberty went on and on from there. The original story<\/a> by reporter Rory Linnane apparently no longer appears on the paper\u2019s website. But you can read an updated version<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

A truly objective news story would have at least noted that much of America has another perspective of both the SPLC and Moms for Liberty.<\/p>\n

The SPLC, much of America already knows, is often described as a civil-rights group, \u201ceven though in recent decades it has shifted its focus to smearing conservative organizations as hate groups,\u201d writes Varadarajan.<\/p>\n

As his Wall Street Journal piece also notes, \u201cwith its dogged focus on school reform, hostility to teachers unions and opposition to Covid shutdowns and mandates, the (Moms for Liberty) group is hated on the left and typecast as far-right\u2014or worse\u2014by much of the media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Including the Milwaukee paper that somehow seems oblivious to the SPLC\u2019s own history of smears and controversies<\/a>. More background here<\/a> or in lots of other places. Just do a little reporting.<\/p>\n

Varadarajan called out Linnane, the Journal Sentinel\u00a0reporter who wrote the smear, by name, and that\u2019s fine. But newspapers are not like blogs or Substack offerings. When I worked at the Journal Sentinel as a reporter and columnist many years ago, every piece was seen by multiple editors, none of whom were shy and most of whom were well-informed and tried hard to be objective. I never knew the political leanings of most of the people I worked with and they never knew mine until I applied for a columnist job.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s still some sort of editing process over there, they have far worse problems than a biased reporter. It\u2019s an institutional issue.<\/p>\n

Or they\u2019re just so short-handed the reporters are on their own. If that\u2019s the case, they should just make unedited reporters into left-wing columnists \u2014 and label them as such.<\/p>\n

Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The post The Journal Sentinel gets its comeuppance<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/the-journal-sentinel-gets-its-comeuppance\/ Local paper\u2019s smear of Moms for Liberty noted in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badger-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5466,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463\/revisions\/5466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}