Journal-Sentinel on McAdams v. Marquette

Appearing today, a very good article in the local paper by columnist Christian Schneider titled “In the case of professor John McAdams, Marquette lost its way.”

Schneider gives some history:

In 1853, the Rev. Anthony Urbanek of the newly minted Catholic Diocese of Milwaukee reported back to Vienna on the state of Catholics in the fledgling city. Urbanek expressed optimism at how quickly Catholicism had taken root in Milwaukee, especially among its German and Irish settlers.

“What an encouraging sight it is to witness crowds of young and old on Sundays, coming from all sides out of the woods, as though they arose out of the ground,” Urbanek wrote, noting many churches weren’t large enough to hold all the people who wanted to attend services.

Not so with schools. If parents wanted to send their children to Catholic schools to “preserve their children from Yankee-ism,” he said, they would have to pay for the schools themselves. Trying to educate Catholic children in public schools, he said, “soon deteriorates into heathenism.”

And so, led by Archbishop John M. Henni and funded with a $16,000 gift from a rich Belgian, the diocese founded a small Jesuit college. The purpose of Marquette was to allow for academic freedom, distinct from the pressures of the secular world.

Schneider then outlines the basics of Marquette’s attempt to fire us, and concludes:

Marquette’s contract with faculty contains the promise that they will not be disciplined for “legitimate personal or academic freedoms of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy, or action.” It vows not to “restrain…rights guaranteed (faculty) by the United States Constitution.”

McAdams’ treatment vaporizes those promises; in this case, freedom of speech ended when an offended graduate student and sympathetic faculty advisers said it did. And the university capitulated to the very outside forces it was founded to resist.

Biased Reporting

Schneider’s column is in stark contrast to the slanted reporting the Journal-Sentinel usually provides, courtesy of Karen Herzog. In an absurdly biased story back on January 23, she pretty much acted as a mouthpiece for Marquette, suppressing information and giving a biased version of events.

The story, as it now exists online, is slightly sanitized relative to the one originally posted (but Google cache is the friend of people wanting to document embarrassing things posted and then changed).

In the original story, Herzog wrote “McAdams argued that he could say anything he wanted on his blog because of academic freedom protections.” This is nonsense, since we never claimed we could say anything we wanted. We never claimed the right to libel anybody, for example. Herzog changed that to “McAdams argued what he writes on his blog has academic freedom protections,” which is correct.

Much worse is Herzog’s description of what our original post was about. She said: “McAdams said he did it because he felt the graduate student was trying to impose her liberal views on students she taught.” In fact, we blogged about a graduate instructor (Cheryl Abbate) who told at student who wanted to argue against gay marriage (which had come up in class) that he could not do so, since he was not allowed to say “homophobic” things, and any such argument would “offend” any gay students in class.

Herzog apparently believed that an accurate account of what Abbate did would leave readers much less sympathetic to her, and would make it obvious that a serious issue of campus political correctness was involved.

Naming Wrongdoers

Herzog repeats Marquette’s claim that we should not have named Abbate. But Herzog knows perfectly well that the Journal-Sentinel (or any other news outlet) will name people accused of misconduct. This would apply to (say) an athletic coach accused of sexually molesting athletes or a county employee accused of embezzling funds. But Marquette wants to claim that a graduate instructor, who was 27 years old and had been in the military, and was the “instructor of record” in the course, should be exempt.

Herzog uncritically accepts Marquette’s claim that “the graduate student instructor reportedly started receiving threats as a result of the blog post.” Had Herzog simply bothered to read what was at the time the most current post on our blog, she would have known this was flatly untrue.

Herzog, without bothering to check, repeated Marquette President Michael Lovell’s claim that I had “expos[ed] her [Abbate’s] personal contact information as recently as last month.” I was puzzled reading this, until it was brought to my attention that a link to an Abbate page was included in a column by George Will in the Washington Post, which I republished on my blog. It seems Lovell’s real beef is with the Washington Post. Herzog could have checked this out.

Read Only One Side

Finally, at the very bottom of the story as it first appeared, was the notation “While in the national spotlight over the case, Marquette posted a list of frequently asked questions and answers about the case on its website.” This is linked to a Marquette “FAQ.”

An unbiased story would also refer readers to the website of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, to get the other side of the issue. But Herzog has chosen to be, essentially, a sock puppet for Marquette.

Journal-Sentinel’s Preposterous “Bullying” Charge

From Rick Esenberg on Right Wisconsin:

A recent report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says the Faculty Hearing Report involving Marquette’s sanction of Professor John McAdams for speaking his mind “suggests” a pattern of “bullying” by Professor John McAdams. This is, in a word, preposterous. It is a claim that can be indulged only by those who mistake debate for assault and criticism for violence.

Indeed, it is not clear that any human being — someone speaking in the active rather than passive voice — is even making such an allegation. The FHC Report itself did not use the term and the newspaper hedges its bets by use of the term “suggests.”

Let’s begin by clearing some deadwood. The charges against John McAdams did not involve any incidents other than a blog post about an exchange between an undergraduate student and a Philosophy instructor. For that reason, other matters were not fully explored in the faculty committee hearing. Lawyers tend not to spend a great deal of time on matters that are not at issue. It’s a bit like herding cats.

Indeed, by focusing on these other incidents, the FHC demonstrated its bias in a particularly revealing way. No matter what lip service they may give to the value of gadflies, its members obviously don’t think much of Professor McAdams and his audacity in criticizing the university. McAdams has been a critic of the dominant views on campus and the dominant forces decided to strike back. The Abbate incident was taken as an opportunity to get rid of him.

In any event, these prior incidents involved investigating and writing about matters at Marquette. Criticism and publicity of public actions and matters of public and institutional interest are not “bullying.” If they were, then the Journal Sentinel’s Karen Herzog and Dan Bice and their newspaper colleagues would be the biggest bullies in town. But that would be an unfair way to characterize them. To say that McAdams was hired as a “professor” and not a “journalist” is a non sequitur. Professors have the right to engage in institutional criticism. It is a major component of academic freedom.

One could have just as easily written that prior incidents showed that McAdams was a critic of the university that now seeks to fire him. Indeed, McAdams’ writing on student activities is dwarfed by the number of times he has criticized very powerful figures at Marquette. Writing an article about the latter — and not the former — is to buy into the university’s misleading narrative.

As to the particular incidents of “bullying,” Professor McAdams wrote about the actions of the student newspaper in rejecting a pro-life advertisement. He attempted to contact a student who had listed herself as the campus contact for the production of the Vagina Monologues at the phone number that he had. He did nothing more than ask whether the play was going to be produced.

He wrote about the mistaken view by an unnamed student that citing facts that are inconsistent with one’s preexisting views on a subject - in this case the prevalence of sexual assault on campus - is not harassment. To be sure, in the midst of this debate with others (not the student herself), he referred to the unnamed student as “prissy.” If that is “bullying" we have truly become a nation of snowflakes. The University took no action in these situations because no action was warranted.

Vague references to “negative consequences” of McAdams blogging suggest something that is simply not there. The “negative consequences” here are no different than the “negative consequences” of an article that any of us might write. People will read it and form a judgment about the behavior reported upon. While Ms. Abbate received some abusive e-mails, Professor McAdams had nothing to do with them.

To say that our freedom of expression is limited by how the bottom feeders of life may react to them would mean that we have no freedom of expression at all. The FHC conceded that nothing like the e-mails sent to Ms. Abbate had, to John’s knowledge, happened before. And even if it had, the nasty and offensive reaction of third parties cannot silence the rest of us.

While Marquette repeatedly says that “more will come out” nothing ever does. The bottom line here is that John McAdams is being punished for writing an accurate blog post about a matter of great public and institutional interest.

That is atrocious.

Rick Esenberg is the head of our legal team, representing us against Marquette’s attempt to fire us.

Journal-Sentinel Hit Piece: Warrior Blogger Responds

Over the weekend, the Journal-Sentinel published an article accusing us of having a history of “bullying” people at Marquette. In fact, all the instances cited are examples of campus leftists trying to bully us.

Monday morning, we had an opportunity to respond on three Wisconsin talk radio shows. Here are the three interviews. There is some redundancy among the three, but between them we show how the Journal-Sentinel accepted at face value a shoddy report from the Faculty Hearing Committee, and then added a claim of “bullying” that the Faculty Hearing Committee never made.

First, Jay Weber:

Then, Jerry Bader (Green Bay):

Then, Charile Sykes:

Journal-Sentinel’s Bizarre “Bullying” Attack on Warrior Blogger

It was a screaming headline: “MU report suggests pattern of bullying by suspended McAdams.”

Written by education reporter Karen Herzog, it claims to be based on the Report of the Faculty Hearing Committee, which heard our case last September. Unfortunately, there are two massive problems with the story.

In the first place, Herzog has taken the claims of the Faculty Hearing Committee absolutely at face value, and never asked us or our lawyers for our side of the story.

In the second place, she mischaracterizes the Report. It nowhere in the 123 pages ever claims we were responsible for bullying anybody. So where did Herzog get that? Our guess is that it came either from leftist faculty at Marquette, or from Marquette administrators who have been flailing around in a sea of bad publicity, and are desperately trying to discredit us.

Let’s take the claims one at a time (with the Herzog claim in sans serif type):

Documents released by Marquette University in response to a lawsuit by tenured associate professor John McAdams suggest a pattern of bullying leading up to the targeting of a graduate student that resulted in his suspension.

Note the biased use of the word “targeted.” We reported on a graduate instructor, Cheryl Abbate, who told a student in an after-class confrontation that he could not express opposition to gay marriage, since such opposition would be “homophobic” and would “offend” any gay students in the class.

If this is “targeting,” then any negative reporting on anybody could be called “targeting.” Did the Journal-Sentinel “target” Scott Walker in the John Doe investigation? Their biased reporting was far closer to “targeting” than our accurate reporting on Abbate.

The report cites nine prior incidents of conflicts with administrators, other faculty members and students at the private Jesuit university since 1995.

Of course, if one reports misconduct in an institution, and especially if one is a whistle blower within the institution, there will be “conflicts.” Apparently, the assumption is that no faculty member should ever cause a “conflict” by criticizing anybody within the institution.

Notably, McAdams was never reprimanded or given a written warning. In addition, the report says, there are few indications in course evaluations that he attempted to intimidate students with opposing views in his classes.

These things are true, and the reason is that Marquette never had any basis to reprimand or warn us. Lots of people didn’t like our blog posts, but we violated no rules, and we were entirely within our rights, given Marquette’s guarantee of academic freedom.

The Faculty Hearing Committee explicitly said our teaching was quite satisfactory, and so was our scholarship. Marquette’s whole beef with us is our blog.

In March 2008, he posted a blog asking why the student newspaper had rejected an advertisement discouraging use of the “morning-after pill.” McAdams originally identified the student advertising director by name, but later deleted the name after discovering the student had played no role in rejecting the ad.

And what, supposedly, is wrong with this? Marquette seems to believe that we should not name people engaged in misconduct, even if they are functioning in an official capacity at Marquette, or are engaged in high-profile political activity.

The student in question was functioning as the Advertising Manager of the Tribune, and she did in fact reject the ad from Pro-Life Wisconsin. The Tribune ignored an e-mail of ours, and a voice mail of ours seeking more information before we posted the article. After the article was posted, a faculty advisor of the Tribune called us and told us that the Advertising Manager was in fact not responsible for the rejection of the ad. So we modified the article to reflect that.

In February 2011, he emailed a student listed on a Facebook page as the contact for a production of “The Vagina Monologues” at Marquette, then called her at her permanent residence, disturbing her parents. He wrote a blog post mentioning her by name, and continued to blog about her by name when she complained about his behavior. . . . The student filed a harassment complaint against McAdams and requested an “MU Stay Away Order” from the Marquette Public Safety Department.

The student (Anahi Sanchez) had listed herself as the Marquette “contact” for “The Vagina Monologues” on the national Vagina Monologues website (not Facebook). We had heard there would be a Marquette performance, and wanted to confirm that. We e-mailed her listed e-mail address, and got no response. We then called her listed phone number. She was not home, so we left a message asking her to call us.

She freaked, and went to the campus cops and Student Affairs to complain. The campus cops apparently blew it off (since we never got any Stay Away Order). We were contacted by university bureaucrats, including the Provost. We blogged about this, since at this point we were being harassed. And indeed, harassed by Sanchez and also by Provost Pauly.

prompting a reader to send a message to the student “to simply demonstrate that actions have consequences.”

And you can read the message (by James Diamond) here, and it’s perfectly civil.

The provost responded by asking McAdams to meet with him, the acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the chair of the political science department for a conversation about the blurring of McAdams’ roles and his possible misuse of the student information system.

Of course, we were being bullied here. In what kind of bizarre world do campus bureaucrats try to intimidate a faculty blogger, and then accuse him of being the bully?

In November 2011, he blogged about a complaint that a student filed alleging that McAdams, in casting doubt on commonly cited rape statistics, had made comments belittling rape victims. McAdams referred in his blog to the complainant as a “prissy little feminist.”

What happened is this: in our American politics class, we discussed media bias, and the bogus statistics often bandied around. We explicitly mentioned the claim that 25% or 20% of college women are victims of date rape as such statistics.

A female student in the class took offense, and filed a sexual harassment complaint against us.

That’s right. A student claimed to have been sexually harassed simply because a professor said something she didn’t like hearing.

The Committee apparently thinks our calling the student (whose name we did not know) a “prissy little feminist” was terrible.  But what would be the correct term for some student who claims to have been harassed when she merely hears something she disagrees with? Would “snowflake” have been better? Unfortunately, that was not in common use when the incident happened.

We did not belittle rape victims. However, in the minds of feminists, any dissent from the orthodoxy of a rape epidemic apparently translates into “belittling rape victims.” But in reality, feminist researchers who classify women as “rape victims” when the women themselves insist that what happened was not rape are doing the belittling.

In September 2014, he was called to a meeting with his college dean over a confrontation with a student group called “Students for Justice in Palestine.” McAdams warned the dean to be careful what he put in the letter that would follow because “you don’t want to be in my blog.” McAdams later admitted that his statement was intended to affect the dean’s actions during their meeting.

Translation: we made it clear to the Dean that any reprimand or any punishment for our blogging would be immediately reported on our blog. And this is somehow bullying? Do we have the power to bully the Dean? Apparently, we had an obligation to submit to being censured or reprimanded. Or else, we should have said nothing, and then blindsided Dean Holz by denouncing him on our blog.

The president of Students for Justice in Palestine had complained that he felt “intimidated” when we tried to interview him about “Israeli Apartheid Week” which that organization was sponsoring. He secretly recorded the conversation, and the recording shows us merely politely asking him for information.

(One piece of hypocrisy here: the Faculty Hearing Committee objected to our use of a recording of the student confrontation with Cheryl Abbate, but Marquette had no problem with the student recording the exchange with us.)

Snowflakes

Are we noticing a pattern here? Social Justice Warriors, if ever challenged or merely asked for information, run and start whining about how they have been bullied or harassed or intimidated. They specialize in playing the victim, even as they are victimizing others.

The Abbate Affair

Herzog then recounts the details of the student’s confrontation with Abbate, and adds:

McAdams targeted the graduate student instructor by name in a November 2014 post that prompted dozens of harassing emails to Abbate. She ultimately transferred to another university to finish her doctoral work, because she said she feared for her safety and was unable to focus on preparing her dissertation topic defense at Marquette, according to the documents released this week. Transferring required her to repeat three semesters of coursework.

Abbate was “ABD.” That is, she had finished all her coursework, and lacked only her dissertation. One can write a dissertation anywhere. She could have flown off to India, finished it, and e-mailed it back. She might have had to fly back to defend it, but in this era of Skype, even that would be unlikely.

So why would she transfer to another Ph.D program? Simple. She transferred from a Marquette program that barely ranks in the top 100 nationally, to one at Colorado that ranks in the top 40.

McAdams has repeatedly argued he was obliged to identify Abbate on his blog “because the norms of journalism require such identification," the faculty hearing committee report said.

“This would be a far stronger argument if Dr. Adams were employed by Marquette as a journalist," the report says. “But he is not; Dr. McAdams is a professor, and therefore his first loyalty must be to the obligations of the academic profession.”

This is beyond bizarre. Apparently, telling the truth, or at least telling the truth about one’s own institution, is not one of the “obligations of the academic profession.” Apparently, the most important obligation, for the Faculty Hearing Committee, is to not make trouble for anybody, or at least not for the forces of political correctness at Marquette.

Ironically, many of the same faculty who want us fired signed a statement condemning Marquette for its failure to hire aggressively outspoken lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien.

The report argues that McAdams could have avoided naming Abbate or linking to her contact information

We did not link to her contact information. We linked to a post on her blog about how “All Men Contribute to the Prevalence of Rape.” It may well be that Abbate’s contact information was on that blog. The point of the link was to show the anti-male sexism of Abbate.

could have confirmed what Abbate’s views were on the conflict

We in fact e-mailed her on Sunday morning to ask her perception of what happened. By the time we went live with the post Sunday evening, she had contacted Nancy Snow and James South, who advised her not to respond to our query. Since we had a recording of the confrontation, there was no doubt as to what she had said to the student.

and could have helped the student — his academic advisee — internally pursue his complaint against Abbate instead of publicly shaming her and exposing her to harassment.

The student had lodged his complain, and was greeted with hostility.

Bureaucrats in any organization would prefer to keep misconduct quiet, handled internally, with people outside the organization none the wiser. That’s the way the Catholic Church dealt with the priestly sex abuse scandal.

But letting the bureaucrats keep the abuse quiet removes the incentive to fix systemic problems. And if the institution is claiming to be one thing (a Catholic university) while actually being something else, to conceal systemic abuses is to be a party to fraud.

Journalists function by exposing wrongdoing, not by covering it up.

A Pretext

This recital of grievances various people at Marquette have against this blogger make clear one thing the University will not admit: the Abbate affair is simply a pretext to get rid of a professor who has created trouble for administrators and politically correct faculty and activists.

Conclusion

Thus, the Faculty Hearing Committee produced a shoddy document, and Herzog merely accepted it as face value, and even added a spin (“bullying”) that the Report did not contain.

But in fact, the incidents the Faculty Hearing Committee recounted are a story of years of bullying and harassment — the bullying and harassment of this blogger, by people who piously pretend to be victimized.

And the biggest example of bullying is Marquette’s attempt to fire us.

Writer of Bizarre Anti-Police Tirade Was Mover of Femsex at Marquette

It created quite a stir:  a column in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel where one Claire Van Fossen demanded the abolition of police!

Titled “A just and free world means a world without police,” the lede paragraph sets the tone:

Whether we call them because of a dispute between neighbors or a robbery, a shooting or sexual violence, the police rarely meet our needs. They don’t help us heal. And they don’t prevent future harm. Rather than serve as advocates for true justice, they use their nearly limitless power to reinforce the oppressive status quo. They threaten us with violence and incarceration and target the most oppressed and vulnerable people in our society. By blaming “crime” and “criminals” instead of systemic oppression for society’s ills, the police exacerbate societal problems, harm citizens, and bar the people from liberation by maintaining the capitalist social order.

And further:

What’s perhaps worse is the fact that, because the police do not keep us safe, their predominant role in society is maintaining a social order that enables people in power to operate with the least amount of disruption possible and thus continue to exploit and oppress the already disenfranchised. By targeting low-income individuals and people of color, the police maintain a racial and economic system of social stratification that is profitable and beneficial only for the ruling class.

Yes, it’s a left-wing tirade.

Van Fossen, however, is not a stranger to Marquette. She was one of the organizers of the Femsex Workshop at Marquette in 2013. We exposed the event here, and Marquette eventually decided it was so over the top in terms of the way it dealt with female sexuality that the university ordered the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center to cease its sponsorship.

Van Fossen responded with a deranged rant. She sent the Journal-Sentinel (which covered the story) an op-ed saying:

As a Marquette student, I demand punitive action on McAdams and am prepared to convene any and all students who have been hurt or slandered by him in order to ensure that he is held accountable.

And further:

McAdams and his blog . . . are regular sources of oppressive, hateful content and blatant misogyny, not to mention homophobia, racism, and slander of Marquette students.

All this is the standard politically correct denunciation of any politically incorrect ideas, showing the nasty authoritarianism of campus leftists.

But demanding the abolition of the police is extreme even by the standards of campus leftists.

[Note:]  As of right now, the Van Fossen column is online.  There is a report that the Journal-Sentinel has decided to withdraw it and take it offline.  If so, an archived copy can be found here.

Journal-Sentinel on BPA: Ideology, Ambition Trump Science

Liberal reporters love the narrative in which the chemical industry is poisoning the American people, and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has adopted that narrative with regard to bisphenol A (BPA.

Unfortunately, the sound science is radically different from what the paper has said.

A smackdown has been administered to the Journal-Sentinel by no less an outlet than the very liberal Huffington Post.

One key graph:

“[Journal-Sentinel editor] Stanley appears to have thrown one of his reporters under the bus to protect what he believes is the sanctity of those journalism awards,” adds SPJ [Society of Professional Journalists] ethicist Smith. “He even says he’s quoting from the acknowledgments section of the German report, which makes it seem as if his columnist was sloppy for not alerting readers to the alleged biases of the scientists, when actually he was the biased one.” The editor, he suggests, appears heavily invested in the controversial endocrine disruptor hypothesis, which is gradually losing favor in the international science community. “If the Journal Sentinel was really committed to truth, it would welcome new data and just report factually on developments. That’s the way science and journalism should work. It seems the editor was more committed to presenting his version of the truth.”

The Flynn/McBride Affair and Journalistic Malpractice at the Journal-Sentinel

The illicit affair between Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn and local journalist Jessica McBride is a fiasco any way you look at it. It badly tarnishes the reputations of both.

Presumably, we can all agree that adultery is wrong (although a lot of people, frankly, don’t seem to take it too seriously). Thus the really contentious issue surrounding the whole affair is one of journalistic ethics: did McBride commit a serious ethical breach by having sex with a fellow who was the subject of a story she wrote for Milwaukee Magazine?

The column that broke the story, written by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Dan Bice, clearly asserted that McBride had engaged in a breach of journalistic ethics. But Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy has forcefully pointed out the problem with this argument: there is no evidence that McBride had sex with Flynn until weeks after the story was turned in, and indeed two months after the rewrite that Murphy had requested was turned in.

But in a more recent article, Murphy appears to throw McBride under the bus, saying that “In the eyes of the public, McBride has compromised herself – and this magazine.” It would have been more accurate to say that in the eyes of liberal bloggers who don’t like McBride because of her politics, McBride is compromised and so is Milwaukee Magazine.

Interestingly, Murphy reports no evidence that McBride was having any sort of affair with Flynn before the story was turned in. He describes the e-mails between them as getting “chatty and friendly . . . as soon as McBride finished reporting her story on Jan. 5.” That’s about it. Murphy has nothing else to suggest any kind of erotic connection.

The McBride/Flynn E-mails

We have a collection of e-mails exchanged by Flynn and McBride. We are certain of the provenance of the e-mails, but cannot (as Bruce Murphy admitted he cannot) be certain that we have the entire record. Perhaps some missing e-mails show a torrid affair between McBride and Flynn weeks before the story was submitted. But that’s vastly unlikely, since it would flatly contradict the substance of e-mails we have.

McBride and Flynn were clearly on friendly terms before McBride turned the story in on January 5. Most of the e-mails from that period deal with the clarification of certain issues in McBride’s story.

On January 1, for example, McBride gave Flynn the passage from the profile about Flynn’s experience in Jersey City, and noted “. . . I realized it seemed a little vague. What specifically did you think the police department needed to change? And, what specific negative effect did you see politics having on the department?” Flynn responded (on January 2) with a detailed explanation.

Earlier, on December 29, McBride asked Flynn a series of questions.

1. In Jersey City, I read in an article that you had supported a mayor who didn’t live up to promises and left you a bit disillusioned. What happened with that?
2. What influence did “Crime in a Free Society” have on you, and do you think its message of rehabilitation, etc. is still apt today? I read that you were drawn to its painting of policing as a noble, purposeful profession
3. When’s the first time you met Kelling? I know you read his 1982 article but when did you first actually meet him?
4. How did 9/11 change you if at all?

Two days later, Flynn responded with a somewhat lengthy series of answers.

It is clear from the very early exchanges that both McBride and Flynn are (figuratively) “buttering each other up.” McBride, having interviewed members of Flynn’s family tells him in a December 31 e-mail “Your kids were great. Your son idolizes you. You would have probably found his comments very touching – ‘knight in shining armor’ the little boy looking up to the father in the uniform, and all of that!” In another exchange, McBride explains that she has had to put some negative material about Springfield [Mass.] into the story, but says she has some positive material from that city too and then Flynn, on January 3 replies “I think you ‘get it’ about Springfield.”

Indeed, with regard to Flynn’s enemies in Springfield, McBride quoted Churchill to him: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” Flynn replied “Thanks for the Churchill quote. Now that’s REAL perspective!” Both e-mails were dated January 4.

Sometimes McBride commiserates with Flynn. In a January 1 e-mail she says to him “So, I pick up my Journal Sentinel this morning and read the story about homicides plummeting to their lowest levels since 1985. . . and black male homicides plummeting more than 64%...which are really startling figures. . . and then I turn to the JS editorial page and the lead editorial is negative and lamenting an increase in black male homicides.”

Even this early, many of the exchanges are pleasant but trivial badinage. For example, McBride tells Flynn “my maiden name is McBride and my stepmother emigrated from Ireland and is named O’Hara . . .plus, my great-grandmother was Julia Flynn LOL.” Flynn replies “We’re cousins!” McBride comes back with “Probably, 15 times removed!” All this in an exchange on December 31, 2008. This, however, was part of a very informative exchange about Irishness in which Flynn said “We were ‘lace curtain’ not ‘shanty’ Irish. And after [my father] passed we still came up with enough money to send me to the best high school in the region.” (This on December 31.)

What is missing from these early e-mails? Anything remotely erotic. It’s true that the exchange is quite cordial. Given that Flynn is the subject of a journalistic profile, he has every incentive to be cordial. And McBride has every incentive to establish a cordial relationship with her source. It’s not everybody’s style (it’s not Dan Bice’s, for example), but it’s a defensible style.

After January 5.

After January 5, McBride had turned the story in to editor Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine. Murphy asked for a rewrite (although McBride had no way of knowing he was going to do so). The cordial e-mails continued.

One exchange started when Bruce Murphy asked McBride to find out whether the drop in murders in Milwaukee was merely due to a change in the definition of “murder.” Flynn, on January 18, replied with a detailed explanation of why it was not.

Numerous other e-mails dealt with various intellectual interests. Flynn and McBride discussed the movie “Doubt,” the movie “Valkyrie,” a trip Flynn made to Washington, DC, Clint Eastwood and the movie “Gran Torino,” Milwaukee talk show host Mark Belling, law enforcement and criminal justice, concealed carry legislation, and Milwaukee mayors (past and present). And a lot of other stuff.

Flynn said he liked “Penelope Cruz in ‘Elegy’ based on the Philip Roth book, ‘The Dying Animal’” and that he is generally amused by Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

On January 27, Flynn informs McBride he has bought “Public School Administration for Dummies.” McBride’s response: “So are you going to be MPS superintendent?”

In these e-mails, the two come across as people who like a good discussion, and maybe even as intellectual soul mates.

So what is missing? Anything even remotely erotic.

The Decisive E-mails

On the very day McBride turned the story in, she wrote Flynn with the suggestion “I could tell you interesting background on Milwaukee, its chiefs, and various characters you are encountering (inside and outside the dept.). I think you’re right about Milwaukee. The environment is receptive right now. People are sick of things not working. The city’s been very tough on past chiefs. . . .” Flynn replied with “You’re on. One of these days a debrief would be helpful.” A longer e-mail from Flynn on the same day says:

Thank you. Once the article is declared done, with the expectation that you won’t be “covering” me in your professional capacity, I guess we wouldn’t be violating journalistic ethics (notice I didn’t make a smart remark) if we stayed connected and I received some of the benefit of your particular perspective.

Was this the beginning of an adulterous relationship?

Not anytime soon.

On January 27, Flynn wrote to McBride an e-mail discussing a variety of topics, which concluded with “Good to hear from you. Maybe we can connect sometime in next couple of weeks.”

On March 30, McBride suggests to the Chief “Let me know when you want to catch a cup of coffee after you get back, now that the story has been put to bed.” On April 1, Flynn responds saying “When I return let’s get together for that cup. I look forward to it.”

On April 23, after McBride’s profile had appeared on the newsstands, Flynn sent the following e-mail to McBride:

As I navigate in a sea of controversy, I wanted to take a moment and tell you the consensus among my family, friends, and the mayor is that “The Cop Who Can’t Stop” is well written, thoughtful, balanced, empathetic to its subject, broad in perspective, humorous where appropriate and a good read.

From my perspective, I’m grateful that you put so much effort into really trying to understand your subject and to place it (me) in context which is both private and public, personal and professional. I thank you also the generosity of spirit that informed your writing.

Now that that’s done, let’s schedule that coffee! If you’re really nice, you might even get a guest speaker out of the deal!

This sure doesn’t sound like two people who are carrying on an affair.

McBride responded later the same day with “It was really nice to hear from you, and I must say that your email meant a lot to me. I knew you wouldn’t like every line in that piece, but I had hopes that you would see it as being fair. . . .” Then after a discussion of how her husband Paul Bucher has often been treated unfairly, she concluded with:

Coffee would be great. Let me know what days work for you. For me, Mondays are wide open, Fridays sometimes have time available, Tues-Thurs are out due to class schedule until May 7, when classes end. A Saturday is theoretically possible albeit tougher, and Sundays are out.

Flynn then replied to her with an April 26 e-mail (if he had the hots so badly, why did it take three days to respond?):

Give me some numbers you can be reached. Scheduling something as simple as a coffee break is remarkably complicated! I get your Tuesday-Thursday conflicts. Tomorrow is wacky for me until 5, for example. Think we’ll need to be flexible. There’s stuff I’d like to get your perspective on. Maybe coffee could be lunch one day. We’ll work on it.

McBride wrote back to Flynn on April 27.

Hi chief,

It just occurred to me that you asked for my contact info and, in the entire lengthy opus that I wrote you about guns before, I forgot to provide it.

McBride then gave Flynn what appear to be her work and home phone numbers.

So we are supposed to believe that Flynn didn’t know how to contact his “on the side” lover (other than via e-mail)?

Could Flynn have been intent on getting McBride in the sack? Could McBride have been thinking that that would be nice? We can’t rule that out, but if they had the hots for each other back in December and early January when McBride was actually writing the story, they certainly showed a lot of restraint.

And it’s certainly plausible that Flynn, a public figure in an inherently contentious position, would find the opportunity to hear a briefing from a prominent local journalist to be a dandy professional opportunity. And it’s equally plausible that McBride would find a good relationship with an important figure to be a professional boon.

The Love Letter

The only evidence that can even be spun to show an affair (or even an infatuation) before McBride turned in the profile is a love letter she wrote to Flynn in May. Yet Bice and the Journal-Sentinel quoted it very selectively and tendentiously. Consider, for example, this passage:

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I think there was something from the moment we locked eyes in Anne’s office. It grew when you let me inside you with the tavern story and it slowly developed through intellectual repartee. At the time, I didn’t think romantically, not consciously, at least.

Bice only quotes “I think there was something from the moment we locked eyes in Anne’s office,” and ignores the “looking back with the benefit of hindsight” phrase, the “it grew when you let me inside you with the tavern story” phrase and the “developed through intellectual repartee” phrase. And of course, Bice left out “I didn’t think romantically, not consciously, at least.”

Properly quoting the entire passage would have made it clear that there was no affair, and not even any genuine romantic feelings when McBride interviewed Flynn in Anne E. Schwartz office in December.

In the same letter, written for Flynn to read when McBride was in France in May, there is the phrase “Where to begin? How can words properly express the last few weeks?”

Huh? “Past few weeks?”

Bice, of course, doesn’t quote this.

Finally, McBride wrote in the same letter “I wasn’t looking for this; it came to me. It surprised me, sort of crashed into my life.”

Journalistic Misconduct

Quite simply, accusations that McBride was guilty of a breach of journalistic ethics are dependent on reciting a few salacious details of the affair, and omitting the chronology of how it unfolded. Bice admits the Journal-Sentinel lacked a key April 23 e-mail showing that only after that date did Flynn and McBride get together. If the Journal-Sentinel did not have this e-mail, it would appear they were manipulated by a source that leaked a bunch of e-mails and selectively omitted the April 23 missive, and indeed other e-mails showing the same thing.

If the paper did have these e-mails, they simply chose to ignore them in order to support the theme of journalistic misconduct.

McBride, in sum, has been the victim of shoddy journalism on the part of the Journal-Sentinel and the ideological bias of local liberal bloggers. Her sins (like those of Flynn) have been considerable, but a breach of journalistic ethics is not one of them.

The (Continuing) Decline of Print Media

Our journalism colleague Steve Byers has a blog titled Marquette Student Media which, in spite of the name, deals mostly with the print media off campus. Byers is an old-style newspaper reporter, with old style newspaper reporter values, and sometimes his critique of the direction of contemporary papers can be devastating.

For four decades, American newspapers have been lulled into complacency by being virtual monopolies. They have grown fat and ossified. During my time with just The Milwaukee Journal and Journal Sentinel, I watched as it went from a lean, tight newspaper with only a few editors to one with layers upon layers of assistant managing editors, senior editors, deputy senior editors, assistant senior editors, etc. (When I started at The Milwaukee Journal its news operations had one editor, one managing editor, one assistant managing editor; today, its masthead lists an editor, a managing editor, a deputy managing editor, six assistant managing editors, and at least six senior editors.)

This, in fact, sounds like academia. At Marquette, as everywhere else in higher education, there has been a huge proliferation of people whose job is not to teach students, nor to do research, nor to provide needed services to students, but rather to “implement” various “initiatives” involving such (at best) irrelevant and (at worst) harmful things as “assessment” and “diversity.”

But universities are different from newspapers, in that the former are essentially a cartel, all the members of which do all the same things, with no choice of (for example) a university where a student will be free of politically correct indoctrination, or a university where religion is taken seriously, and a majority of the faculty are practicing Christians, or Jews or Muslims.

(Religious institutions -- genuinely religious ones, not places like Marquette -- provide a real alternative, but in academia prestige is so highly correlated with the age of an institution that newer alternatives are largely locked out of the market.)

Newspapers are not so lucky, since they face real, vigorous competition from other media, ranging from the Internet to talk radio.

We sometimes chortle a bit at the decline of the “dead tree media,” since it has come to be dominated by a standard liberal “mainstream media” worldview.

But, of course, Byers nostalgia appears to be for a world where large cities had competing papers, with different editorial policies. It was a world where editors did not see themselves as arbiters of what the citizens were allowed to see and read, since failing to report a story that would interest readers was to invite being “scooped” by a rival paper.

Byers has, multiple times, invited us to his classes to talk about blogging, since he apparently sees the enterprise as partaking of some of the vitality that newspaper journalism formerly had: aggressiveness in reporting, sharp diversity of opinions and the lack of a bureaucratic structure watching over (and stifling) the people doing the reporting.

We tend to disagree with Byers view that, if newspapers added content and did more and better reporting, the traditional newspaper model could be revived. He, for example, cites an Australian named David Kirk and explains:

He builds his argument around three pillars: strong content, addressing audiences and supporting his newspapers’ brands. He isn’t talking about cutting staff that his audience wants to read, like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and, frankly, most American metropolitan newspapers continue to do. Nor is he talking about dropping sections, ignoring portions of the audience, and allowing his readers to gradually drift away. He is talking about aggressively going after them.

Our view is that dead tree media is going the way of the horse and buggy -- the victim of technological change.

But if the form of journalism has to change, the substance has to remain pretty much the same. Good reporting, good writing, incisive commentary, quality photojournalism, provocative editorial cartooning -- all of these can prosper on the web just as they once prospered in the daily newspaper.

So we have an irony here: good electronic journalism has to reflect the ethos of the anachronistic heyday of newspaper journalism. In reality, it now reflects that ethos better than the modern bureaucratic, over-managed, cost-cutting world of contemporary print journalism.

Journal-Sentinel Working on Walker Transit Hit Piece

Quite often, journalists let their biases show.

Sometimes, they make their agenda patently obvious.

Via GOP3.COM, an account of a Journal-Sentinel reporter who is clearly working on a hit piece directed against Scott Walker.

From post on the Journal-Sentinel Newswatch blog.

THURSDAY, Feb. 28, 2008, 3:36 p.m.

Have county transit changes affected you?

How have you been affected by Milwaukee County Transit System fare increases and service cuts? Please contact Journal Sentinel reporter Larry Sandler at lsandler@journalsentinel.com to let him know, and please include your name and a telephone number where you can be reached.

Of course, any such accounts will be used to attack budget-cutting County Executive Scott Walker.

Panel on Crime Reporting at Journalism School

WHAT: “Feeding the Media Beast: Crime Coverage in the Cheese State”
WHERE: Johnston Hall 103
WHEN: Thursday, February 28, 2008

TIME: 7:00 p.m.

COST: Free

Marquette University’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists invites you, your classes and your colleagues to the crime reporting panel discussion, “Feeding the Media Beast: Crime Coverage in the Cheese State” featuring:

• Tony Anderson (moderator), managing editor of the Wisconsin Law Journal
• John Diedrich, federal reporter at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Tom Held, general assignment reporter at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Martin Hintz, author of “Got Murder? The Shocking Story of Wisconsin’s Notorious Killers”
• Michael McCann, former Milwaukee County District Attorney
• Charles Benson (just added), broadcast journalist for WTMJ

The event is in fact open to the public, so members of the Milwaukee community (Marquette and otherwise) may want to come.

More: Media Bias on School Choice

An e-mail, sent to a variety interested observers by George Mitchell, an expert on and strong supporter of school choice:

On page 5 of the WPRI [Wisconsin Policy Research Institute] report the following appears:

“A story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently noted that ‘parents might have more choices in publicly funded education in Milwaukee than anywhere else in the United States.’”

The referenced story discusses a study on how low-income parents choose schools in Milwaukee, Denver, and Washington DC. That study’s findings pertain directly to the issues raised by WPRI. Namely, to what extent do parents in Milwaukee make discerning decisions?

I have attached a copy of the study. Its findings and methodology differ starkly from those of the WPRI study.

Unless I am too numbed by this whole affair, I find no discussion in the WPRI report that addresses these differences. That is perplexing. With a recent study (from a highly credible source) having addressed essentially the same issues as WPRI, one would expect WPRI to examine that study and comment on similarities and differences. Questions that arise include:

1. How do the studies differ in terms of gathering information about Milwaukee parents?
2. How does the studies differ in terms of conclusions about how those parents choose schools?
3. Given those differences, what suggests that more confidence should be placed in the WPRI method and findings?

I encourage you to skim the attached study. It differs in so many ways from the WPRI report that I feel a summary from me would not do it justice. WPRI must disagree with its findings, but WPRI’s report is silent on that matter. If I have missed something in the WPRI report, it means that the reference is very brief and thus does not address the obvious questions raised above.

A separate question is why the Journal Sentinel did not raise these questions in reporting on the WPRI study.

Setting aside the paper’s demonstrated failure in connection with this story, the failure of WPRI to pursue the questions raised above stands out as yet another glaring inadequacy in its report. I thank Mike Ford for bringing this to my attention.

George

This, of course, is a follow-up on an issue we have covered here, in which the Journal-Sentinel enthusiastically jumped on and covered prominently reported a study from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute casting doubt on the ability of school choice to improve the quality of Milwaukee’s public schools.

We critiqued the study, and commented on the failure of the Journal-Sentinel to report better studies showing positive gains from school choice in Milwaukee.

Mitchell followed up with his own critique posted here.

The study sends mixed messages about the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. First, it shows considerable integrity when an organization that strongly favors school choice publishes a study that goes against school choice. Honest policy analysis says to go where the data take you.

But on the other hand, it simply wasn’t a very good study.

But how about the local media? The Journal-Sentinel gave high visibility to the WPRI study, but didn’t even bother to report a study from a New York Federal Reserve Bank economist who found that choice has indeed improved Milwaukee’s schools. This latter study has been accepted for publication by a top ranked peer-reviewed economics journal.

Likewise, as yet there is nothing in the paper about the study Mitchell references above. The conclusion, based on extensive research into parential decision-making, including a sample of parently in Milwaukee:

On balance, the research indicates that while there are some differences related to income, race and ethnicity, parental education, and the kind of school the family selects, overall these low- to moderate-income parents seem fully capable of making the decision. They feel well informed; they appear satisfied with their choices; and they go about the process in very much the same way as middle- and upper-income families choosing schools—or other consumer goods.

Are we soon going to see this in the local paper (or on local radio and TV)?

And if not, why not?

Front Page Milwaukee Scoops Journal-Sentinel on Recruitment Center Investigation

When anti-war activists demonstrated in Milwaukee, some of them vandalized the Army Recruitment Center on Oakland Avenue near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Federal authorities are now investigating the incident, which might involve a violation of Federal law.

Just yesterday, Front Page Milwaukee, the web-only newspaper published in the Journalism Department at UWM, broke the story. Their article went online at 3:00 p.m.

The Journal-Sentinel finally got a Regional News Brief on the issue posted at about 9:00 p.m.

It seems the student journalists at UWM are ahead of the monopoly dead tree outlet yet again, just as the blogosphere was ahead of the paper in reporting the offensive comments of Michael McGee, Sr.

Journal-Sentinel Editorial on Michael McGee Affair

The Journal-Sentinel, the lumbering local monopoly newspaper, has finally started to pay attention to the Michael McGee affair.

They posted an editorial condemning McGee, and commended the owner of WNOV for taking him off the air.

It will be determined tomorrow (Saturday) whether McGee will merely face a suspension, or will be banned from the station.

After posting a brief “Day Watch” entry yesterday (Friday) the Saturday edition of the paper has a full-fledged article written by Tom Held.

It seems the Mainstream Media is finally catching up to the blogosphere.

Journal-Sentinel Reports Race of White Suspect

Via Subject to Change, the fact that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (which has refused to report the race of black criminal suspects who are at large) is perfectly willing to report the race of white suspects. The paper reported:

The man entered Groppi’s Food Market, 1441 E. Russell Ave., about 7:10 p.m. and showed a silver and black handgun as he ordered everyone onto the floor, according to police. He approached the cashier and also grabbed a purse from a customer. No one was hurt.

Police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said witnesses described the man as a white male, six feet tall, 200 to 225 pounds and having a stocky build. They said he wore a black mask and sunglasses, and black jacket with a yellow or white stripe down the sleeves.

It might seem obviously sensible to report the race of a suspect still at large -- and quite likely a threat to other people.

But in at least one recent high-profile robbery in the UWM area, the Journal-Sentinel refused to identify the suspects as black.

And in another case in Racine, the Journal-Sentinel refused to give a racial description of a suspect who allegedly sexually assaulted a child in a school there.

The motive behind this kind of political correctness is clear enough: the media don’t want to reinforce the stereotype that blacks commit a disproportionate share of crime.

Unfortunately, blacks do commit a disproportionate share of crime (as well as being disproportionately the victims of crime).

People know that, and won’t forget that, even in the face of politically correct reporting.

Indeed, a cynical public is likely to simply assume that any criminal suspect whose race is not reported is black.

Journal-Sentinel Slams Marquette Over Philosophy Department Office Door Censorship

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, in today’s edition, slammed Marquette for censoring a quote from columnist Dave Barry that was posted on the door of a graduate student’s office.

Editorial: It’s all a free-speech zone

We were under the impression that the entire United States is a free-speech zone. Which is why the phrase’s use is puzzling in the case of a teaching aide and graduate student at Marquette University who had a quote from a well-known humorist removed from his office door recently.

The quote from Dave Barry was, “As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government.”

Philosophy department chairman and associate professor James South called the quote “patently offensive” and said that the campus’ free-speech zones required him to take it down.

Point No. 1: If this quote is “patently offensive,” then a whole lot of folks who call themselves conservatives or Libertarians are patently offensive. Variations of this theme operate as their mantra. There’s nothing offensive about it. It’s a point of view. Agree or disagree, but don’t ban it.

Point No. 2: Lighten up. Most folks recognize hyperbole when they see it, particularly educated people such as those who walk the non-free-speech hallways of Marquette.

Point No. 3: While no right is absolute - yeah, yeah, yelling fire in a crowded theater - free speech should come pretty darn close. An easily offended nanny state might police cartoons and posters pinned up on office doors and walls. Thank goodness we don’t live in one. Right?

Of course, Marquette is a private university. OK, but one that presumably subscribes in some measure to the concept of academic freedom. Or is this reserved only for those graced with tenure?

No, the teaching assistant and graduate student who put up the quote - Stuart Ditsler, who says he is a Libertarian - should qualify. A campus spokeswoman said this is a workplace issue, not one of academic freedom. This makes no sense. The workplace in this case is a university.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has taken up Ditsler’s cause. A letter to the foundation from Marquette President Father Robert A. Wild said, because the quote wasn’t attributed, “someone reading . . . may not have understood the humor/satire of Dave Barry.”

So, here’s a compromise. Attribute the quote and return it to the office door. But here’s a better one. Allow Ditsler to put it up anyway if he chooses.

Of course, it’s not just conservatives and libertarians who distrust the Federal government. Where the Patriot Act is the issue, it’s liberals and leftists who do that.

Which doesn’t matter at all here, since you can be liberal, conservative, libertarian or whatever and still have a right to academic freedom.

And the leftists who run the Philosophy Department probably do believe that “folks who call themselves conservatives or Libertarians are patently offensive.”

And they believe that they have the right to shut up people they find “offensive.”

But it’s the job of Deans, Provosts and, if necessary, university presidents to protect students from those sorts of attitudes.

Mike McKinney, where were you on this?

Madeline Wake, where were you on this?

You both look as silly as James South does.

We know where University President Robert Wild was. Out to lunch.