Wisconsin Media Absolves Itself for Running Falsehood from GOP Propaganda Organ

County Republican Party Chair,
Gary Ellerman, in Wisconsin
compared President Obama
to a NAZI in a Facebook post;
and a defamation of Mary Burke
by Ellerman was run across
Wisconsin as a legitimate news story.
No newspaper has retracted the story.

This morning an editorial in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calls for Scott Walker to "cut ties with Jefferson County Republican Party Chairman Gary Ellerman" in a milquetoast, everybody-does-it rebuke of the GOP.

Ellerman sent out defamations of Mary Burke last week, first inserted in the GOP propaganda organ, Wisconsin Reporter, and reported by Wisconsin media across the state as a legitimate news story.

The Ellerman story is a Republican Party last-minute propaganda operation, and any news editor of Gannett Co newspapers in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin State Journal or the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel could have discovered the GOP ruse with minimal investigation.

Checking facts, sources with ax to grind, credibility of Ellerman, running accusations by credible officials with Trek.

The Ellerman operation fails all these tests. Run the story, decided Wisconsin newspaper editors.

Maybe the fact that Ellerman used President Obama's campaign slogan and posted a Nazi swastika in a Facebook post might have raised a red flag. It didn't.

Consider "...Ellerman was the Republican plant who ran in the Democratic primary against Lori Compas in the 2012 Wisconsin State Senate recall election in the 13th District ... ." (Camp, The Badger Prairie) No matter.

Publishing facts is not the objective of many newspapers in Wisconsin; playing stenographer to Scott Walker and the latest Republican Party of Wisconsin lie is the objective, or Scott Walker would not be governor.

This is what passes for journalism today, and don't expect any retractions.

Scott Ross of One Wisconsin Now writes "The $500 million Bradley Foundation empire views promoting Scott Walker and his radical right wing agenda as central to its mission. From financing television ads to paying for junk science to sending lawyers into the courtrooms to suppressing the minority vote, Michael Grebe's right wing army stops at nothing to keep Scott Walker in power. The smear of Mary Burke is just the latest hit job by this well-funded, win at all costs campaign."

Ross' statement is supported by facts, of little apparent interest to most of the Wisconsin media.

Wisconsin should expect propaganda from the Republican Party and its allies, and just as apparent should expect Wisconsin newspapers across the state to run the GOP propaganda—no matter how repulsive the defamation and the source—and present it as news.