AP Treats Arrest of Wis. Woman Issuing Death Threats to Legislators As Local Story
Even though the goings-on in Wisconsin this year connected with collective-bargaining rights legislation have been front-page news nationwide for well over a month, the Associated Press has apparently concluded that folks outside the Badger State couldn't possibly be interested in real threats of serious violence issued against Republican legislators who voted for it -- and their families.
The latest support for that contention comes in the AP's coverage of the indictment and arrest of Katherine Windels on four counts: two relating to "threatening injury or harm" and two for "bomb scares."
At first I thought that the wire service might have totally ignored the story when a search at the AP's home site on the woman's last name at 8:45 a.m. this morning came up empty. But AP did report the news -- in Wisconsin, treating it, at least based on the tag at the left seen below, as a local story ("Wisconsin woman Katherine Windels charged for threats to state senators"):
Guarding against the possibility that the publication involved and not the AP put the "local" tag on the story, a Google News search at 9 a.m. on ["Katherine Windels" "Associated Press"], sorted by date and with duplicates, came back with 44 items, the vast majority of which were clearly Wisconsin news outlets.
In addition to limiting its distribution, the story itself is pretty weakly written, as the following subsequent paragraphs excerpted below will show:
The criminal complaint accuses the Cross Plains woman of sending two emails to senators threating to shoot them and plant bombs around their homes.
The first message sent March 9 to Sen. Robert Cowles of Green Bay said the sender and others had decided to kill the Republican senator by "arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head," the complaint said. The email also claimed the group had planted bombs around the senator’s house and car and the Capitol building.
A similar email with the same threats was sent to other Republican senators two hours later. [1] Both emails chastised the lawmakers for voting earlier that day for the budget repair bill, which strips most public employees of collective bargaining rights. [2] The emails also praised Republican Sen. Dale Schultz of Green Bay, who was not sent a threat, as "heroic" for voting against it.
Notes:
- [1] -- The threats were sent to 15 other senators. I think there was more than enough room in the story for three additional characters (a "1," a "5," and a space) to communicate that relevant information.
- [2] -- As has been noted several times, the legislation doesn't strip all collective bargaining rights from affected employees, as the AP's text above would lead readers to believe. As the wire service's own Scott Bauer reported back in February, "Unions still could represent workers, but could not seek pay increases above those pegged to the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a public referendum. Unions also could not force employees to pay dues and would have to hold annual votes to stay organized." That means some collective bargaining rights remain.
On a related noted, there's an interesting difference between one of the headlines noted in some Google News results and the headlines at the related linked stories. A few of the results came back with a couple of very interesting headlines:
But clicking on each of the related stories (here, here, here, and here) takes one to the story previously discussed.
So what's this delay all about? Well, there was an earlier AP story (local, naturally) about this:
Wisconsin Department of Justice officials say they're concerned that a Dane County district attorney has not acted on a case involving threats to state lawmakers.
DOJ officials say they referred criminal investigations regarding the threats to District Attorney Ismael Ozanne (OH-zan) two weeks ago, but Ozanne returned the referrals to resolve clerical oversights. DOJ says it resolved the issues and the referrals still sit with Ozanne. The department claims the reports have enough evidence to prompt criminal charges against one Dane County resident.
It gets worse.
Mr. Ozanne "just so happens to have filed a lawsuit claiming that the collective bargaining bill "was approved illegally by the state Legislature."
How odd that the AP "somehow" didn't mention that point in its coverage of Mr. Ozanne's delay in having Ms. Windels arrested. Why, that's almost enough to make you think that unionized AP employees, whose News Media Guild union has openly supported and demonstrated on behalf of Wisconsin public-sector employees, might be trying to shield Mr. Ozanne from scrutiny.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
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Comments
This is similar
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 10:34am.
to the treatments of the stories about the guy that flew his plane into the building in Austin and the female professor at Univ. Alabama at Huntsville. Once it was determined the crackpots weren't right wingers, it was almost as if those events had never happened.
Sloppy Beyond Belief
Submitted by Caringwhiteguy on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 10:47am.
Senator Dale Schultz, mentioned in the AP story is NOT from Green Bay. He is from Richland Center. According to Google Maps the AP is a mere 190 miles off. This story is also getting precious little attention from local outlets in Wisconsin itself. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel buried it, cleansed it, and relegated it mostly to its online edition. Imagine the outcry if the e-mail threats had been made by a Tea Party member to the lefty Madison Judge, Maryann Sumi, who issued the injunction halting implementation of the much ballyhooed law. By the way the alleged terrorist is an early childhood teacher whose Myspace page is http://www.myspace.com/katherinewindels. Can you imagine leaving the teacher part out of the story? By the way Judge Sumi's son is a former operative with the AFL-CIO and SEIU. This is mentioned on a few conservative websites, but not in local media.
Schultz
Submitted by Tom Blumer on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 11:21am.
You see, the AP misidentified his home town to protect him from those crazy Tea Partiers. (/sarc)
This "Shielding"
Submitted by Ashrak on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 11:04am.
isn't even working as well as damaged shielding at a Japanese nuclear power plant after a earthquake and tsunami.
Had this been a TEA partier who made these threats against the Wisconsin 14, had it been this Mr. Ozanne been of another political persuasion, Big Media would be hammering it daily.
I am convinced that Big Media planted the idea that the TEA party is racist and violent so that when the left acts like this, and they always do, the average joe would think "TEA Party" every time they hear a story like this. Keeping it to the local level aids in that effort.
It is pretty twisted to engage in a fabricated endless ongoing lie. Pretty sad that these folks, these journ0lists, dedicate their lives to being dishonest. They have done a pretty good job destroying the reputation of a once honorable profession.
TEABAGGER!
Submitted by JPTSO3 on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 12:30pm.
Damn teabagging crazy gun loving wingnut. This is what's wrong with America - the threats and violent rhetoric. Talk Radio Sarah Palin and Beck are to blame for... oh... wait, she threatened Republicans...? Ahhhh never mind, my bad.
A concious effort
Submitted by Bob K on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 3:09pm.
Reading at one of the really far left websites I have noticed a real effort to not talk about it at all. Two days, three threads, and the oldest has only two dozen comments. What makes it unusual is that nearly every comment is about how she is certainly a GOP "plant". If they really believed that, you would not be able to shut them up. Sad to say, but this story is going to disappear, which is just what they intend for it.