Sep
28
Christine Barry is named Troublemaker of the Week by Wikifoia
September 28, 2008 |
My esteemed colleague, Christine Barry, has been called a troublemaker–again. But this time, it’s music to her ears.
WikiFoia named Christine troublemaker of the week for the hard work that she did to shed light on the abusive management style of Shiawassee County Sheriff Jon Wilson.
It’s not the first time that Christine Barry has been acknowledged as an accomplished social deviant. Her BFM blog was banned in the state capitol building, because so many juicy tidbits were appearing on it; for a time the people charged with running the state must have perceived a real danger that employees would either spill their guts onto the BFM site, or that they would sit for hours at a time, entranced by the wrongdoing of elected officials. Fortunately for Christine, there’s an obscure loophole for bloggers, known as “The First Amendment,” so the ban is off.
When Christine broke the story about Sheriff Wilson, he famously said, “I’m not responding to the blog.” Then in August, the incumbent sheriff was defeated in his own party’s primary, by a relative political newcomer named Deana Finnegan, an assistant prosecutor who will be the county’s first elected female sheriff, if she’s victorious in the November general election.
Just guessing, but we think the election results have something to do with Christine and her cohort of merry bloggers, who uncovered documents detailing the sheriff’s alleged assaults against two deputies. And his shuffling of top brass in the department, reputedly to punish some and to use the Hatch Act to prevent others from running against him. (The act forbids anyone with a federally funded job from running for a local office.) It may have also helped that the sheriff suddenly cut off all contact with the local newspaper, The (Owosso, Mich.) Argus-Press, when a reporter decided to delve into the controversty–he refused to even provide press releases about traffic accidents that were considered routine before the reporter’s investigation. News of that was carried nationwide on the Associated Press wire.
Nice work, Christine. Your hard work confirms, once again, that sunshine is the best disinfectant.
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