Star: Republicans win in Wisconsin despite millions from labor!

by David Safier

I can't blame the Star entirely for this, because the AP story is awful. But the Star compounded the awful reporting with its headline.

In recall vote, Wisconsin Republicans hold on to Senate

Republicans won!

Really? Out of six Republican legislators, only four are left standing. That's two pickups for Democrats. It's actually a four vote swing if you do the math — two less R votes, two more D votes. And it means all Dems need is one R defector to stop a bad bill from passing the Senate. How about the headline, In recall vote, Wisconsin Republicans BARELY hold on to Senate.

OK, it's a bad headline. But surely the opening paragraph will make it clear six R seats were up for grabs in the recall, and the Ds won two, right?

Wrong.

Republicans held on to control of the Wisconsin Senate on Tuesday, beating back four Democratic challengers in a recall election despite a political backlash against GOP support for Gov. Scott Walker's effort to curb public employees' union rights.

That's paragraph one. You have to read almost to the end of the article, paragraph ten, to learn the Dems "picked up two seats." Uninformed and semi-informed readers who stopped before that would think the Dems lost in every race.

Did you know all the money in the campaign came from labor groups, none for right wing groups? I know that because I read it in the second paragraph.

Fueled by millions of dollars from national labor groups, the attempt to remove GOP incumbents served as both a referendum on Walker's conservative revolution and could provide a new gauge of the public mood less than a year after Republicans made sweeping gains in this state and many others.

There was no selective editing by the Star in this article. That's how the AP wrote it. This article is a marvel of misinformation or disinformation, and the Star headline just compounds the problem.