Posted on 10/30/2014 6:45:42 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Milwaukee Board of School Directors President Michael Bonds doesn’t like what he calls “biased” coverage by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter Erin Richards.
So he’s asking the state’s largest newspaper to take Richards off the beat and assign a different journalist to write about Milwaukee Public Schools — or else.
“I just requested that we have somebody who’s objective, who’s going to give the readers the truth and everything about what’s going on … we want a new reporter or else we’re going to cut off all ties with the Journal in terms of communication with them,” Bonds told Wisconsin Reporter on Wednesday.
Bonds suggested he wants to have a different reporter cover MPS because Richards is incompetent. But several examples of what he called inaccurate reporting, included in Bonds’ Oct. 1 letter to Journal Sentinel Editor Martin Kaiser, indicate what Bonds really dislikes is critical coverage.
Bonds, a union supporter, was especially critical of a June 2013 story that highlighted savings due to Act 10, Republican Gov. Scott Walker‘s signature collective-bargaining reform law. Richards based that article on a report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which Bonds describes as a “right-wing think tank.” Bonds said Richards didn’t include a statement from MPS until after two follow-up emails.
Richards also drew the ire of Bonds in Februrary when, he said, she didn’t contact MPS for comment on a Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty complaint against MPS. WILL, a free-market organization, had asked for access to public records involving the vacant Malcolm X Academy. WILL found through other records that MPS was blocking choice schools from buying the empty facility and several others.
Bonds also took exception with Richards when she wrote two stories last month about MPS and the developer of the Malcolm X project parting ways. Bonds said he provided documentation MPS was willing to pay about $500,000 for work that was already done, but he got upset when Richards noted the developer was seeking $1 million.
Bonds will update his fellow board members on his inquiry at Thursday’s school board meeting. The report being presented to the board says Bonds is “requesting that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel assign a new reporter who isn’t biased against MPS to cover MPS.”
However, Bonds told Wisconsin Reporter he isn’t trying to control media coverage or the content in the Journal Sentinel’s stories.
“I’m not telling (Richards) what to report,” said Bonds, who called himself a firm backer of the First Amendment. “We’re just asking that they provide the public with fair and objective information.”
In the Oct. 1 letter addressed to Kaiser, Bonds lists more than 20 stories and tweets by Richards he said contain either factual or typographical errors or fail to fairly report and assess data and information. Bonds also claims Richards wrote stories about critical meetings and events she never attended.
Kaiser couldn’t be reached for comment.
Richards, when contacted by Wisconsin Reporter on Thursday, called the issues detailed in Bonds’ letter petty.
“I think many of the concerns raised here, given the quantity of the stories we write and the complexity of the stories I write, are really minor,” Richards said. “And I also think that it’s eyebrow-raising for a large government institution to ask editors to move someone off of a beat.”
Wisconsin Newspaper Association Executive Director Beth Bennett was practically speechless when Wisconsin Reporter told her about the request. She doesn’t think Bonds’ inquiry will go far, and she’s confident other government officials won’t follow suit because she said it “doesn’t make any sense.”
“Quite frankly, I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” Bennett said. “I mean, how can a public official think that they can make the Journal Sentinel send somebody different to a public meeting?”
Bonds contends his concerns are “certainly noticed” by MPS personnel. He also said several staff members have had so many negative experiences with Richards they will no longer talk to her.
“This combination of significant issues causes substantial problems for the Journal Sentinel and MPS,” Bonds said in the letter to Kaiser. “We certainly cannot continue, on a regular basis, to correct errors and identify problem situations. I don’t believe the Journal Sentinel, which has a special responsibility as the only daily newspaper in Milwaukee, can continue down a path where those who are covered by a reporter have declining confidence in her ability to get the story right.”
Richards, as well as other Milwaukee media members, sent a letter to MPS on Thursday morning asking school district officials to get together to talk about press policies and larger media access issues.
Another Democrap elitist mocha thug. In the mold of Obama, Jarret, Holder
Had that Pooblik Skrewl Collective MouthPerson read any of Sam Clements he might have known better than picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
To the leftists down is up, wrong is right and lies are truth.
Judging from the photo only, I suspect that he just took a big bite of c**p, right before the photo.
lol
Bookmark
You won’t replace that reporter? It would be a shame if something happened to that nice newspaper of yours.
Maybe he could hire Scott Bauer to be his dutiful union stooge presstitute.
His mouth looks like an anus.
He’s not a union boss, he’s the school boss, the one who’s supposed to deal with the union. Wonder how adversarial he is in those negotiations?
With RTW, the Milwaukee Education Association should have about five card carrying members by now.
Screw all Public Teacher Unions!
He’s supposedly not a union boss, but that’s just a fiction. That kind of guy works for the union first, and the students a very distant second.
School "public thugs" unions not done bankrupting Wisconsin yet?
Hang in there losers!
Doggone free press! It makes the Left so angry
I think I see the problem.
They can’t handle the truth
His mouth looks like an anus.
______________________________________
You may need to see a doctor.
That should save reporters time. When they want to write something he wouldn’t like, they don’t even have to spend the time to call him. They just print what they want and say he “refused comment”. In fact, they should make the tone more and more negative with “refused comment” on his part and see how long he can keep his pledge.
It sounds like the Spotted Owl looking thug doesn’t like the news. Oh well, get a subscription to the left leaning New Yawk Times you idiot. They love union thugs.
the milwaukee urinal sentinel is a very liberal rag. the reporter is liberal, but there’s just so much already known about this to not report it would be an obvious show of liberal bias on the part of her and the paper.
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