Earlier this month, reporters working for Lee Enterprises wrote a story attempting to paint the Montana Republican Party in a negative light for simply asking questions of potential candidates and preparing them for the campaign trail. While Democrat candidates face scandals for wishing death on their political opponents, their attack dogs in the media had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a topic they could spin into a poorly written hit piece.

They titled the article “Who counts as a conservative?” but I have a better question: what counts as journalism?

Those reporters should return to J-school to learn about the need to cover a variety of stories from multiple angles instead of advancing a single, biased perspective. If they don’t, then it’s not journalism; at best, it’s opinion, and at worst, pure propaganda.

Did the authors of the article concurrently investigate the Montana Democratic Party’s internal dysfunction? Did they bother digging into how all the Democrats disguised as Republicans are scrambling to salvage their remaining power after getting exposed? Of course not, because their goal is not objectivity or truth — it’s spin.

Simply look at the slanted language scattered throughout the article. In a blatant attempt to scandalize an otherwise normal practice, they smeared a basic questionnaire sent to candidates as a “purity test.” They also called the new Conservative Governance Committee “clandestine” despite it having been talked about publicly for months. Moreover, they characterized me as a “hardliner” when I’ve been clear about my intention of keeping us a big-tent party, just not at the expense of core principles.

The charged language throughout the article and its skewed portrayal of the situation, which I consider fundamentally inaccurate, are exactly why readers distrust the political reporting from Lee newspapers and are unsubscribing. I don’t want to see their newspapers become what many others have: vessels for school sports results and grocery ads.

That said, what was clearly intended as a hit piece actually ended up strengthening our case with conservative voters. When you read through the article’s spin and look at the facts like a commonsense Montanan, it simply reads like a political party doing its job. The Conservative Governance Committee didn’t emerge out of nowhere — it’s what our base asked for.

The Montana Republican Party will continue to deliver our message to voters across Montana ahead of the 2026 election, regardless of attacks from the liberal media. The team at Lee Enterprises and other media outlets should step up their game if they want to be taken seriously. Otherwise, readers will keep asking the same question they have for years now: is this even journalism anymore?

MTGOP Chairman Art Wittich

Published in Lee Enterprises newspapers, November 22, 2025
https://helenair.com/opinion/column/article_9d6feb27-1fd7-5add-894a-624673542c3f.html