In June, the New York Post, the conservative paper run by right wing Rupert Murdoch, started running stories about congressional and senatorial races in battleground states. In Wisconsin, Murdoch picked Amy Sikma for the job.
But by no stretch of the imagination could one say that her reporting was fair and balanced. In fact, it was fairly unbalanced:
Records show Sikma was paid $2,500 in consulting fees by the state GOP in March and April 2023. She also received $4,200 for campaign consulting work for Kelly, a conservative candidate who lost to now-state Supreme Court Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal.
Sikma also said on her LinkedIn page that she was the campaign manager for Jennifer Meinhardt, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the state Assembly in 2021.
In one of her first jobs, Sikma was a research writer for Wisconsin Family Action, a conservative Christian group led by activist Julaine Appling, who helped lead the effort in 2006 to pass a constitutional amendment in Wisconsin banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. In 2014, a federal judge overturned the ban.
She also a history of writing for hightly partisan sites such as The Federalist.
When asked whether the fact that she is writing articles that are favorable to the GOP when she has a history of being paid by them, she naturally lied, of course:
So is it a conflict of interest for Sikma to accept consulting fees from the state Republican Party and then write news stories beneficial to Republican candidates?
Reached last week, Sikma rejected the premise of the question.
“Well, I’m writing stories for the benefit of readers,” she said before referring questions to her editor, Kelly Jane Torrance. Torrance did not answer a series of questions about Sikma’s coverage of Wisconsin.
In all fairness, her sense of journalistic ethics and boundaries are probably very skewed since her husband, Brian Sikma, would write for right wing propagandist sites like Media Trackers. Sikma had been caught numerous times writing things that he knew to be false but his sponsors at the ultra-conservative money tanks, like the Bradley Foundation or the Sam Adams Alliance wanted him to write. Despite that, he would still refer to himself as a journalist. Go figure.
For all the money that these right wing dark money groups are dishing out, you would think that they could find a better grade of hacks.
