The American Spectator

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.