Jessica McBride Dumps on Dan Bice

Dan Bice

The news that Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice died last week of cancer at age 62 was a shock. Not just because it happened so quickly and he seemed too young to go, but because of the impact his longtime column “No Quarter,” and before that “Spivak and Bice” (co-written with Cary Spivak), has had since 1998.

The praise from politicians poured in, with members of both parties praising Bice. Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson called the veteran journalist “hard-hitting, hard-working, conscientious,” and Democrat and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley declared that Bice’s “commitment to nonpartisan, honest reporting set the standard for journalism by holding public figures accountable.”

Jessica McBride.

All of which was killing UW-Milwaukee journalism faculty member and former Journal Sentinel reporter Jessica McBride. “I’ve … tried to hold back,” she wrote on Facebook, “but the over-the-top, nauseatingly glowing tributes to a certain person really gall me, and I just can’t take it anymore.”

And then she began blasting away at Bice:

“This ‘great journalist’ LIED about me in print … Purposely lied. He fabricated a journalistic ethical conflict that I DID NOT have with false and purposeful choice of language … I did not have a journalistic ethical conflict with the individual in question. It was not an interview. I was not even a reporter at the time. I was not covering him at the time …

“So he made up the connection. And then he called journalistic ‘ethics’ professors and asked them to weigh in on the FALSE premise in an attempt to destroy my career (didn’t work). And then quoted them.”

Whew. Tough stuff. But awfully vague: Who was the individual in question, when did this situation occur, how is it that Bice “made up” a connection? The list of unanswered questions is long.

McBride clearly doesn’t want to validate any part of Bice’s reporting by being more specific, but she complains the “lie is still on the Internet,” so anyone who doesn’t know the story can probably dig it up. Bice’s column on June 19, 2009 accuses then-Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn of having an affair “with journalist who wrote about him,” that being Jessica McBride.

The story was of no small interest to me, as I was then editor of Milwaukee Magazine, which published the 5,400-word feature story by McBride, who was then a journalism instructor at UWM and a freelance writer who had written several well-reported features for the magazine. The feature on Flynn was published in the May issue and hit the newsstands in late April. As I later wrote in a defense of the feature, McBride emailed the story to me in January, three months before it was published, and then did a rewrite I requested, which she completed on Feb. 16. Bice did not include this in his story, which speculates that the emails between Flynn and McBride suggest “the two became involved while McBride was working on the lengthy article.”

That said, McBride had refused Bice’s request for an interview and he had the chief on the record admitting he had an affair though not naming McBride. As I learned from McBride, the affair began on May 1, some ten weeks after she completed her rewrite. With that in mind I wrote the column defending her and blasting Bice.

One reason I felt no worries about the feature’s point of view is that I, as editor, picked what to include in it and what to cut. McBride interviewed more than 45 people, went though voluminous clips about Flynn, and compiled 35,000 words of material that she struggled to shape into a narrative. She finally turned in a 7,600-word story that I trimmed to 5,400 words. I cut things that were both favorable and negative about the police chief.

But a day after my column defending McBride everything changed. Flynn, it turned out, had used his public email to write McBride and Bice had requested these as public records. McBride learned of this and began forwarding the emails between her and Flynn to me. For hour after hour the ping of these emails hit my computer. I couldn’t believe how many there were.

The emails did confirm that, other than their one interview in December, McBride and Flynn never met face-to-face until May 1 at an Irish bar. But they also suggested the two got awfully chatty and friendly — strictly through email, granted, but it was a lot of email — as soon as McBride finished reporting her story on Jan. 5 and well before she finished the rewrite I requested.

“But at this point, the precise details hardly matter,” I wrote in a follow-up column conceding this had become an ethical issue for Milwaukee Magazine. “In the eyes of the public, McBride has compromised herself — and this magazine. This has cast a shadow over our story on Chief Flynn, and our online version of the story will henceforth fully inform readers about the controversy.”

I don’t think any of us came out of the controversy with clean hands. McBride showed terrible judgment, Bice played a bit fast and loose in his column, and I was “guilty of the same thing I accused [Bice] of,” failing “to do due diligence,” as I wrote at the time.

There’s no doubt the controversy was damaging to McBride. “I’m still called vile, s*x**l slurs on a REGULAR basis because … I blocked another such comment a few minutes ago … I said, enough. I can’t take it anymore. My photo was put on a p**n star’s body and pasted on hardcore g*ng r**e websites.”

I sympathize with McBride, and let’s face it, women get punished much harder on the internet — and perhaps still in the workplace over sexual affairs.

But here’s the question. Is it newsworthy when a married police chief has an affair with a married woman? I would say yes and all the more so if it involves a journalist not long after she finishes her feature story on him.

McBride’s post goes on to attack Bice for other alleged offenses and unfair columns, but doesn’t link to the stories or provide details so it comes off as an angry diatribe. I admire her dogged reporting, and her students speak highly of her as a journalism instructor, but her analysis pieces, especially defending herself, can be puerile.

McBride also claims that “liberals are crowing about what a great journalist [Bice] was but more conservatives are holding their tongues.” I’ve argued the opposite in a past column, that Bice was tougher on Democrats, but suggested that was due to the editor he worked under.

Which is something that McBride and other Bice detractors have missed: Because it was so punchy, opinionated and unlike anything else published by the Journal Sentinel, his column undoubtedly got a lot of attention from the editors, and we’ll never know what compromises he had to make. (I did the same when I was at the paper, figuring it was better to get 85% of the story than nothing.) Bice was also under pressure from newsmakers and members of both parties complaining to him and his editors. It was a stressful job, I have no doubt. Yet he continued to write a must-read column of statewide importance and handle all the complaints with good grace. Under the circumstances, what he accomplished was pretty heroic.

I doubt he will be replaced, both because there may be no other JS reporter with the smarts and experience to do it, nor any staffer who wants the stress.

As for McBride, her latest diatribe was preceded by a story for Wisconsin Right Now I’ve just seen which is not bylined or dated, but presumably ghostwritten or coached by her — a kind of PR piece that defends McBride from Bice’s column by quoting the first column I wrote on the controversy while ignoring my second column with its very different take.

And late last week she did a Facebook noting she “disabled comments” on her recent post on Bice because “It is no longer fodder for public discussion. I get to write my own story now. And I get the final word.”

If only life were that simple.