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Consider The Source
The New York Post, owned and operated by Fox News magnate Rupert Murdoch, recently started showing an interest in congressional and senatorial races in Midwest battleground states, such as Wisconsin and Michigan. Given the stakes in this election up and down the ballot, that’s not entirely surprising, but what our guest this morning finds questionable is the hiring, by the NY Post, of a long-time Wisconsin GOP operative to serve as their Wisconsin-based reporter.
Amy Sikma, the Post’s new Wisconsin reporter, was twice paid by the state Republican Party for consulting work. Additionally, she worked as a consultant on former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly’s 2023 campaign, ran the primary campaign for a GOP candidate and worked for an organization that opposes same-sex marriage.
Thursday 8 O’Clock Buzz hosts Tony Castañeda and Eli Wilz welcome Dan Byce of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who explains that there is a “code of conduct” journalists are expected to follow to avoid the appearance of partisanship when writing about politics. Being on the payroll of a major political party is not specifically part of that code – but is not something Byce has seen in his 37-year journalism career.
Sikma is married to Brian Sikma, a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Government Accountability which is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025.
Photo courtesy of Hümâ H. Yardim on Unsplash.
- Broadcast on:
- 26 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
It's eight thirty nine and fourteen seconds. So whatever you should be doing as your morning routine at this time, you can do it now. This is WRT and the Thursday buzz. Joining me on the phone, I'm very pleased to have Daniel Bice. He's a longtime walkie journal, Sentinel reporter. He's part of their watchdog team now for over thirty years. Wow, Daniel, he's been on the show before, but it's been a while. Daniel, good morning and thank you for being on. Good morning, thanks for inviting me. Well, it's always a pleasure. I like your writing. I know some people have questions about it, but I'm fine with it. Your most recent story, just from a Tuesday's paper, actually Milwaukee Journal, sent about a New York Post reporter who was paid by Wisconsin Republicans as he's also reporting for the New York Post. Well, there's there's so much wrong with this and I'm not actually an official journalist myself. I did not go to journalism school. You did though, Daniel, right? No, no, I did not go to journalism school. I have a undergraduate degree then, ancient Greek and English, but I've been I've been I've been a reporter for thirty seven years and that's a journal, Sentinel for thirty two. So I I know what I'm doing generally. Okay, I mean, there's a certain there's certain code of ethics that I think they're all journalists and even myself, I've been doing this show for thirty years. I did not go to journalism school. Eli, did you go to journalism school? You know, I went to one semester of journalism school, if you can believe it. Well, that counts. Actually, that I'm not that you're an official journalist now, as far as that goes, but I mean, but I don't I don't think you have to go to journalism school to understand the crux of the story though, and as you know, with what we're doing, it's it's generally impossible to be completely objective, but you need to do what you can to try to reduce the appearance that you're being partisan. You're on one side or the other. If you're writing about politics and this reporter for the New York Post started writing a bunch of stories, highly critical Democrats and beneficial to Republicans. And I'm not seeing her name before as a reporter. And so I'd start looking into who she was. And as you said, her name is Amy Sichma. There it is because I was just going to say we have not mentioned her name and I was thinking I'm not supposed to mention her name, but let's mention her name. It's Amy Sichma, everybody. And yeah, and she's been a political activist in Wisconsin for 15 years or so. She worked for a group called Wisconsin Family Action, which is the main group that supported the ban on same-sex marriage in Wisconsin. And she worked on campaigns, she worked for Dan Kelly's conservative former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly's campaign, she was paid by them, and then she was paid directly by the Republican Party last year, consulting fees to do work for them. And this is highly unusual. I actually don't know of any other journalist who's been paid directly by a political party who then goes on to write stories about politics. Do we have any-- is there any indication that she's actually still on a Wisconsin Republican Party payroll? No, I don't think she is now. She ran a primary campaign, she was a campaign manager for someone running for an assembly seat a couple of years ago, and she listed on her LinkedIn page. And so that's why I thought, well, maybe I should look up any other money she got from campaigns and it popped up that she had worked for the Dan Kelly campaign and then been paid for consulting work in 2022, and then the State Republican Party paid her for consulting work in 2023, campaign consulting work. Now her title is Campaign Reporter, the near coast decided just recently that it wanted to start covering the congressional Senate and the presidential race in Wisconsin. And they're doing it in several of the battleground states and so they advertised and they hired Amy in June. And I first came across it because the Republicans pitched me a story, both parties pitched stories to me and the swear operates and I do some of them and I don't do other ones. And I turned this one down and just very, very shortly after I turned it down, the story of here in the New York Post and I thought it was a rather small story and couldn't figure out why the New York Post would care about it. And then the New York Post ran another story that I know the Post had looked at five or six months ago but taken a pass on and then ran it but it was Amy Sigma who had done the story the second time and now Eric Humpty's running multiple ads using her story to justify her attacks on the TV. Can we remind our listeners what story you're actually talking about and then I'm sure we've all seen the ad on TV where it's attacking Tammy Baldwin's partner, right? Is that what I had to do with her and her partner Maria Brisbane and it's suggesting that the two have a conflict event just because Tammy was on a committee that dealt with biotech funding for biopec tech firms and her partner we don't know that she operates any mutual fund dealing with biotech firms now but she used to run a mutual fund that dealt directly with that subject and so they're saying that she might have or she might have had a conflict of interest but she hasn't disclosed her partner's assets but there's no rule or anything that says that she needs to and there's not any particular stock or anything that we know that she shared with her partner or anything like that. It's a bunch of innuendones though. I looked into it too and we decided not to run a story but then the New York Post ran a story and since then they've spent a lot of money implying that there is a conflict of interest when in fact we don't know if there is one or isn't it's something we just don't know. Right and most journalists are actually going to investigate stories more I mean maybe not so much here on 8 o'clock buzz and actually we actually have a disclaimer at the beginning of the show where we say that our show is just for entertainment purposes only I guess I stole that from a Fox News which kind of absorbs us from anything we say. But yeah Eli's got a question. I think we're just kind of seeing an interesting theme developer where we see a journalist with a perceived conflict of interest reporting on a story of a politician with a perceived conflict of interest and I guess I'm just more curious, Dan, how you think about these issues from a journalistic standpoint you know it's I think what we're recognizing here is how important it is is that even if you're not corrupt to kind of be ahead of those perceived conflict of interest and I'm curious kind of how you handle that. Yeah it's not just me but since I wrote the story editor and publisher which is a national publication that covers journalists and stuff followed up and wrote a story about this and the Pointer Institute which is actually owned the Tampa Bay Times but they operate a center that educates reporters and keeps them up to date and they put out a daily newsletter on what's happening in journalism and they ran this story as well. If you're and we have rules at the journals that know I can't put up campaign signs in my front yard saying please vote for this person I don't go to fundraisers. I mean I take it a step further than most people because I went to a talk by the former editor of The Washington Post I guess it's been 30 years now and he talked about why he didn't vote and so I'm taking the step of not voting I don't vote in races that I cover so if I'm covering this center race I'm not going to vote because I don't want to think about the race in terms when I'm doing stories I don't want to think about it in terms of am I going to vote for Eric's health gear am I going to vote for Tammy Baldwin I think about is this a story or not a story and that's that's what helps me decide I think I'm probably the only person in the journal not knowing does that but I've said some people because they're like you know more about this than anybody but it just keeps me from thinking about it in those terms I'm not I'm not thinking about who who I think would be better for the job or anything like that what I think is you know I'm people put certain stories in front of me and suggest certain stories you know I've got like three or four currently on that race that either come up with or other people suggested and when looking at those things I try to decide just on my own is this a legitimate news story that readers should know about when they're making the decision I'm here to vote for I think that's pretty extreme what you've done as far as now voting you know I guess I haven't gotten to that point yet but but we also got a look at it I mean this not only affects journalists but you know when we have candidates for a state Supreme Court or whatever they went back the Republicans went back and said oh your name is on here for the recall for Walker so obviously you're coming from this area so yeah that's interesting I would I would never sign a recall for anybody and we did have we did have to an editor and a reporter who signed the recall petition in our newsroom and those were suspended for one week or two weeks really yeah because they had done that because it's just it's just something you don't do and so when I was working on a story and you know the the interesting thing is there are more and more groups out there that are funded by ideologically driven nonprofits like the Bradley Foundation and groups like that or the Joyce Foundation which is you know it's a liberal group the funds group and and like the MacGyver Institute which is based in Madison they'll do stories but their stories are always concerned always support conservatives and always critical of Democrats but when you go there you know what you're going to get right they're clearly stated where it's coming from they don't say we're a right-wing news site but we're the MacGyver Institute so it's up to you to to investigate where that's whatever but everything that they do is consistent consistently you know stated I mean from that one particular side and that's where they get their funding from stuff they're not pretending to be a daily newspaper and you know the New York Post it leaves right it's owned by Rupert Murdoch but you know Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal too in the Wall Street Journal I don't think anyone says has a tilt in its news coverage it does on a editorial page clearly they take that up fine but they're they're really good reporters who work there and the New York Post has broken some major stories including I mean they were right on the Hunter Biden's story before anybody else and most of the mainstream media was wrong on that but in this case it's just it just is an unusual thing and that's why I decided to write that people should know where the stories are coming from that are being used in the campaign that you know that a person who is a Republican and conservative activist is the one who's putting out this material that's being used by the campaigns right I mean we all know that the trick is like once something is reported in the press even on the Thursday buzz someone can say as reported by the press they don't say it was by Eli and Tony just making things up we're talking about Amy Sigmund and now who is the alleged journalist writing stories for the New York Post and at the same time on the payroll of the Wisconsin Republican committee now is there anything she got any breaking stories coming up before the election that we should be aware of I have I have no idea what she's what she's going to be writing but she's written stories and you know it is interesting what I don't know why the New York Post cares about this but she's written stories in the first congressional district between Peter Barker and Brian Stalman's story is critical of Peter Barker a former congressman and a Democrat out in the in the third district with Derrick Van Orton and a Rebecca Cook she's written stories critical of Rebecca Cook and and you know Rebecca's the Democrat in that case and then she's written the stories critical of Tammy Baldwin and her partner and I think it's important to realize when she's writing about their relationship that she used to work for an organization that openly opposes same sex marriage relationships and then she's writing about the same the same sex partnership between these two and then she's been very critical of she's been critical of Kamala Harris and things she said in Wisconsin she also wrote a story that implied that immigration and border border policies that that those are the number one issue in Wisconsin and that's just not the case if you look at the most recent mark at poll that they people in that poll were asked what the biggest issues were and for Republicans that was the second biggest issue but for independence it was the fifth most important issue and for Democrats not a single person in their poll mentioned the border as being the most important issue this election so I think again this is a story that was true for Republicans but it's not true for Democrats they don't they don't see the borders a major issue but her plant was that that was the case and then she quoted people from the Republican Party agreeing with her taking the story and so I mean what is the danger of this now Wisconsin is a very crucial state some people say Wisconsin goes is how the country is going to go if you know if Wisconsin if Kamala wins Wisconsin she'll win the what you call it so what about this type of reporting and what should people how should people be looking at now I know you're not going to vote so your vote doesn't come well it's I mean how should people think about I mean it's not just how Wisconsin goes the election will go because there there are five or six some say up to seven battleground states that are that are the toss-up states that will determine the election and and you know if if you sweep all those then you win and if you win the most electoral votes in those you'll win but there are any number of combinations that would get either Trump or Harris to win but Wisconsin's crucial and it's very important and the thing is when you're watching these ads on TV many of them do cite where they're getting the information and with the ones that cite that they're cut that their stories are that they're basing their stuff on is coming from the New York Post I just told people to be aware of that and if you have time look up the stories themselves and see what you think do this do the stories pass the snow test with you and again why does the New York Post you know why does it care so much about the first congressional district in Wisconsin is there reason or are these stories just being put out there so that they can be used in TV ads which you know seems to be the case in many of these sentences and yeah it's a boy if I was getting paid to do stuff like that well I don't even get paid for doing this show here on war so I guess there's no problem with that Daniel Bice thank you very much for being on the show and I got to say personally I enjoy the work that you're doing and the investigative nature of it and now it's good to know that you don't vote one way or the other because I was having a discussion with longtime readers and they're oh Bice is a conservative in blah blah blah whatever you got a pass from me man okay okay thanks a lot for being on the show and then we'll we'll definitely continue to watch the political situation in Wisconsin as we lead up to November presidential election thank you very much again for being on okay thank you all right
The New York Post, owned and operated by Fox News magnate Rupert Murdoch, recently started showing an interest in congressional and senatorial races in Midwest battleground states, such as Wisconsin and Michigan. Given the stakes in this election up and down the ballot, that’s not entirely surprising, but what our guest this morning finds questionable is the hiring, by the NY Post, of a long-time Wisconsin GOP operative to serve as their Wisconsin-based reporter.
Amy Sikma, the Post’s new Wisconsin reporter, was twice paid by the state Republican Party for consulting work. Additionally, she worked as a consultant on former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly’s 2023 campaign, ran the primary campaign for a GOP candidate and worked for an organization that opposes same-sex marriage.
Thursday 8 O’Clock Buzz hosts Tony Castañeda and Eli Wilz welcome Dan Byce of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who explains that there is a “code of conduct” journalists are expected to follow to avoid the appearance of partisanship when writing about politics. Being on the payroll of a major political party is not specifically part of that code – but is not something Byce has seen in his 37-year journalism career.
Sikma is married to Brian Sikma, a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Government Accountability which is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025.
Photo courtesy of Hümâ H. Yardim on Unsplash.