WISN 12 Hatchet Job on Scott Walker
Channel 12's Deliberate Effort to Lambaste Scott Walker
As reported first by Wigderson Library and Pub, WISN 12 ran a remarkably biased story about County Executive Scott Walker for contracting an out-of-state firm to build a website for his gubernatorial campaign. Channel 12’s Brendan Conway reported that on his campaign website, Walker complained about Wisconsin losing jobs to other states, and yet Walker contracted his web development work to an Ohio company. In their news segment, WISN was about as blatantly biased against Scott Walker as MSNBC was to Sarah Palin.
In his piece entitled, “Outrageous Bias at WISN TV”, James Wigderson points out that reporter Brendan Conway spent time eliciting criticisms about Scott Walker from a Wisconsin web developer, but neglected to mention to the vendor that Doyle did precisely the same thing two years earlier. Furthermore, Conway didn’t practice fair journalism by eliciting opinions from critics of Doyle, which is exactly what he did to Scott Walker when he aired the opinions of Milwaukee County Supervisor Chris Larson.
The Transparency of WISN's Bias
WISN deliberately manipulated facts in order to create a storyline that was unfair and unbalanced toward Scott Walker. For instance, what is the purpose of asking a Wisconsin web developer what he thought of Walker using an Ohio firm for his campaign website? Did WISN honestly believe that a vendor would miss out on an opportunity to get free publicity by criticizing a gubernatorial candidate? For goodness sake, WISN has the vendor saying he could have built a better website for Walker at the same price or cheaper than the Ohio firm. Can you imagine a better advertisement for this guy? Or on the flipside, did WISN believe that the vendor would admit that Walker's website was too complicated for his firm to build? Such an admittance would almost certainly drive away his customers.And then there is the problem of WISN and their game of semantics. On his campaign website, Conway pointed out that Walker complained about the loss of jobs to other states. And yet Walker gave a job to Ohio rather than Wisconsin. The problem is this: there is a difference between the loss of jobs and the loss of bidding opportunities. The former removes an existing job from the hands of an employee; the latter isn’t a loss at all because the job was never his to lose.
Web development is a very lucrative business and remains very marketable even during the current recession. Wisconsin web developers are not hurting for business, and they don't represent the demographic of families hurting in Wisconsin. WISN ran a story to make news rather than to report it, and like James Wigderson said, this is just a sign of things to come. WISN can learn a thing or two from its competitor TMJ4 News - that is to report the facts, not political ideology.
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2010-09-25 08:52:36 |SAdministrator| Aaron Rodriguez
Steve,
If you're still around, follow the link or paste it into your browser. I should clarify what I meant by making the news rather than reporting it.
http://www.thehispanicconservative.com/wisns-biased-coverage-of-governors-race.html
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2011-01-15 16:13:59 |76.229.195.xxx| Linda - Steve Ryan
What part of what Walker did, don't you get. He saved our State money. Cheaper saves money, and helps not to raise taxes.
Open up your thought process, it may help you think.
Walker will prove to you and others, that he is going to do, what he promised.
You may not agree with how he does it.
You are entitled to your opinion, I'll give you that much.
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2011-02-27 00:05:29 |24.92.77.xxx| La Verne
On another subject that I believe shows bias-
If you look at the outline of the state of Wisconsin which you have up whenever you're discussing the Walker issue (yes, he seems to be the issue, not the budget he is attempting to balance), I note that you have a 'sign' on it saying "WORKERS RIGHTS". Odd that there is not one that says "TAXPAYERS RIGHTS" as well.
I just wanted to say that I think it is rather ironic that you state that WISN "ran a story to make news rather than to report it." No news channel, no matter how talented can make news up, and if they do, they are required by law to redact it. Scott Walker should not be preaching to our state about Wisconsin losing jobs when he DID cost us a job. I do not care how rich or poor that any person is - they still should be able to count on their own state and community supporting them. If Scott Walker really cared about the cause of local Wisconsin residents losing jobs, he should have been willing to pay a company here more money to do a job for him. He is a hypocrite, and there is no way around that. It seems as though YOU are twisting the truth.