23
October
2006

Racine Journal-Times buries McReynolds Love Child story

mcreynolds.jpgThe Racine Journal-Times, which allows readers to add comments to stories they publish on the web, ran a fluff story October 18th highlighting State Senate candidate, and current Racine County Executive, Bill McReynolds.   The Journal-Times editors, it seems, weren't appreciative of what one user wrote.

A person known only as "mew" responded that McReynolds wasn't exactly honest in the story and even lied when it came to how many children he had.  The story said McReynolds had 3 children.  Mew said McReynolds has four children and cited a love child that McReynolds fathered with a woman who the writer described only as having a name starting with the letter "E".  Apparently McReynolds fathered this child late in his college career.

An accusation worth a little digging?  We thought so too.

But first, it's worthwhile to point out how the Journal-Times handled the situation.  They deleted the comment.  Here's what it was replaced with:

This comment was removed because it was reported to The Journal Times as making an unfounded accusation against a candidate. Let's please stick with the known facts everyone.
10/22 13:28:34
Why would the Journal-Times claim to know all of the facts without doing a little investigative digging of their own?  After all, that's what newspapers used to do.  Nope.  Apparently another newspaper left it to the bloggers to investigate.
 
The situation isn't well publicized and out of respect for the child, who would now be in his 30's, we're not going to go into details.  We'll stick to the facts as we were told them.  We will say we have uncovered this about the case; "E-" (whose name we now know) had a child fathered by McReynolds but "E-" was never married to McReynolds.  "E-" later married another man and the couple raised the child as both of their own.
 
At this point we chose to abandon the investigation.
 
You see the child, now an adult, may not even know he was adopted by his new Dad.  He may not know that McReynolds is his biological father.  While we do cutting edge journalism on Watchdog Milwaukee and are not above exposing some of the slimier elements in politics, this story, if we pursued it further, would include the names of people who are not now and have never been in politics.  A child who may have grown up thinking his father was also his biological father (but was not) may get a shock we're not prepared to administer.  Out of respect for them, we will leave the story of McReynolds past trysts as we found them.

What is interesting however is the treatment that the Journal-Times took in the story.  Rather than do their own investigation, they said their readers should "stick to the known facts".  Who is to say that the Journal-Times has the exclusive rights to explore the "known facts" or bury them as they please?  The Journal-Times could have done a little investigation and uncovered what we have discovered.  They could have started by contacting their reader "mew" and in all likelihood they may have chosen to abandon the story as we had.  But "mew" was in his or her right to question McReynolds statements if the author knew that McReynolds knew his statements to a reporter to be untrue.  Further, would it not change the Journal-Times publisher's opinion of McReynolds if s/he knew McReynolds had not been forthcoming?

We do not all together condemn the Journal-Times actions in this story.  They chose a format for their online presence that offers a discussion forum much like the comments feature in blogs.  For that, we salute the Journal-Times as a publication that is ahead of the curve.  But we can't help but wonder, if "mew" is privvy to the same information we learned in just a few phone calls, what else may McReynolds have lied to the Journal-Times about?

3 Comments

  1. Stacie:

    The problem is, anyone can post anything at any time on the Internet. Should a newspaper investigate every potentially juicy accusation posted on its site? (Or am I missing something fundamental here?)

  2. John-david Morgan:

    “This comment was removed because it was reported to The Journal Times as making an unfounded accusation against a candidate. Let’s please stick with the known facts everyone.”

    The known facts? Lazy journalism. The Journal Times statement was like saying, “There will be no more new facts allowed to come to light here … Look, we’re having a hard enough time keeping track of all the old facts lying around, so don’t bother us with anything we aren’t already supposed to know. The inbox is closed! Is it Nov. 7 yet?”

    It should be noted, however, that the Racine Daily has not been all that kind to ol’ Willie McReynolds this fall.

  3. Tom Boyle:

    Why was McReynolds fired from the Union Grove School District? He used to be a school teacher. They fired him.
    Did he actually stand up in front of the Tavern League in Racine County and say, “You can have open gambling as long as nobody complains.” That is breaking the law.
    There were plenty of witnesses.
    Did he take a .45 caliber revolver and point it right next to a guys temple working on a dock while McReynolds was drunk.
    After every election he has always thanked his opponent for not getting personal. Let’s start getting personal.
    While McReyolds was Shariff he had his deputies lie and commit perjury just to get a conviction. His response was. “The voters want me to be tough on crime”

    As Racine County Administrator, He put a cement factory across the road from Racine county’s prettiest park, Fischer Park in Burlington. Get him out of there.

    Tom Boyle
    Boyle Legal
    Burlington, Home of Tony Romo, Dallas Quaterback

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