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Posted on 09/09/2015 6:04:12 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A Gannett reporter who writes for both the Appleton Post-Crescent and USA Today covering local and Wisconsin politics, including Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential bid, signed a petition in 2011 to recall Walker from office.
Madeleine Behr is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Madison, and she wrote for a number of publications before joining Gannett earlier this year.
Her first story for the Post-Crescent appeared online on July 2, and since then she’s published 35 stories, including four that focus on Walker’s presidential bid, and others that cover the political aspirations and maneuvers of high profile Democratic candidates.
In 2012, then-Post-Crescent publisher Genia Lovett disclosed that 25 Gannett journalists, including nine at the Post-Crescent, signed Walker recall petitions, but none of them were assigned to the political beat. “It was wrong, and those who signed were in breach of Gannett’s Principles of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms,” Lovett wrote.
There’s no mistaking Behr’s contribution to both the Post-Crescent’s and USA Today’s political coverage. On Twitter, Behr claims she is, “Covering Wisconsin politics for @USATODAY. Local government @postcrescent.”
On November 18, 2011, Behr signed a petition to recall Walker from office. The address she lists is a UW Madison residence hall.
Joel Christopher, vice president of news for Gannett Wisconsin Media, responded to a Media Trackers inquiry about Behr’s assignment to cover Walker, saying, “We indeed are aware that Madeleine signed the Gov. Scott Walker recall election petition in 2011 because Madeleine made it a priority to tell us before she even interviewed for a reporting position with us.”
Christopher further explained that, “With Madeleine and every Gannett Wisconsin journalist whose work we put in front of the public, we invite people to read with a critical eye because we’re confident they will discover strong journalism reported fairly and accurately in a nonpartisan fashion in service of the public interest.”
“Scott Walker had his own email controversy,” blares the headline of Behr’s July 30 story about Walker, which claims that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mail controversy involving classified information and secret personal servers is similar to a private e-mail network established by Walker aides when he was Milwaukee County Executive.
“While Clinton has been scrutinized for her use of private email for public purposes, Walker’s county executive office once faced questions, and even a criminal investigation, over its use of a private email system to do campaign work on public time,” Behr wrote. Her story went on to quote Jay Heck of Common Cause Wisconsin, a far-left group, and a former Democratic attorney general of Wisconsin who downplayed Clinton’s actions and played up what they thought was wrong-doing on the part of Walker.
Unlike a similar Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story, Behr never mentions that it was Democrats who first compared the Clinton e-mail situation to Walker’s aides’ actions.
Other stories Behr has written for Gannett about Walker include a column musing about the importance of Iowa to Walker’s presidential prospects, his poll numbers in Wisconsin, his plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and his performance in the first GOP presidential debate of the cycle.
Prior to joining the Post-Crescent / USA Today, Behr wrote for the leftwing Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, a non-profit that receives public support via its offices at a University of Wisconsin facility. A piece she wrote for the group criticizing Walker’s Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) was published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In college, Behr wrote for The Badger Herald, the UW Madison student newspaper. While there she penned a sympathetic portrait of a pro-union protester, wrongly claiming he was a member of the press. In another story she took up the Left’s anti-ALEC crusade, rehashing state Rep. Chris Taylor’s (D) points about the number of Wisconsin lawmakers who have attended or otherwise participated in the right-of-center legislative exchange. She also wrote about Walker.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Behr was an intern at the ultra-leftwing Center for Media and Democracy before leaving college.
They probably couldn’t find one that hadn’t.
So what. Walker is a GOPe’er.
No kidding. And these local reporters’ stories are often picked up and regurgitated by other “news” outlets.
Most people don’t know about Walker’s private email server.
It is hypocritical of him to criticize Hillary when he and his staffers were communicating on a secret server. This is what put several of them in jail for campaigning on their state job time.
Rush praises Walker as “not GOP-e” because he’s governed as a strong - EFFECTIVE - conservative (someone who can teach the GOP-e how it’s done).
Walker never had a private email server.
I don't believe this has ever existed at any time or any place.
My thought exactly. They have no reporters on staff who are not hard core committed leftists that they could use instead.
So, tell me, Ms Joy, so-called conservative, how many of her articles have you posted yet?
Pretty typical of the kind of objective reporting taught at the UW-Mad.
Technology confuses some people. Trying to explain the difference between a private email server and a wifi repeater is just too much to expect.
Walker should take to Twitter and shame the reporter relentlessly...the way Trump would.
To follow the law staffers must not use public computers for any campaigning. So there has to be a private (gmail) email system.
Not supposed to use it during office hours? Walkers folks tried to follow that rule and still got slammed.
Wonder why a Democrat has NEVER been charged with a campaign violation, at least until the campaign was long finished?
Come on man. I don’t like Walker, but you have to admit that any legal troubles he or his supporters have are part of a witch-hunt. Remember Rick Perry and Tom Delay.
The local press in Wisconsin has been stabbing Walker in the back since day one. Dog bites man. But when it breaks out into the national press and they simply regurgitate it without showing any awareness or sensitivity to this bias, it makes you just want to see these media organizations (Madison Newspapers, Inc. for example) collapse and fall of their own weight even faster. Ugh!
The Dems employ secret, drawn out, fishing expedition John Doe and DA investigations against effective Republicans - DeLay, Perry, Walker...
I am willing to bet that when Walker was Milwaukee County Executive he did not handle much in the way of Top Secret or Classified intelligence information.
Comparing Walker’s use of emails to Hillary’s is like comparing Rubio’s wife’s traffic tickets to Hillary’s husband’s serial molestation of women.
I’m not sure I’ve posted any of her articles, but here’s a thought. Maybe her inside knowledge of the Walker operation is the reason she signed the recall.
Why the double standard on the use of a private server, which had no place in a government office?
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