An open letter to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Patrick Marley

You know what I hate – in addition to Hitler, I mean? I hate working until 1:30 in the morning to publish a great story only to find my counterpart at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (this’d be you) ripping me off – and then missing the story.

My story, “Explosive email exposes GAB attorney’s partisan motives in John Doe probe,” cited an email that I had exclusively. I actually worked for that email. You found it the way all of my readers did. Wisconsin Watchdog linked to that document. You linked to our link, at least in the online version of your story, but you failed to mention that you needed to see this email to truly confirm your story.

Fifteen hours after my piece posted, you used that June 2014 email from former Government Accountability Board staff counsel Shane Falk to John Doe special prosecutor Francis Schmitz, to perpetuate a narrative that your paper has ridden like a porn star.

First a little background. John Doe investigations are supposed to be secret. But this one went super nova in the courts in the summer of 2014, and documents spilled out into the public. Your paper scoured them for evidence that Gov. Scott Walker was a crook.

Why? Because Walker, the incumbent Republican governor, was running against Democratic challenger Mary Burke in a tight re-election race. And like all candidates, Burke needed bad news about her opponent.

Your reporting (with colleagues Dan Bice and Jason Stein) of the document dump gave Burke that bad news. Your headline said it all: “John Doe prosecutors allege Scott Walker at center of ‘criminal scheme.’”

You and Walker’s opponents – often the same people – pushed that story with such dispatch that Schmitz, the John Doe special prosecutor, apparently felt it necessary to take a step back. He said publicly at the time that it was important to remember that he was not alleging that Walker was involved in a crime.

Walker, of course, as you know, has never been charged with any wrongdoing. Nor have the conservative citizens this political probe unconstitutionally targeted.

Your own paper grudgingly reported the sad news of Schmitz’s about-face, but did so with sadness that just radiates from the headline: “Prosecutor: No determination if Walker committed crimes” – a little like writing “Walker Not Not Guilty.”

From your perspective, what’s interesting about the email Wisconsin Watchdog published is that Falk then accused Schmitz of lying – because, Falk said, Walker was indeed a target. But who didn’t know that? I’d been reporting that the John Doe was a partisan attempt to bring down Scott Walker from the very first of my now 237 stories on the subject.

MADISON — For the second time in three and a half years, a Democrat District Attorney of Milwaukee County has launched a secret investigation into conservatives, with the apparent goal of bringing down Gov. Scott Walker, sources tell Wisconsin Reporter.

So, congratulations: you grabbed without attribution a document that I worked hard to obtain and then used it to report news that’s nearly two years old. Comfort yourself with the thought that that’s not bad in the cheese world.

What you missed in reporting on the new email was the politicization of the John Doe. In the email, Falk orders Schmitz to bring his public statements into conformity with Mary Burke’s newest campaign ad.

Schmitz had apparently tried to keep the John Doe from influencing the Walker-Burke gubernatorial race. Falk wouldn’t have it.

“If you didn’t want this to have an effect on the election, better check Burke’s new ad. Now you will be calling her a liar,” Falk wrote Schmitz. “This is a no win. I encourage you to roll with it, or tone down the press release a bit more to focus on how many times you said ‘alleged’ or say that people are drawing conclusions that have not yet been proven in a court of law or something.”

I’ve taken a lot of heat for reporting that the John Doe investigation was political from the start. Now everyone knows with a certainty that it was – everyone, apparently, but you, Patrick, and your newspaper. You lifted from my work an email that is the equivalent of a smoking gun. But all you got was the smoke.

I’m sure as I finish off these lines your newspaper’s John Doe-loving editorial board is busy churning out another full-throated defense of the “nonpartisan” Government Accountability Board. They declared it a “model for other states,” didn’t they?

Here’s hoping other states look long and hard at the conduct of Shane Falk and the GAB at large before attempting to replicate Wisconsin’s model.

And I hope other mainstream outlets don’t replicate your journalistic omissions. The real story, as so often is the case with Wisconsin’s political John Doe, is what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel opts to leave out.

Part 238 of 237 in the series Wisconsin's Secret WarBy M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Watchdog

PATRICK MARLEY: Dear Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Patrick Marley, your newspaper’s John Doe narrative is quickly unraveling.

This is a little “inside baseball” but I think that it is hilarious. Wisconsin Watchdog reporter takes Milwaukee Journal Sentinal reporter to task for stealing his stuff and then twisting the story.

FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.

“Old news”..........

A grudge match between two reporters?

Except one writes carefully researched, comprehensive articles, while the organ that publishes the other often mis-reports and slants everything for the benefit of the left. In this case the good guy struck back.

Awesome, but when will Wisconsin end the secret police nightmare that is GAB?

BTW, this story is why Walker will be such a powerful nominee. He’s been vetted and there’s nothing, but lies against him. He’s been in the arena and sits on a throne of skulls, all of them marked D-Democrat.

The Milwaukee Journal is such a leftist rag that it ranks right down there with the New York Times. The Journal’s goal is to push the left’s agenda and slam any Republican along the way. Don’t count on them for unbiased reporting.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel would probably double its circulation if it would present a fair and unbiased presentation of the news. That is probably, at this time, nearly impossible given the infection of its staff by Extreme Leftism and its penchant for injecting its opinions into the the news that it is reporting. For example, reporter Daniel Bice actively became an anarchist in his attempts to overthrow the duly elected Governor Walker by distorting facts about the John Doe investigation and by reporting his distortions in the Journal.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel would probably double its circulation if it would present a fair and unbiased presentation of the news

Not in their DNA.

8 posted on 08/29/2015 6:59:57 AM PDT by JayAr36 (A land without borders is not a country. So where did America go?)

What has been the Journal’s take on Sheriff Clark? I am sure they despise him.

9 posted on 08/29/2015 8:03:34 AM PDT by Cyman (We have to pass it to see what's in it= definition of stool sample)

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