Every journalist has a job to tell the truth, but investigative reporters are held to an even higher standard.

On Tuesday, reporter Dave Umhoefer came to my Journalism 4953 class to speak about his work with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and PolitiFact

Umhoefer’s job at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact is to find statements made by politicians in speeches, political advertisements, etc. and conduct in-depth research to determine whether or not the statement is true. 

“We scour the political universe for what we call statements or claims,” Umhoefer said. “We are always on the lookout for ridiculous or interesting claims.”

Depending on the validity of the statement, the politician will receive a rating between true and pants on fire.  Each rating is backed by hard research including as much as 30 sources to give the reader proof about the truthfulness or falsity of a statement. 

Umhoefer said that his work at Politifact completely changed his way of thinking.  Now, he finds other investigative reporting to be too much of he said, she said and not enough hard facts.  He explained how that reporting is “just not satisfying anymore.”

In a country where too many politicians lie it is nice to know that there is a place where the average citizen can investigate what is said and learn about the character of each politician.  It forces politicians to be held accountable for the statements they make.
 
As a journalism student at Marquette University and intern for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, I know what it means to be constantly trying to get a new story.  Some days I have had to leave straight from class to an event that I needed to cover.  There is a huge pressure to keep up with my work and get stories out quickly.  However, compared to campaign journalists, I do very little work.  After all, I only work for a small online news outlet and only produce a maximum of two stories a week.

In 1972, this high-speed world of political campaign journalism was captured by the book “Boys on the Bus.”  This book told the tales of journalists traveling together to cover political campaigns and get out the news story.

Today, instead of having many well-paid journalists for a campaign, news outlets are looking towards young, up-and-coming journalists to do the dirty work. 

With the Internet and the changing face of the media, young journalists such as NBC embed reporters literally cover political campaigns seven days a week almost 24 hours a day. Each embed is selected from a highly competitive pool of journalists to follow one candidate everywhere he goes. 

To some journalists this would appear to be the opportunity of a lifetime, but to me it sounds completely crazy.  The embed reporters have to carry around all sorts of equipment everywhere they go, getting little sleep and no time to sit at a table and eat much less see their families.  To top it all off, they work “at a fraction of the salary” that campaign reporters during the 1970s would make.

It is an amazing opportunity and I take my hat off to all journalists that participate in the program but for me, there is no price you could pay me where I would exchange my life, my family, and my freedoms for months just for a good opportunity.
 
In past months, the GOP primary has had heavy coverage from the Chicago Tribune.  There were reporters at every single debate as well as a continuous stream of Tweets.  However, since Mitt Romney has become the clear frontrunner, this has slightly changed.

Their national politics page seems to be much less focused on the GOP and instead more focused on President Obama and the wider political spectrum.  For example, there was a story about how the enthusiasm that young voters felt towards Obama has waned.  Another article spoke about Obama addressing student debt at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Out of about 22 national politics articles published by the Tribune since April 20 there are only 2 about Romney as apposed to 6 related to Obama.  There were also a couple of stories about the secret service scandal and Jonathan Edward’s trial, but it appears as if Romney has somewhat slipped out of the limelight.

Naturally as we get closer to Election Day the Tribune will shift its focus towards Obama because he was the senator in Illinois; still, it is curious that there were very little stories related to Romney.

Citizens and even the media are less focused on the elections because there are bigger news items at this point and the GOP has not even officially announced Romney as the final candidate.  However, it will be interesting to see as we get closer to November how much the Tribune will focus on Obama and how much more or less it will focus on Romney.
 
On April 12 my classmates Kevin HoganAllison Kruschke and I made a trip to WISN (Milwaukee's ABC affiliate). Our job was to visit the station and ask them to see "the public file."  The public file contained information related to how much money super PACs are spending on advertising.  According to ProPublica, an online news source focused on investigative reporting, "TV executives have been fighting a Federal Communications Commission proposal to make the data accessible online."  Since the TV stations are resisting, ProPublica has taken matters into its own hands and is reaching out to the public.

The news outlet is requesting assistance from the community to make copies of the public records from the stations.  Our job is to find the records, scan them, and send the information to ProPublica who will make it accessible online.

At first, Hogan, Kruschke and I were a little worried about asking for the public records.  We were unsure if the station would be resistant or even what information we were supposed to specifically copy.  However, all our worries abated when we began speaking with the staff at WISN.  

As soon as we walked up to the front desk and explained what we were doing, employees were more than happy to assist us.  We were taken to a small room with a filing cabinet and encouraged to look through the files and flag anything we wished to have copied.  Their only request was that we kept all the files in order.

We ended up finding files on Restore our Future (the pro-Romney super PAC) and Red White and Blue Fund (the pro-Santorum super PAC).  Unsurprisingly, each PAC had spent thousands of dollars on advertising at the station and Romney's super PAC far outspent Santorum's.  

The experience did not stop there. We were then asked if we wanted to see the newsroom.  Of course if you ask journalism students if they want to see an actual newsroom, they will not refuse.  We were thrilled at the opportunity and accepted it readily. 

When we were first assigned to go to the stations, the entire Journalism 4953 class groaned. However, the experience turned out to be truly rewarding and I was very thankful for the courtesy and helpfulness exhibited by the WISN staf.
 
On April 3 fellow Journalism 4953 student Heather Ronaldson and I worked together to learn about voters.

After much discussion we decided to follow one voter through her experience of voting and her opinions on the importance of voting and voter ID laws. We specifically decided to follow one woman, Alandria Gladney as she made her way to the polls.

Our adventure began at Marquette University Dental School where Gladney works.  There we conducted a short interview about her opinions on the election and voting in general.  

From there, we left the school and continued our interviewing in the car.  Between potholes and stoplights filming proved to be difficult.  However, we finally made it to the polling place and were able to film Gladney's complete voting experience.

The experience turned out to be very rewarding.  Ronaldson and I learned a lot about Gladney's opinions and about working together in video and sound editing.  

As a journalist, personally, this experience taught me a lot.  I learned to be prepared for anything and that often things do not go the way you expect. Everything from technical difficulties to car troubles could have gone wrong but we planned ahead and were able to develop a quality project.
 
People in the United States are scarred to talk about race.  In everyday conversation we shy away from the topic. We are afraid that talking about race will provoke some sort of passionate argument or maybe a violent altercation. But race and ethnicity are a part of who we are.  We naturally define ourselves black, white or Hispanic, but to talk about it in a conversation has become a sort of cultural taboo.

The case of Trayvon Martin it is an understandably heated topic. A 17 year-old African American boy was shot by a 28 year-old Hispanic man (George Zimmerman). Naturally, people are going to be saddened and even angry and there are going to be questions raised as to the motivation of the shooting. 

According to Zimmerman, he shot Martin in self-defense but the trick is that we will never know Martin's side of the story. So how do we know what is right? As a journalist, this is an extremely difficult case to cover. 

However, although I feel that this case is important, I must ask myself, why is this story the one that is receiving such heavy coverage when there are probably many killings that are race related?  In order to cover this story accurately, I think I would have to keep it in perspective of past racial crimes. I would understand that at times certain cases seem to grab ahold of the media but I would not simply ride the wave of popularity, but I would try to keep the facts in perspective. Most importantly, I must keep in mind that the majority of the news surrounding the case is simply speculation. If I am going to cover the story I would speak directly to the eye witnesses but I would not try to make any personal interpretations because ultimately, we will never know the full story because Trayvon Martin cannot speak with us.

People all around the country, from all walks of life are protesting the case taking pictures of themselves in hoodies and collaborating in demonstrations to show their support for Martin. I believe that people should uphold their beliefs and I would encourage others to do so however, I think that the media has created a huge uproar based on shady facts and speculation and people need to be careful of jumping to conclusions before they know the whole truth. It is a tragedy that a boy was needlessly killed but as a journalist I must evaluate all the facts myself and keep my personal biases out of the story so that I do not convey an inaccurate story to an already passionate audience.

    Author

    I am a journalism and writing intensive English major in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University. 

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