PolitiFact's Two-For-One And Why Is Sykes Still On The Air?

PolitiFact, the hit and miss "fact checking" product in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gives Scott Walker a "Pants On Fire" rating for falsely blaming Governor Jim Doyle for one of Tommy Thompson's taxpayer's cash giveaway:

Facing a near-certain recall election, Walker that day used his Twitter account to highlight the story as a failure of the previous administration, that of Democrat Jim Doyle. (Other tweets included the fact he stopped for ham and rolls after church.)

His tweet: "Headline ‘State spends millions for 202 jobs’, missed rest of sentence:, ‘under program approved by Gov Doyle.’"

In other words, the poor performing program was created under Doyle. And that’s where the blame should fall, Walker says.

Did Doyle approve the plan?

The legislation creating the program was introduced in 1997 and passed and signed into law the following year -- not by Democrat Doyle, but by then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, a fellow Republican now running for a U.S. Senate vacancy.

Doyle didn’t take office until 2003, five years after the CAPCO bill was signed.

Indeed, the proposal had bipartisan support. It was authored by Democratic state Sen. Gwen Moore, now a congresswoman from Milwaukee. Among the 89 members of the state Assembly who voted in favor of the bill March 25, 1998: Walker himself.

But the go on to write how Charlie Sykes, Milwaukee radio squawker, took this from Walker and ran with it, even though he knew it to be false:

Walker’s tweet gained a broader audience the following day. WTMJ radio talk show host Charlie Sykes picked up on the topic and in a three minute segment linked Doyle to the CAPCO program five times. He called it "a Jim Doyle idea," and said the program was "one of Jim Doyle’s signature venture capital bills."

In an email, Sykes acknowledged that the program was created under Thompson. And he pointed out that Walker had tweeted on the subject the day before.

Sykes whined about it on the radio and sniveled about it on his blog, but not once did he even come close to apologizing for misleading his listeners or bothering to correct his lie. If anything, he doubles down on his dishonesty by mewling that Doyle wasn't mentioned enough in the original article, even though he just acknowledged it had nothing to do with Doyle.

Why Sykes is still on the air despite openly lying about things, and admitting he is lying, is simply beyond me. But it goes to show why a person can't believe anything that comes from corporate media shills like Sykes.