Curmudgeon's Corner

Walker Is Guilty?

Posted by Al Campbell on Jan. 6, 2012

Wisconsin, Political, Quality of Life

I found the now-standard approach used in the lead story as I read the headlines and lead-off segments of news stories this morning.  The lead story in our world was the announcement yesterday that several people had been charged by the Milwaukee District Attorney based on a John Doe investigation that has been in the news for some time.

The headline and significant parts of the story sounded as though Scott Walker had been found guilty when it was actually Scott Walker who had requested the John Doe investigation of a staff member while he was Milwaukee County Executive.  For anyone who doesn’t follow the news in some detail, it would be easy to conclude that our Governor is a crook.  He is much disliked, even hated, by some but I don’t think this John Doe investigation resulted in him being determined a crook.

Walker has been circumspect during this lengthy, and not yet concluded process, in spite of the fact that the news hounds have been trying to intimate that he might have some involvement in the John Doe that would besmirch his character.  It is not much of a secret that our media tends to be liberal and tends to let that interfere with their reporting, but this has been a scarcely concealed effort to affect the recall campaign outcome in my opinion.

We now learn that Walker is the person who caused this John Doe investigation to get underway, and not the target of that same investigation (as was discussed openly by the District Attorney during his press conference).  But that doesn’t seem to have blunted the efforts of some in the media to use this fact to somehow continue the effort to sully his reputation.

There was a teaser late in the story mentioning that several other tangent investigations were still underway.  I suspect that was placed in the story to keep people thinking that Walker might eventually be somehow connected criminally to this investigation.

This was sorry reporting, sorry headline writing and news publishing so far as I am concerned; it was more akin to what I’d expect from a liberal blogger and not a respected member of the media.  We have slid a good ways down the slippery slope with this story and the manner in which it was framed.