After being blasted by the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reporter Patrick Marley defended his paper's criticism of Hillary Clinton's transparency record on Thursday.
MSNBC host José Díaz-Balart asked Marley, who did not take part in the editorial, about the critique ahead of the Wisconsin presidential primaries.
"Your paper, just yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, released an op-ed attacking Hillary Clinton's record. Normally, the editorial boards of papers release an endorsement of a candidate they support. What's behind releasing an op-ed critical of a candidate?" Díaz-Balart asked.
"Well, I mean, I'm not involved with—" Marley said.
"Right, I know you're not," Díaz-Balart said.
"With writing the editorials, obviously, but our paper has always taken a strong stance from its editorial page on open government. It's been a very big deal, particularly here in Wisconsin," Marley said. "There was an effort led by Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the legislature to eviscerate the state's open records law. That really opened the eyes of a lot of people. There was a huge bipartisan response to that that stopped that."
"Since then, in particular, our paper, which has always been a champion of open government, has really taken a hard line on that, and a lot of editorials like that and so they looked at Hillary Clinton's record and they didn't like what they saw."
One of the leading criticisms of Clinton during the 2016 campaign, by Democrats and Republicans alike, has been her poor transparency record.