Other than maybe the guys at Powerline, this story
probably won’t get too much attention, but it should get more.
The skinny? Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch discovered
that a political competitor had hired a team to do opposition
research on Hatch and his family. Apparently the Star
Tribune, a notoriously Democrat-friendly publication, received
the opposition research file, or at the least was told the bulk of
its contents, and a couple of reporters asked Hatch questions
specific to the details revealed in the files.
Hatch refused to answer the questions, and filed a complaint
with a state journalism organization. In response, the Star
Tribune published an article about the complaint, and made it
clear that it knew about the contents of the opposition research
file. So without publishing it, it smeared Hatch anyway through
hints and innuendo, even though the paper has no corroboration.
We don’t know Hatch, but it’s this kind of backdoor leaking and
smear work of the MSM that is giving it a worse name than it
already had.