UPDATE: Dave Helling of the Kansas City Star has done some investigating and discovered that local conservative writer Jack Cashill is behind the Phill Kline Web site. Cashill has been a long-time executive editor at Ingram's magazine and author of several books. 07-23-2008 Cashill, on the barrelhead
It looks like author, radio and TV pundit, and conservative provocateur Jack Cashill is behind this new website, KC News Watch.
Cashill is listed as the incorporator and agent for KC NewsWatch, which is registered with the Missouri Secretary of State as a non-profit corporation. The papers were filed July 1, 2008.
The website says the corporation is a 501(c)(4), a non-profit political organization.
We're told the group is buying time on local radio, pushing Phill Kline and other Republican candidates.
The domain name is registered to Bob Gough of Lee's Summit, a well-known anti-tax activist and former candidate for Jackson County Executive (he opposed the stadium tax increase.)
In one of the oddest political races ever, Republican Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline is virtually ignoring his primary opponent Steve Howe, but going directly after the Kansas City Star, the area's leading newspaper. In numerous radio spots airing on KC stations Kline's camp goes directly after the Star's coverage of him. In fact, the radio ads refer listeners to a site called KCNewsWatch (http://kcnewswatch.com/default.htm) a non-profit group whose stated goal is: "...to watch the news and objectively correct it as needed through appropriate reporting and commentary. Particular emphasis will be on news print, radio and television media reaching areas surrounding the Kansas City Metro area." KC Star columnist Mike Hendricks has written an interesting column (below) that talks about the anti-Star campaign. The Star's Readers' Representative Derek Donovan also wrote a column discussing the Kline issue. 07-10-2008
UPDATE (07-13-2008): From Derek Donovan's column titled: "Sometimes, too much of a single viewpoint seems intentional" LINK TO ENTIRE ARTICLE: http://www.kansascity.com/news/reader/story/702659.html ...Kline is a frequent focus of comment, as I’ve noted before. It’s certainly true that The Star’s opinion pieces have featured many more knocks than praises for him over the years. And since I work closely with the Letters editor, I can vouch for the fact that traffic there tends to be overwhelmingly negative toward Kline. A newsroom is a rather decentralized place, and too many individual pieces can appear in different sections over a short period of time, giving the appearance of an orchestrated campaign. Editors may then step in to equalize things — but it’s too late to undo readers’ impressions at that point. Another strong conservative voice in the roster of staff columnists would also be a powerful safety valve. Speaking of Kline, a few readers have pointed out radio commercials blasting The Star for not highlighting his positive accomplishments. Some of those criticisms are defensible, but one is an outright lie. The ad charges that the paper didn’t cover his successful prosecution of John Henry Horton for the 1974 murder of Lizabeth Wilson earlier this year. The four-column centerpiece photo on Page A-1 March 6, in which Kline is smiling and holding the hand of one of Wilson’s brothers, shows that’s simply untrue. In fact, I heard complaints at the time that the picture should have focused on the Wilson family instead.
Phill Kline runs against KC Star.
Such are the times of Phill Kline By MIKE HENDRICKS The Kansas City Star Me run for office? The republic isn’t ready for that. But after listening to the pro-Phill Kline radio commercials that began airing this week, I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of a negative campaign ad. It’s almost as if the Johnson County district attorney is running against The Kansas City Star, rather than his opponent in the GOP primary. The radio spots don’t even mention Steve Howe. Instead, an unnamed announcer portrays Kline as a heroic prosecutor who has lived “a life committed to fighting crime never reported by The Kansas City Star…” and so on. The Kline campaign denies having any connection to the ads, which conclude by saying they are sponsored by the Victims Voice Foundation. What’s that? We might never know, thanks to loopholes in the campaign laws. As long as they steer clear of making a straightforward endorsement, ads such as the pro-Kline spots are not covered by campaign finance laws, said Carol Williams at the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission. “We will never know who they really are,” she said. “Never know how much they spent. “They don’t have to report squat.” Third-party campaign ads are a story unto themselves, but this is about Phill Kline and those of us who cover him. It’s no secret that Kline lacks warm feelings for this newspaper. He’s been using The Star as his imagined foil since at least 2006, when he lost re-election as Kansas attorney general. It’s gotten louder since party insiders appointed him JoCo DA. An article describing the relationship between Kline and the paper was published this week in Citizen magazine, which is run by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization in Colorado Springs, Colo. That’s the same James Dobson who recently endorsed Kline. Under the headline “Star v. Kline,” a sentence in italics summarizes the article that follows: “The biggest newspaper in Kansas is on the warpath against a native son who’s holding Planned Parenthood accountable.” None of that is factually accurate, except the native son part. The paper’s home base is Missouri, we aren’t on the warpath against anyone, and so far Kline hasn’t held Planned Parenthood accountable for anything. But I quibble. The writer, Tom Hess, goes on to describe what he believes is Kline’s noble pursuit of the abortion provider and The Star’s critical treatment of such over the years. All of which adds up to exactly what, I’m not sure. Perhaps the supposed conflict between Kline and The Star is a way to rally Kline supporters, who don’t have much use for the media. Or who might not be all that motivated to turn out to vote in August, if the race was merely between their hero and an opponent who isn’t particularly well-known. Whatever the campaign strategy, straw man seems to be the role assigned to my colleagues who write straight news and people like me who spout opinions. But allow me to establish a couple of facts for the record. First, I’ve got nothing personal against Phill Kline. I told Hess as much when he interviewed me on my back deck last month. “I like Phill,” I said. It’s just that he and I differ on many issues, and then there’s the question of his credibility. “As both attorney general and district attorney, he said that his main focus would not be abortion, and then it turned out to be the focus of his terms in office.” That’s the quote I gave Hess, and I’m sticking with it. Hess did his own statistical analysis of The Star’s coverage. So I went back and looked at the four dozen or so times I’ve mentioned Kline in columns over the last 11 years. About half of those columns were critical of Kline, and about half were what I would consider neutral. Four were plainly positive. And I’m not about to apologize for that. Phill deserved every one of those pats on the head, just as he deserved every kick in the pants. Put that in a commercial. LINK: http://www.kansascity.com/news/columnists/mike_hendricks/story/697457.html
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