When she announced her run for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Judge Maria Lazar stressed that she is independent, non-partisan, and doesn’t belong to a political party. Yet WISN-TV and the Associated Press rushed to frame her through a partisan lens in their headines.
In contrast, her opponent Judge Chris Taylor was a former Democratic state legislator who was widely regarded as one of the most liberal members of the Wisconsin state Legislature. She also was a policy director for Planned Parenthood who won’t even promise not to rule on cases involving….Planned Parenthood. Yet some in the media framed her through a nonpartisan lens.
WISN-TV dropped the partisan angle altogether in its headline when reporting on Taylor’s announcement, and the AP didn’t call her liberal in its headline; rather, the wire service framed Taylor as a fighter for abortion “rights.” Although the body of the stories elaborated on the candidates, headlines arguably frame a story most, and they’re all that some people see. And that’s what we’re talking about here.
Contrast.
Supreme Court races are supposed to be non-partisan.
It’s enough to make your head spin, but it’s a continuation of a trend, in which some in the legacy media label sites like Wisconsin Right Now conservative (we’re an independent site), but they don’t always apply a partisan label to liberal sites like the Wisconsin Examiner or Up North News. As an aside, in its headline, the Examiner called Lazar an “Act 10 lawyer” and gave no label to Taylor.
It also seems sometimes like some in the media consider conservatives the “other,” whereas liberals get presented as the “norm” not necessitating a label.
This matters because Lazar is expressly running a campaign AGAINST the overt partisanship by liberal candidates to the state Supreme Court, yet she’s being framed as the partisan one.
