Following our blog post about MLive and the Mackinac Center yesterday, I have been notified by the Saginaw-Bay City editor that they will no longer publish bill and vote tracking information from the biased MichiganVotes.org website.
After speaking with the regional editor, Rob Clark, I believe he was simply trying to provide his readers with important information about local elected officials – without fully considering the implications of getting that information from a special interest group like the Mackinac Center. Rob and MLive deserve credit for promptly and personally responding to our criticism.
Moving forward, the Saginaw-Bay City hub will now use internal resources to compile bill and vote tracking information for their readers. This is a time and labor-intensive task, but one that is well worth the effort.
At a time when so many media outlets are cutting back on news departments, it’s refreshing to see that MLive is investing in real reporters, and willing to make quick adjustments to improve its product.
Thanks to everyone who urged MLive to do the right thing.
Something else you may want to look into regarding Mlive is whether or not a key member of Dave Camps staff has a spouse who is an editor at Mlive. Mlive is constantly doing fluff pieces on Camp in their Bay City and Saginaw editions. I have been told that one of the editors is the spouse of a Camp aide. Have no idea whether or not it is true, but it makes sense as to the number of Camp pieces they do.
Good work!!!
Hard to believe the Regional Editor ‘didn’t consider’ getting info from MACINAC CENTER?? Better keep on sharp eye on this – it smells.
There is only one reason they don’t want it published, duh…they don’t want people to know.
This is what grassroots democracy looks like. Imagine what can happen when we all pull together, infinite possibilities.
The mackinac center is a right wing hack organization but repubs and some media want to pretend it is non-partisan. I don’t want to call it a right wing think tank because they don’t think there – they just follow repub standard lies. It is koch funded and its not credible.
I thought the original story centered around MLive using info gleaned from michiganvotes.org to show readers how legislators voted. There is nothing wrong with that unless one believes they are lying about who voted for what. Yes, it’s sponsored by the Mackinac Center and they are admittedly conservative, (Republican for the rest of us.) But do folks believe that the michiganvotes.org information technology people are changing ayes into nays and vice versa? I think some of the info one can get from the website is very useful. Can you easily search the legislature.mi.gov website and return info on which legislators voted against their party? Can you list missed roll call votes? I’m no fan of the conservatism expressed by the Mackinac Center but I’ve found no reason to distrust the record of votes that michiganvotes.org publishes. Does anybody know of a better, easy-to-surf website than michiganvotes.org for legislative voting records? I thought MLive.com was doing a great service to its readers by publishing who voted for or against bills, and keeping legislative actions in the public eye. Oops – my mistake.
By the way, I’m not employed by MLive.com or Mackinac Center or Dick DeVos, etc.