As NewsBusters reported last month, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, and NPR totally ignored Wisconsin Republicans receiving death threats as a result of their support for Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill.
Although the following report concerning a woman being charged for emailing such threats was published by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel at 5 PM Thursday, almost no major media outlets thought it was newsworthy:
Katherine R. Windels of Cross Plains was named in a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Criminal Court.
According to the criminal complaint, Windels allegedly sent an email threat to State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) March 9. Later that evening, she allegedly sent another email to 15 Republican legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).
The subject line of the second email was: "Atten: Death Threat!!!! Bomb!!!" In that email, she purportedly wrote, "Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks."
As Ed Morrissey with help from the Underground Conservative discovered, Windels is a schoolteacher.
The complaint against her was filed at 8:30 AM Thursday. Yet, according to LexisNexis and Google searches, not one major American newspaper outside of Wisconsin has reported her being charged.
Not one.
From what I could uncover, the only wire service to consider this newsworthy was the Associated Press, but as NewsBusters reported, its stories concerning this matter only crossed their state and local wire.
As for television, through Friday evening, there has not been one single mention of Windels' name on ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, or PBS. No NPR either.
Not one word.
Interestingly, CBSNews.com's Political Hotsheet reported this revelation Friday morning as did CNN.com. As such, these news divisions were aware of this matter, but still chose to not discuss it on the air. The only network that did was Fox News in a report filed on "The O'Reilly Factor" Friday.
With this in mind, virtually no Americans are aware that death threats were made against Republican lawmakers during March's battle in Wisconsin, and even fewer have been informed that a female schoolteacher has been charged.
Would this boycott have occurred if Windels was a Tea Party member and those email messages had been sent to the Wisconsin Democrats that fled their state to prevent Walker's bill from being passed?
It seems a metaphysical certitude every news organization in the country would have been all over that story like white on rice.
Yet because this was a union-supporting teacher threatening Republicans - crickets.
Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?
