We would be hard pressed to find a media organization that outpaces the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS) in political bias and corrupt journalism. On a daily basis they betray the public trust and make a mockery of journalistic integrity. Our founders were clear about the importance of a free press to watchdog the truth and keep corruption in government in check. They would be enraged by the decay in the foundation of the free republic they fought so hard for.
Last Sunday the JS devoted an entire half page to detailing the threat of hacking to our elections. Entitled “Hackers Compete to Sink, Boost Trump” the article focused on recent instances of foreign governments hacking into the Trump campaign in an effort to influence the outcome of the election. Government officials and cybersecurity experts explained that multiple countries are attempting to sway voters through propaganda and lies on various platforms and went on to add “…sweeter prizes lie behind the firewalls of the Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns.” They made it clear that today’s sophisticated cybercriminals have no trouble hacking into infrastructures that have been secured against such intrusion. According to one former head of the Justice Department’s national security division, “You can imagine an election where there are hacks and dumps of both campaigns by different nations, and I think that may ultimately be the world we’re headed for.”
No one disputes that hacking is a routine occurrence in our electronic world. Change Healthcare, a multibillion-dollar company that manages billing for health care systems, just notified clients all across the country, including Wisconsin, that the company has been hacked. An unknown number of the 85 million patients served by the company have had their personal information stolen.
Cybercrime in elections will not be limited to foreign criminals. The unaddressed vulnerabilities in the Wisconsin election system have been well documented and have us barreling toward an unverifiable election. Despite the demands of Wisconsin voters, the legislature has refused to direct the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to purge the millions of names of ineligible voters from the registered voters list. This reservoir of names will be used by those who will cheat to win to generate illegitimate ballots if they can. The same Journal Sentinel that found the election hacking by foreign governments worthy of significant ink has been derelict in its duty to expose our election system flaws and apply the pressure for change that comes from clean, honest journalism. The JS will take a pass on serious investigation of the numerous ways cheaters can corrupt our system and be the first to slander concerned citizens who cry foul at the election results.
How big a deal is this? Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin recently provided the country with a roadmap to clean elections when he signed Executive Order 35. He made it clear he was taking this action, not in response to widespread fraud, but because he wants Virginia to “set the standard for election security” by ensuring voter rolls are clean and trustworthy. While improving their election process, Virginia found 80,000 dead people on their voter rolls and more than 6,000 non-citizens who are ineligible to vote in Virginia on the rolls. They have codified a daily process of scrubbing the rolls and are using 100% paper ballots. Counting machines are not connected to the internet and they have 24/7 monitoring of drop boxes. For “day of election” registrations, the registrant’s ballot is held as provisional until eligibility is verified. Youngkin stressed that a clean and verifiable election system is a “politically agnostic” process that benefits every citizen. Virginia has a total population of 8.6 million and nearly 6 million registered voters.
By contrast, Wisconsin has a total population of just over 5.9 million people and a registered voter list of greater than 7.6 million people. More than 4 million people listed on the registered voter lists are ineligible to vote in Wisconsin. Where is the reporting? Where are the ethical journalists? Where is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel?
True to form, last Monday, the JS ran a front-page article entitled “Dark-money Effort Bolsters Trump. Group Spending Millions to Secure Wisconsin Win.” It opened: “A far-right dark-money organization (Turning Point) headed by political activist Charlie Kirk has set up a sweeping, get-out-the-vote operation across Wisconsin with the hopes of winning the state for former President Donald Trump.”
The article went on to describe a plan called “chase the vote” designed to focus on “low propensity voters who rarely cast a ballot in the state but support Trump’s message.” The group engages people who are paid to knock on doors in the communities in which they live in an effort to motivate every eligible conservative voter to get out and vote.
Never reluctant to create scandal where none exists, the JS interjected “Democrats tie Turning Point rhetoric to Capitol insurrection.” Of course they do.
The JS did all it could to make “chase the vote” sound sinister and tried to make the case the Republican Party in Wisconsin is inadequate with its own efforts to fund raise and get out the vote.
It’s true that Turning Point doesn’t disclose its funders, a practice known as “dark money.” It is a not-for-profit charitable organization and is not required to. The Journal Sentinel’s reference to Turning Point as “a dark money outfit” was met with this clarification from Andrew Kolvet, its spokesman: “We’re outgunned significantly in this category” by the Democrats. The JS was forced to acknowledge that the latest reporting from Open Secrets, a tracking organization, found that dark money “is on track to steer more money from undisclosed sources to the 2023-2024 election than any prior cycle”. They found that 52% of those funds went to liberal candidates and 45% to conservatives.
A serious debate about whether dark money is harmful to election integrity would be very worthwhile if it involved sincere people with pure motives. We haven’t seen that.
On August 13, a real dark money scandal corrupted the Republican primary in Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was nowhere to be found. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were used to slander and spread lies about a handful of conservative legislative candidates who were running against incumbents who march in lockstep with Robin Vos, Assembly speaker. They were motivated by a desire to do the will of the people in their districts and determined to resist becoming part of the Party machinery. The corruption within the Republican Party and the complex network of money that flowed between dark money corporations, the Wisconsin Assembly Campaign Committee, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin should have been exposed to Wisconsin voters by the media doing its job.
A corrupt government cannot exist without a corrupt media. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a leader in the media’s race to the bottom. It’s a race no credible professional would want to win.
