First it was judges. Now it’s journalists.
Turns out more than two dozen editorial employees of the Gannett Wisconsin newspapers also signed petitions urging the recall of the state’s Republican governor.
And, just like the 29 circuit court judges whose names appeared on recall petitions, they can’t understand why anyone cares.
Ironically, it was Gannett Wisconsin that first reported that the jurists had jumped on board the “Dump Scott Walker” bandwagon.
According to a letter to readers from several local Gannett publishers, the journalists “did not consider signing the petition a political act. They equated it to casting a ballot in an election.”
Except, of course, that voting is a private act. And signing a petition tells the world that you’ve taken a side in a particular partisan contest. Remember Caesar’s wife?
Unions and left-wing activists across the country are heavily invested in this campaign. Dumping Walker would be seen as a major Democratic victory.
To its credit, the publisher made clear that the journalists’ behavior “was wrong” and “in breach of Gannett’s principles of ethical conduct.”
But then, despite making the disclosure” in the interest of full transparency,” the papers refused to name a single one of the offending journalists. Huh?
The judges were named. So why do the journalists get a pass — especially since the names are a matter of public record?
And particularly since, as the publisher admits, the journalists at issue don’t even accept that they did anything wrong.
This cover-up undercuts pretty much all of the tsk-tsk moralizing in the publishers’ letters — and only underscores the sorry state of what passes for objectivity in journalism today.