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Monday, April 21, 2008

Gazette's Lack Of Fairness Critical For Cronies

A few of weeks have passed since the Janesville Gazette exercised their self-righteous display of partisan journalism and editorial power targeting open citizen participation and support for local candidates. If you may recall, the article titled When politics comes home, singled out one candidate from a field of six running for Janesville city council and framed him along with citizen democrats and local unions in an apparent attempt to provoke controversy before the election. In the article, the newspaper enlisted the perspective and rebuttal from "non-partisan" organizations such as Rock county’s largest economic development and pro-business group, Forward Janesville, and Republicans as a way to provide balance? and division among the ranks. Of course they succeeded.
JG Excerpt:
That said, Cunningham said Forward Janesville is looking at how the labor community has been able to recruit people such as Mike Sheridan to take the next step in public service by getting elected to the Legislature. It is a model Forward Janesville might follow in finding business-friendly candidates, he said.
Less than two weeks later, Forward Janesville ( a private club?) takes that next step and announces a recruitment drive schedule picking up full Gazette spin and quoted comments. Labor unions, professionals, average Joe Citizen or a local democrat or two were not invited to offer their view of the group’s political intentions to expand influence in the Janesville community.D is ForwardPredictably, during the same week, the newspaper also ran a series of articles and editorials of recent topics and activity in Janesville city government while propagating Forward Janesville’s positions within the stories and their interest in city government affairs. Just as predictable, the newspaper projected the cloaked partisan business group as a positive influence.

FINALLY, in Sunday’s Gazette, the newspaper allowed publishing a well-rounded and pointedly accurate perspective of the newspaper's bias, blatant hypocrisy and unwelcome attitude towards local citizen’s willingness to participate in their own civic affairs. Titled (by the Gazette?) "Criticism of labor shows Gazette lack of fairness" but written by the Chairman of the Janesville-Madison Community Action Program and UAW 95 Cap director J.K. Unfortunately, the article is not available on the Web.

Clear and precise. Great, great writing from J.K. It gets it done.

Note: As a courtesy to avoid search engine robots from linking names of individuals otherwise not widely published through other sources, I have used initials only.

1 comment:

RichE95 said...

I have no personal relationship with the Gazette other than being a long term subscriber. They continue to do a good job of reporting both sides of local issues whether I agree with them or not. They are to be applauded for publishing the article you refer to. However, the whole column was blown away by the sound off comment about union officials acting like aristocrats. They have become just what they purport to oppose. Short of the plant manager, the highest paid employees at GM in Janesville are union officials - who aren't even put on equalization charts because it would be embarrassing. They dress to look like working people but in fact do behave like aristocrats. Three Cheers for Sound Off! I know of no other newspaper which allows citizen commentary without fear of personal reprisals from our local union or anyone else.

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