#wiright Journalism- all the speech with none of the accountability!

Hey, look who was back in the news today- the loser GOP operative who tried to claim he was bullied by Mark Pocan's husband and got beaten up by "intolerant lib'ruls," but was later found to be lying about the whole incident. Now this POS is looking at jail time for his idiocy.

A former volunteer for a Republican congressional campaign who had claimed to be the victim of a politically motivated assault has been charged with obstruction.

In late October, Kyle Wood, 29, reported to Madison police that he was attacked in his home. Wood claimed the attack was politically motivated. He told police his face was smashed into a mirror and he was choked during the attack....

According to court documents obtained by WISC-TV, five days after the alleged attack while police were questioning inconsistencies in his story, Wood told police, "You're right -- I did it to myself."

For one of his injuries, to his eye and forehead, Wood told police he used a rock from an aquarium, one that looked most like a fist, placed it in a sock and struck himself with it, according to the criminal complaint.

The complaint said Wood told police he hit his own head against a mirror, causing injuries to his forehead and eye.

The complaint also said Wood used a guitar string to create marks around his neck.

Those GOP campaign operative types are such well-adjusted folks, aren't they? Right, Tim Russell, Kelly Rindlfeisch, Hooters Girl, Keith ("I don't want a scrap of paper on this incident") Gilkes, and the Waukesha GOP campaign worker that was pulled over with a bottle of vodka in her car? WINNING!

But remember that there was a second part of this story, one that I find a lot more significant. That was where Media Trackers and Charles Sykes and Christian Schneider all used their media megaphones to give Kyle Wood publicity about being "attacked" in an attempt to smear Pocan and promote Republican chances. Schneider in particular was odious, as I cited at the time, because he printed Wood's false account of the alleged incident, and when he was called out on it when Wood was proven to be lying, kept the article online for a while with a "my bad" on it at the end.  Later, Schneider was even more cowardly, getting the whole slanderous article to be taken off the J-S site so others couldn't find it. Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee followed up on this BS, and allowed the Journal-Sentinel's David Haynes to contradict himself in the span of two paragraphs.

Editorial page editor David Haynes says the Purple Wisconsin columnists are not paid and are not edited or fact-checked by the paper. (By contrast, it pays Schneider a fee for his newspaper columns which are edited by the paper.) Yet Schneider in the past took down a Purple Wisconsin post he did, saying he needed to check the facts, and at the bottom it was notated “-Management.” Schneider did not reply to my email asking about this; Haynes says he suspects Schneider “was referring to himself.” That’s strange.

Haynes also says that had Schneider not taken down his erroneous story about Wood, “I would have done so. I see no value in continuing to circulate information that we have reason to believe is untrue. Christian’s follow-up post gave a sense of the original, which should satisfy curious readers.” But since when does the newspaper expunge erroneous stories? And if Haynes is not editing Purple Wisconsin columns, why would he be making decisions about whether to take one down?

    

Yep, still smarmy d-bags. And allowed to be smarmy d-bags.

Given that Schneider hurt the Journal-Sentinel's reputation by publishing this false garbage on its editorial pages, we can assume he was punished and had his role diminished by the Journal-Sentinel in an attempt to regaing the trust of the public, right? OF COURSE NOT. In fact, Schneider's role seems to have been expanded in recent months, including this absurd column promoting Walker's stupid income tax plan (guess he didn't read what I had to say about that), and Chrissy was allowed to use "unnamed sources" in a "news" story that let him leak Gov. Walker's decision not to take the expansion of Medicaid funding under Obamacare. (Gee, wonder why the Walker Admin sources chose ol' Chris to leak it to instead of someone who could do, you know, do journalism?)

Brian SiKKKma and Media Trackers? They're still putting out their BS, too including their attempted misdirection play on Obamacare's impact on Wisconsin's Medicaid budget (which the J-S included as part of its story on the the Walker "Work Makes You Free" plan until they were called out on it), and the J-S ran with Trackers' recent article on the Bad River Reservation's EPA issues on a wastewater treatment plant, as if it was somehow relevant to the giveaway of a mining bill that Walker and WisGOP is trying to shove through the State Legislature and impose on the Bad River Chippewa.

Of course, Charles Sykes still has his TV and radio shows peddling hate and GOP talking points day after day, and has even branched out into his own propaganda site at RightWisconsin (apparently overwhelming the J-S editorial page and intimidating its reporters wasn't enough for these guys). Chuckles the Clown is allowed to emcee events from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and other pro-GOP organizations, complete with Republican candidates making campaign speeches.

At least Kyle Wood is suffering consequences for his pathetic actions, but I'm curious to know where Christian Schneider or Brian Sikkkma or Charles Sykes or any of these right-wing media types get held accountable for relaying these lies, and the horrible results that come out of the lies and deceptions that they choose to air. In the real world, if we screw up, we have to face the music and learn something from the screw-up. But in WisGOP bubble world? Not so much. They can keep selling their hate and BS and have it go unchallenged in the state's largest newspaper and over the airwaves in the state's largest market. And the corporate heads at JournalComm stand by and condone this unacceptable behavior because they're so terrified of the Milwaukee oligarchy abandoning them.

Given, that JournalComm doesn't to do their job, we'll do it for them. We must confront these lie peddlers and propagandists at every turn, exposing them as frauds to bystanders who do not have the time to look into these things themselves. And we must continue to denigrate the Journal-Sentinel, AM620, and TMJ-4 as the corporate, right-wing shills they are, and expose the money and scummy groups that are hiding behind these "news" organizations (I'm looking at you, Bradley Foundation), until they have no choice but to clean up their unaccountable act.