Cowboy State Daily’s political bias was once again on full display as writer Clair McFarland tried to put together a hit piece to protect favored political allies.
Ms McFarland was tasked with reporting on an issue with the Wyoming Legislative Service Office and their admitted quarantining of constituent emails to lawmakers, as detailed in this report. However, as is too often the case with Cowboy State Daily reporting, rather than being the watchdog for the people, they play lapdog to the establishment class and special interests in Cheyenne.
Why side with the establishment?
That question naturally follows. Why target a conservative grassroots organization representing thousands of voters while ignoring entrenched, well-funded influence groups?? You don’t see Cowboy State Daily or senators like Bo Biteman and Tara Nethercott going after any of the DC Affiliate groups like the Wyoming Education Association, Wyoming Medical Society, Wyoming Hospital Association or all the other special interest groups that have had a stranglehold on Cheyenne for decades.
More curious still is what McFarland failed to disclose. Wayne Hughes, the owner of Cowboy State Daily and a California billionaire who relocated to Wyoming in 2017, is now one of the state’s largest political spenders. His Wyoming Hope PAC was Tara Nethercott’s second-largest campaign donor. That connection went entirely unmentioned.
With facts like these omitted, it raises an unavoidable question: are Wyomingites’ best interests truly being served, or are we watching yet another political game play out behind the scenes?
An Age Old Game of Political Spin
The tricks of the spin trade were on full display starting in the first sentence, where McFarland claims that “the Legislature’s highest-ranking members rejected a controversial bill to keep a list of emails people send to legislators.” When in reality it was a tie vote, with more high-ranking members voting for the bill than against it. Those in favor included the Speaker of the House, the Vice President of the Senate, the Majority Floor Leader, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and the Speaker Pro Tempore.
Further, she opens the article with a blatant misunderstanding of the issue at hand, stating “a controversial piece of legislation that would require legislative staff to keep a rolling list of emails people send to legislators” Did she even read the bill? Because this is factually inaccurate: the bill was not requesting a rolling list of individual emails that are sent to lawmakers. It requested the following, all related to domain names and addresses and only those that were being quarantined:
- The LSO publish a list of all domain names and addresses that are being quarantined or prevented from delivering email to legislators in any way.
- Any person whose email communications to legislators that had been quarantined would be able to contact the LSO to request that their emails be removed from quarantine and delivered to legislators.
- The LSO would remove requested domain names or addresses from quarantine unless the release from quarantine or allowed delivery posed an actual security threat to the information technology systems of the state of Wyoming.
After this disingenuous introduction, CSD immediately placed the following image to influence reader opinions to their advantage. On the left, a smiling image of Senator Bo Biteman, who voted down the legislation. On the right, Representative John Bear (who voted in favor) mid argument and seemingly unhappy. Manipulation that is all too familiar in today’s biased mainstream media.
Of the quotes and statements McFarland chose to incorporate into her article nearly 70% were focused on making the case to support the lawmakers opposing the bill. Continuing on this tilt, McFarland spoke with 3 of the 5 lawmakers that opposed the bill to get their opinions. This included Senators Biteman, Gierau, and Nethercott. And yet it appears she talked with 0 of the lawmakers that voted for the bill. She goes on to quote Biteman over 6 times in the article – giving him an outsized chance to support his manipulation of words while failing to ask him how to explain Director Obrecht’s email.
She even added Biteman’s false statement that Honor Wyoming uses a bulk email service, and that the legislative system rightly classifies that output as spam. This is not true and she did not even ask us if it is true during our interview (more on that below). Saving that falsehood as another “misinformation” tool on her part.
As for Nethercott? She quotes the senator 12 times, allowing unfettered access to attack her opponents with zero push back on any of her claims. Like “Wyoming being taken over by large political well funded organizations”. But for Nethercott, this only applies to one class of organization, the ones that give a voice to the average conservative voter. Anybody that doesn’t toe the establishment line.
Sen. Nethercott also made this false statement, insinuating that Honor Wyoming is using a platform “that doesn’t allow them to reply back to you.” This is utterly untrue and again, Ms McFarland did nothing to verify the truth of this as that would undermine her biased story and preferred outcome of supporting the establishment.
The truth? Honor Wyoming uses one of the most popular and trusted civic advocacy software tools in the country, Quorum. The same software system used by thousands of nonprofits to deliver emails to lawmakers in almost every capitol of every state in America. Without censorship concerns. The same platform other nonprofits in Wyoming use that were also being quarantined. The system requires the voter to enter their name, personal email address and zip code. Their email is then sent on behalf of the constituent to the lawmaker(s) using the personal information provided so when (or if) the lawmaker responds, the exchange is a private communication between the lawmaker and constituent’s private email.
When Honor Wyoming was given the opportunity to answer questions, the story line was already baked
But it gets better. McFarland admitted during one of our phone calls with her that she had been texting with Biteman during the session. Conveniently it seems her storyline in favor of those opposing the bill was ready to go before doing any research or talking with any stakeholders and all before the hearing was even finished. Let that sink in….the story line was apparently baked before any investigative journalist efforts might have been attempted (they weren’t).
McFarland reached out to Honor Wyoming, sending two separate emails that showed her cards a bit early. The questions she wanted to entertain during our call with her had nothing to do with the LSO’s letter showing that emails were in fact being quarantined. They really had nothing to do with the issue at hand at all.
-Nothing to do with the possibility of a need to protect the free speech of thousands of Wyoming voters.
-Nothing about the 2,000 petitions that were signed by concerned citizens.
Instead, she zeroed in on deflecting from the real issue by helping Biteman and Nethercott prop up their Biden-esque efforts to characterize anything they disagree with as disinformation.
But we must give McFarland some credit. She did a commendable job helping Nethercott and Biteman in their efforts to twist definitions and words to try and hoodwink the public into thinking nothing is amiss. The simple reality is that the LSO was blocking certain constituent emails from reaching their lawmaker’s actual inbox. Yet both Senators feverishly made the claim that no emails have been blocked or censored and that any statements to the contrary are dangerous disinformation campaigns. Here is LSO Director Albrecht’s email clearly stating emails were being quarantined. Oops.
Did the storyline change when presented with LSO Director’s email admitting that they were in fact quarantining constituent emails? Sadly not. McFarland had access to this document and yet decided to support a false narrative by including quotes from Nethercott such as “the effort sprang from a falsehood that legislators aren’t receiving emails. That is factually wrong and they know it.”
Or promoting statements like “We’ve established the fact that no emails have been blocked,” by Biteman with no push back. A real disservice to the people of Wyoming to say the least.
Instead of addressing the legitimate quarantine concern, Biteman and Nethercott wanted to play word games and demonize anyone that dared to opine that quarantining communications without someone’s knowledge is a form of censorship. It was a failed attempt at trying to manipulate terminology to fit their political agendas. Something the public has long lost patience for. You know the drill, redefine what a woman is. Change the definition of a vaccine. Coming to America illegally is not a crime if we say so. It’s the same old game. Now we can add that blocking communications is somehow not a type of censorship. Even Zuckerberg would be proud.
Simple Journalistic Research Would Have shown the truth
If McFarland had looked at the evidence and just done a quick search for the common definition of these simple terms, she would have found the following:
Quarantined emails are messages flagged by security filters as potential spam, phishing attempts, or malware, which are isolated in a secure, separate area rather than being delivered to the user’s inbox.
Censorship is the suppression or removal of writing, artistic work, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
What have we learned with even a few minutes of research? Censorship is the suppression of communications. Quarantined emails are messages that are being suppressed. Wait for it……quarantining emails is a form of censorship.
An inconvenient truth for Biteman and Nethercott, but a truth all the same.
With the evidence provided, thousands of petitions signed by concerned citizens, and support by “high-ranking” prominent lawmakers, McFarland still decided to try and help spin the issue as a conspiracy theory and disinformation campaign. She does this on behalf of the establishment class, siding against the people’s interests.
We’ve seen this play out time and time again across America since Covid. But the good news is that independent media voices and grassroots organizations have turned the tide on establishment politicians and legacy media’s previous monopoly on news narratives. And that’s what these folks are really upset about.