Dear Tom Koetting,
Thanks for you response a week ago to my complaint about your non-coverage of the Coalition to Stop the MPS Takeover. It has taken a bit of time to gather the information as we all have regular employment.
Attached is a record of Media Releases of events sponsored by the coalition as well as a record of your coverage. The Media Release for the November 3 event was sent to three people at the J-S: Alan Borsuk, Amy Hetzner and Eugene Kane. We will certainly take your advice in the future and send all releases to Erin Richards and Eric Aspenson.
I also appreciate and accept your apology for missing this obviously important event.
However, I must comment on two of your statements:
1. “The notion that we’re ignoring a significant body of opinion is nonsense, and I find it especially silly coming from someone who has been quoted giving his opinion in the newspaper….” and
2.“As for the editorial board, I do not regularly read our editorials. Anyone who knows me knows that whatever we have published has no impact on my news decisions. None.”
First, the fact that I was quoted by General Assignment reporter Jesse Garza in an article does not in any way mitigate the fact that your education reporters have absolutely ignored the Coalition to Stop the MPS Takeover, have never once even mentioned the coalition by name, have never identified the key organizations involved in the coalition and have systematically refused to cover any of our events.
Here is the reality you call “nonsense.” Fully 28 citizens organizations in Milwaukee representing more than 10,000 people, organizations as diverse as the NAACP, MICAH, Voces de la Frontera, various educational and labor groups, 9-5 and the National Lawyers Guild, are in coalition actively engaged on an issue that your paper covers several times a week. Yet, you have never mentioned the coalition or those organizations. Perhaps your judgment is that these groups are not “significant” or do not represent a “significant body of opinion.” If so, I surely challenge your judgment.
Second, while I have met you, I do not know you. So I’ll take you on your word that you do not read your paper’s editorials. However, with due respect, as clever a rejoinder as your statement may be, it is equally irrelevant. Do your education reporters not read your editorials? Do they not sit with your editorial board to interview school board candidates, take joint meetings with your editorial board and community leaders, do you all not share a common work space, eat lunch together and, perhaps, share a drink on occasion?
Give me a break, Mr. Koetting. You may not read editorials, but you KNOW exactly what position your editorial board has taken on educational issues and the MPS. It has leached into your mind just as surely as BPH has leached into both of our bodies. The absolute consistency of J-S education coverage and J-S editorials has been obvious for two decades now.
Your longtime education reporter, Alan Borsuk, has functioned for years as a virtual public relations machine for the school voucher movement, as well as for its primary spokesmen such as Howard Fuller and Bruce Thompson.
Here is something for you to consider. On February 2 of this year, Advocates for Student Achievement (ASA), a front group financed by the MMAC, held an event to roll out a poll for the purpose of influencing the MPS Board elections. That meeting blew up in ASA’s face as questioners from the audience, including myself, revealed that some of the polling involved “push-poll calls” and asked questions about the relationship between ASA and ASA PAC that were so clumsily answered that they revealed a level of collusion that is subject to a criminal investigation. (By the way, is your paper following up on that investigation?)
At that breakfast, I saw Bruce Thompson briefly step into the hallway to make a cell phone call. About 30 minutes later, Alan Borsuk showed up at the meeting. I asked him after the meeting why he had come so late, and he told me, “Someone phoned me and told me I’d better get down here.” He would not answer my question as to who called him. When I revealed that I had been the recipient of a push call, Allan asked what was said, and when I told him, he looked crestfallen and said, “Oh, that sure sounds like a push poll.”
But he did not write an article about this. The only coverage of the ASA fiasco was by Dan Bice, and it was minimal.
Now, I’m certain Alan hoped to sit in his office and produce the poll story ASA wanted about how vulnerable the ASA targeted candidates were. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that these were the very candidates the J-S editorial board opposed. I’m equally certain that Alan’s disappointment stemmed from the fact that now he had two choices: either write about the push polling or ignore the whole thing. He chose to ignore it, thus revealing his obvious bias. He certainly couldn’t claim it wasn’t newsworthy. Imagine if, say, a teachers union was to engage in push polling on behalf of a candidate the J-S had defined as “anti-reform,” a formulation dredged in misinformation and bias. Can you honestly say Alan would have ignored that story?
Shall we go back to Joe Williams? His reporting of MPS issues was so biased against any MPS board member or MPS board candidate not supported by the MMAC and not pro-voucher that he was rewarded with a job as Executive Director of Democrats for Education Reform. While I have no way of proving it, I’d bet my first born son that Howard Fuller wrote a letter of recommendation for him.
How about Erin Richards? Do you really think, Mr. Koetting, that her reporting is balanced? Well, let’s see. In an article previewing President Obama’s visit to Madison last week, “Is there more to Obama’s state visit,” she quoted only two democrats. One was Jason Fields, who is for the takeover. The other was a democrat who is not even living in or associated with Wisconsin, Charles Barone, director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform. Wow, that’s the same place Joe Williams now runs, an organization that, amazingly enough, favors mayoral takeover!
What do you think, coincidence?
Why were no opponents of the takeover asked to comment, say for example, a leader of the Coalition to Stop the MPS takeover? Why were legislators opposed to the takeover not contacted? Are these questions also “silly?” Maybe there’s an explanation other than Erin Richards simply adopting the culture of the J-S and following in the footsteps of Williams and Borsuk. Perhaps Tamara Grigsby was unavailable to be interviewed. Maybe Spencer Coggs in Milwaukee was harder to reach than Charles Barone in New York City.
But I don’t think so.
I am an activist and an optimist. The former would be a fool’s errand without the latter. So I hope my opinion will lead to a change in your coverage so that it will become as balanced as you pretend it to be.
Sincerely,
Charlie Dee
