Media feeding frenzy over Scott Walker goes too far

While Scott Walker -- suddenly the Republican presidential frontrunner by a wide margin in some polls -- seems to be the flavor of the month, the feeding frenzy in the media has created an outsized appetite regarding the Wisconsin governor.
While recent Walker revelations and eyebrow-raising statements could be enough to eventually knock him down a peg or two, The Daily Beast and the New York Times admittedly hammered him a little too hard.

The Daily Beast retracted its report  (not before it was widely reprinted by numerous publications) that the governor removed from the state budget a provision requiring reporting of on-campus rapes. According to Politico, The Daily Beast admitted the other day that the full story was this: the budget item was axed at the request of education officials because it was a repetition of a separate rule requiring the reporting of campus sexual assaults to the feds.
The false report was written by a college columnist and was first published by another site, Jezebel. The writer, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, foolishly defended her substandard reporting. She went on Twitter to hit back at Walker’s defenders: “I'm not gonna apologize for reporting what was in the budget. Because that was in the budget. Ask your gov. to apologize for bad optix.” She later did apologize.

Perhaps more embarrassing was a New York Times column that haphazardly blamed Walker for teacher layoffs that occurred before he took office. According to Politico, Times columnist Gail Collins wrote that Walker cuts to education caused teacher layoffs in 2010. But Walker didn’t take office until 2011.

Yikes.

Conservative news sites had a field day with the error, for which the Times printed a correction. Collins had written that that Walker’s recent speech in Iowa, in which he criticized the seniority-based layoff process for teachers, was all about “waging war on public employee unions, particularly the ones for teachers.”
Fellow conservative Republicans shouldn’t feel too bad for Walker. As the liberal Daily Kos has noted, Walker uses the example of Wisconsin teacher Claudia Felske when criticizing union practices. But he botches and spins the Felske story beyond all recognition.