{"id":67677,"date":"2018-08-13T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=67677"},"modified":"2018-08-12T14:10:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-12T19:10:41","slug":"about-those-crickets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=67677","title":{"rendered":"About Those Crickets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Everyone in Minnesota politics is buzzing about the rather serious domestic abuse allegations against Congressman and Attorney General candidate Keith Ellison. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Everyone but the news media. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Members of that media are responding – understandably – “we’ve got to have time to actually do our jobs, here”, and “Accuracy > Speed”. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Which all makes sense on its face – but then, there’s some history involved. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In 2006, Ellison was running to replace the retiring Martin Sabo – and while the DFL as a rule can nominate a set of wind-up chattering teeth in the 5th CD and get 70% of hte vote, the polling must have looked a little tight (1). <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The StarTribune ran an “October Surprise” hit piece against Alan Fine, Ellison’s GOP opponent<\/a>, about a domestic abuse *arrest* ten years before, in the middle of a custody fight. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Strib didn’t include in its report the fact that Fine was never convicted – the accusation was tossed for lack of evidence – and that Fine went on to get custody of the couple’s kid (which never happened in Minnesota at that time), and that his ex-wife wound up getting convicted of domestic abuse herself, in a later relationship, all of which tends to support Fine’s response.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I did a ton of writing on the subject, as did Scott Johnson<\/a> – an actual lawyer:<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I also had one of the story’s reporters on my show at the time. I asked her (in one of the better interviews I’ve ever done) why those salient facts, which were a matter of the legal record of the case, were not reported at the time. She said it was an editorial decision – there’s only so much space that can be devoted to a story. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Which claim I went on to flense, by going through the story and figuring out how much redundant fluff could have been cut<\/a> from the original hit piece to make room for a simple paragraph showing, for balance, Fine’s side of the story. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It wasn’t even difficult.<\/span><\/div>\n
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So when journalists claim they’re not rushing material about Ellison out to air\/print because “they’re trying to get things right” – well, maybe (2). <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But there’s some very troubling history, out there, and you’re a pollyanna if you dont realize it. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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(1) It seems unbelievable looking at Minneapolis these days, but Ellison got 50% of the vote. Fine got 25%, and an Independence Party candidate got another 25%. To be fair, she was both a great campaigner and, um, photogenic as hell. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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(2) I’d say “ask Rod Grams”, but he’s unfortunately unable to respond. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone in Minnesota politics is buzzing about the rather serious domestic abuse allegations against Congressman and Attorney General candidate Keith Ellison. \u00a0 Everyone but the news media. \u00a0 Members of that media are responding – understandably – “we’ve got to have time to actually do our jobs, here”, and “Accuracy > Speed”. \u00a0 Which all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67678,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67677\/revisions\/67678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}