Talk:Thomas Binger

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 12:04, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that Thomas Binger, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, unsuccessfully ran as the Democratic candidate for district attorney of Racine County, Wisconsin in 2016? Source: <https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2021/11/11/thomas-binger-lead-prosecutor-kyle-rittenhouse-trial-kenosha-wisconsin-judge-yells-at-assistant-da/6387009001/> <https://www.kenoshanews.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/a-look-at-key-players-in-the-upcoming-kyle-rittenhouse-trial/article_b7f6d9e3-2a4b-54ae-b525-d6807db09516.html>
  • ALT0a: ... that Thomas Binger, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, unsuccessfully ran as the Democratic candidate for the office of the Racine County, Wisconsin District Attorney in 2016? Source: <https://www.kenoshanews.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/a-look-at-key-players-in-the-upcoming-kyle-rittenhouse-trial/article_b7f6d9e3-2a4b-54ae-b525-d6807db09516.html> <https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2021/11/11/thomas-binger-lead-prosecutor-kyle-rittenhouse-trial-kenosha-wisconsin-judge-yells-at-assistant-da/6387009001/>

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Pushback (migration)

Created by Mhawk10 (talk). Self-nominated at 07:11, 21 November 2021 (UTC).

• @Mikehawk10: Article is new enough, long enough, neutral, and plagiarism-free. However, i have an issue with the sourcing—the article relies heavily on a Fox News piece, and Fox News is rated "no consensus" at WP:RSP for U.S. politics (which, as candidate for a U.S. political office and lead prosecutor in a trial that absolutely dominated the U.S. news cycle, this article falls under). I'd prefer that use of that source be cut down significantly first. Hooks are cited and interesting, though, and a QPQ has been done, so we're almost there! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she) 09:03, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
  • @Theleekycauldron: I'm going to push back on your reading of the existing community consensus in this case. My reading of the relevant RfC close (which is what the community consensus on the source actually is) is that Fox News should be used with caution when it is used to verify contentious claims in the areas of politics and science, but for other sorts of claims the source is generally reliable. That RfC also found that there is a reasonable consensus that Fox does not blatantly make up facts in its written content (though its headlines are not so good).

  In light of this, I don't think any use of Fox News here is inappropriate. The only places that the nominated article uses Fox News as its sole source are:

  1. in the "Legal career" section, to support that As of November 2021, he continues to work in his role as an Assistant District Attorney for Kenosha County; and
  2. in the "Personal life" section, to support that Binger is married to his wife, Nicole Gustafson-Binger. As of November 2021, he has had three children with her.

  Neither of these statements appears to be contentious. So, the use of Fox News to support those statements is perfectly fine when in light of the close of the pertinent RfC.

  In all other cases throughout the article where the Fox News piece is used as a source, it is used alongside at least one other source from an established news organization—Fox News is never cited alone for contentious facts. As a result, I think that the article uses the appropriate caution when citing Fox News that the RfC close calls for. I also believe that WP:MINREF is well satisfied.

  If there is a specific contentious statement in the Wikipedia article that you feel is not well-sourced, please let me know so that I can modify it or find an appropriate citation.

— Mhawk10 (talk) 02:13, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Mhawk10: oops, bad ping... you have to enter your actual username in this thing when making nominations. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she) 09:04, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
  • At the time, that was my username (I usurped this username on November 23). My apologies for the inconvenience of not updating this. I've updated the references to my old username above. — Mhawk10 (talk) 02:13, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
    • theleekycauldron, where does this review stand? BlueMoonset (talk) 01:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
      • sorry, stuff has been slipping through the cracks a little lately. Mhawk10 is correct about their use of FOX being appropriate as far as DYK is concerned, so we're good to go. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she) 01:42, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @BlueMoonset: — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:14, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

---

Promoting the main hook to Prep 5 – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 12:04, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Relevance?

I'm all for making new articles on Wikipedia, but can someone explain why it's necessary to have an article on a small-town Wisconsin prosecutor just because he appeared in one major event? It doesn't seem like he is very relevant after the trial wrapped up. TJD2 (talk) 14:49, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

He has received coverage outside of the context of just one trial, as the entire section on his running for DA a few years ago describes. Him being significantly covered as a person in the context of multiple events is evidence of WP:BASIC notability. His running for public office on the level of a county also made him a voluntary public figure, so I see no BLP reason as to why it is bad to write an article on him. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I understand that but by that logic anyone who runs for the position would be notable simply because they ran for it. The majority bulk of the article is about the Rittenhouse trial and when its not talking about that it is describing Binger's position as DA. He is not being covered "in the context of multiple events". Binger is only being described as the DA in the Rittenhouse trial and nothing more. All other context is about his personal career which again, would not be notable had he not taken part in a highly publicized trial. Just like Stuart Scheller before him (who had his own article as well at one point) Binger is not relevant anymore. TJD2 (talk) 18:58, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Update...

The article currently notes that: "Citing state ethics guidelines, Binger told media on November 16 that he would not make public comments about the trial following a jury verdict."

As such, I think it would make sense to update the article to mention that he recently went back on this pledge, doing an in depth hour long interview about the trial with a podcast called "Miranda Warnings," associated with the NY Bar Association: [1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:CA:873D:3842:204A:FAF0:6CD1:3141 (talk) 00:05, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 December 2021

While Binger originally said that he would not do interviews after the trial, he ended up going on a podcast called "Miranda Warnings" several days after the verdict to complain about losing the trial. I think this should open up a "ethical controversies" section of this article to show that there is some debate over the ethics of this prosecutor. 2607:B400:24:0:EC35:D4DF:5A7E:473 (talk) 16:38, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:54, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

If there are reliable sources that frame this as an important ethical controversy in Binger’s life, it might be something to note in the “legal career” section in a single sentence (breaking it out into its own sentence is odd, and probably not appropriate for a BLP given the quantity of coverage). But, I don’t see any such coverage, so it would be undue for inclusion at this time. I do think that the article might be better if we added something about him granting an interview after the trial, but the secondary sourcing just isn’t there. — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:25, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Another job

I heard Binger was asked now to serve as DA anymore, and is currently working a new job, after his demonstrations and blatantly passing the lines on Rittenhouse constitutional rights. 207.7.74.194 (talk) 17:06, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

This does not appear to be the case. Sources such as KCE say otherwise. Someone who's wrong on the internet (talk) 21:05, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Thomas Binger/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Nineteen Ninety-Four guy (talk · contribs) 08:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Will be taking this

Some preliminary thoughts:

• He is native to -> how about "he is a native of"?
• he continues to work in his role as an Assistant District Attorney -> superfluous; revise to "he continues to work as Assistant District Attorney"
• As lead prosecutor in a jury trial, Binger had the responsibility to prove to a jury that Rittenhouse had committed all offenses with which he had been charged beyond a reasonable doubt. -> Remove sentence as it's redundant to the fact mentioned several times that he's a prosecutor, whose primordial duty—proving to the government that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt—is not unique to the Rittenhouse trial
• Later, Binger criticized Schroeder for what Binger... -> "for what he" (pronoun-antecedent agreement)
• Three days later, Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges by the jury, ending the criminal case against him. -> remove struck tautological phrase
• Italicize State v. Rittenhouse section heading

I think that's all my concerns with regard to criteria 1, 3, and 4. Will continue later to check whether the article passes against criterion 2 and 6. Nineteen Ninety-Four guy (talk) 08:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I just finished reviewing the article against criteria 2 and 6; no more issues in this regard. I'd be happy to pass this to GA once the prose issues are resolved. Putting this on hold for now. Nineteen Ninety-Four guy (talk) 14:02, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Nineteen Ninety-Four guy: I've made changes for all of the above. For the first point, "he is native to" was changed to "he was raised in", which feels a bit more natural to me. The rest implemented your suggestions. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 14:53, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, it's a pass. Nineteen Ninety-Four guy (talk) 15:36, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Low quality picture.

The picture of Binger is quite low quality and I think a still from a news broadcast would be better. 172.116.113.102 (talk) 04:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem we'd run into is WP:NFCC; we can't take a still from a copyrighted news broadcast where a news group had a camera pointed at him if we have a public domain screenshot available. Now, if someone were to take a posed photo of Binger, and then upload their own work under a suitable license to Wikimedia Commons, then I would be all for improving this image. Alas, such an image is somewhat hard to come by. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:22, 1 April 2023 (UTC)