If you want to get a good visual demonstration of how the media has covered the Wisconsin budget battle, the front page of the paper in the city of Fond du Lac, Wisc., is the place to go.
Every story on this page is presented from the viewpoint of the state’s public-sector union members. The Associated Press story that leads the paper takes the partisan spin of a few public officials and memorializes it in huge, all-cap type, with a question mark at the end to allow the editors to say they were simply asking the question, not making an allegation.
This approach to the story has been replicated all over the country. In today’s News & Observer, for example, the New York Times story that ran on page 3 makes no mention of the death threats that have been received by Republicans in Wisconsin, nor of the many assaults by union members against counter-protesters and citizen media types, and buries a brief, fragmented quote from one Republican toward the end of the story.
Only on blogs, conservative news sites and on Fox News has this ugly other side of the budget battle been documented. And the mainstream media wonders why people are leaving it in droves.
For an accurate account of what really happened in Wisconsin yesterday and over the past three weeks, read Christian Schneider’s “The Forgotten Story in Wisconsin” at National Review Online.
