Here in Wisconsin: Press Blackout Edition

Today's Wisconsin State Journal has an editorial explaining why they haven't said word one about the Cronon Affair. Phil Brinkman's argument:

First, recipients of open records requests seldom welcome such intrusions. It’s invasive, it risks exposing them and others to embarrassment or worse.

This, obviously, doesn't hold true for Cronon. He tap dances a bit about the special problems in grabbing a professor's emails, because of chilling academic freedom and students' rights to privacy and then asks and answers the key question:

Is the party’s use of the records law in this case “nakedly political,” as Cronon asserts? Most assuredly.

The fact that the Republican Party is seeking to use a legitimate tool that promotes transparency to attack a critic even as their most recent anti-worker bill is under judicial scrutiny for violating the State's laws concerning legislative transparency isn't a story? No wonder newspapers are in trouble.

Brinkman is also clear that

So why not cover the debate itself? Over the years, this newspaper has made hundreds of records requests, many of them unwelcome and unpleasant experiences for the recipient. It would be hypocritical for us to suggest — and a story would suggest it — that some records requests are beyond the pale.

I just don’t believe that.

 This is just remarkably incoherent.  He accepts that the open record request is nakedly political and that the opr can or will have the effect of stiffling debate yet rejects that notion that political parties attacking citizens for engaging in criticism of the political party is a story worth covering. Amazing really.

Also Chris Rickert's (humorous?) suggestion that the UW-Madison fire random people is further evidence that the WSJ hates it's readers.