One
of the biggest battles raging in the country is the nature and integrity of the
American media.
Can
the media be trusted? Are the reporters and editors honest?
There
is probably no better place to address this question than in Chicago. The
reason is that the press in Chicago has enjoyed an almost absolute freedom in
the last few decades to publish an anti-police ideology as if it is news, ignoring
any facts and evidence that contradict this platform.
Their
conduct has caused immeasurable damage.
Examples
of the media’s absolute power in Chicago, and their potential dishonesty,
emerge on an almost daily basis. A February 21 column by Sun Times writer Mark
Brown about police accountability is a prime example.
In
his column, Brown dusts off the tired clichés about police corruption and uses
them to justify and explain the bizarre attempts by a coalition in the city to
lean on Mayor Emanuel in the next contract with the Fraternal Order of Police:
A coalition of groups concerned with police
accountability are teaming with the City Council’s Black Caucus to pressure
Mayor Rahm Emanuel to publicly endorse specific changes in police union
contracts to make it easier to investigate officers.
The Coalition for Accountability in Police
Contracts — which includes ACLU of Illinois and the Better Government
Association among others — has drawn up a list of 14 recommendations it wants
to see recognized in new police contracts.
These
include everything from removing the requirement that citizens sign sworn affidavits
when making complaints against police officers to removing restrictions on the
use of past disciplinary records in the investigation of current complaints.
Blue Voice Candidate For President Kevin Graham
So the coalition Brown touts in his column as “concerned with
police accountability” wants anyone in the public to have the same freedom that
the media in Chicago now enjoys: to make any accusation against the police without
fear of accountability, and then be able to use these complaints as a basis for
further investigation of current complaints.
In other words, Brown gives uncontested column space to a
coalition that promotes a system whereby any police officer can be falsely
accused at any time and there will be no legal recourse to stymie such false
accusations.
Only in Chicago could such ludicrous, patently unfair policies be
disseminated, unquestioned, by a newspaper columnist. But this is nothing new for
Brown and his Sun Times. Their publication of an anti-police narrative stands
as an icon of activist journalism, of journalists betraying their obligation to
pursue the truth in favor of selling an ideology.
How can these “police accountability” policies help the citizens
in the Chicago neighborhoods most in need of ending the vicious gang violence
that has exploded in the last few years?
There is one crucial reason Brown and other Chicago journalists
can so easily control the narrative about police in Chicago: The union that
represents the police, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) under current
president Dean Angelo, has refused to take the media on and confront them for
their bias and deception.
While Brown and his media cohorts have effectively intimidated
every city institution with their incessant anti-police hysteria, and when
Brown now gives more space to policies by which any citizen can manufacture
lies in an effort to attack the police, scores of police officers have been
falsely accused. Many have been stripped of their police powers and some have
even been falsely charged with crimes.
In his column, Brown ignores the fact that complaints against
the police decreased by two thirds after signing an affidavit became state law.
This massive decrease is a clear indication that many of the complaints were
false.
Now Brown writes a column about ending this policy. Does Brown
miss the good old days that required accountability from those filing
complaints against the police?
What is really happening in Chicago is that the anti-police
media has made policing almost impossible, as evidenced by the shocking rise in
violent crime, and all the while Brown promotes agencies like the Better
Government Association who prattle on about police accountability.
What about accountability in the media and in the anti-police
movement within the city?
Has Brown, for example, written anything about what’s happening
in the criminal case against Chicago Police Commander Glenn Evans, charged two
years ago with nine felony counts after arresting a gang member? The judge in
the case acquitted Evans, saying the allegations against him by the gang member
were ludicrous. A chilling defense theory by Evans’ lawyer pointed to a frame-up
job against Evans by the agency that investigates police misconduct, IPRA. Now
Evans has filed a massive lawsuit against IPRA and the media.
Commander Glenn Evans
You won’t find Brown devoting any space in his column to this
story, nor will you find him or his fellow journalists digging through the
mountains of evidence from an Inspector General investigation that could support
Evans’ claim. Nor will you find Brown demanding an investigation into the IPRA
investigators accused of misconduct in building their case against Evans.
No, for Brown and many journalists in Chicago, when a cop is
accused, it’s a green light to start digging into the officer’s past. But when
some individual, even a career criminal, or some agency is accused of
misconduct against the police, even against a commander who enjoyed widespread
support in the community, Brown has nothing to say.
You see, in Chicago, if evidence arises that contradicts the media’s
anti-police narrative, the media merely ignores it.
And what about Northwestern University, accused in a lawsuit of
framing an innocent man in an effort to spring a guilty man from prison? It’s
the infamous Anthony Porter saga, which seems to reveal more evidence every
month of corruption in the wrongful conviction movement, going back decades and
spanning several cases.
The coverage of the Anthony Porter case that resulted in Porter
being exonerated in 1999 stands as some of the greatest corruption in the
history of American journalism. Without the cheerleading of Chicago’s
anti-police media, Anthony Porter could likely never have been exonerated, and
an innocent man could not have been accused of his murder. And as the evidence
unfolds of just how bad the conduct of the media was in this case,
“journalists” like Brown remain silent.
Isn’t that what you call a “code of silence”?
And then what about the release of Howard Morgan from prison?
Morgan was charged with four counts of Attempted Murder of four
police officers, three of whom were shot. After eight years and two trials,
Morgan was finally convicted and sentenced to forty years in prison. Then,
moments before Governor Pat Quinn left office, he commuted the sentence of
Morgan and let him out of prison.
A man convicted of trying to murder four police officers during
a traffic stop in 2005, three of the officers wounded, just walked out of
prison.
Brown and other Chicago media looked into it, right? They
checked out why Quinn would make such a decision?
<Insert crickets chirping here>
Is it any wonder public trust in the national media sunk to its
lowest ever last year, as recorded in a Gallup poll, published at
www.gallup.com:
Americans'
trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately
and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history,
with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.
This is down eight percentage points from last year. Is there
any doubt that Chicago’s media reputation would be much lower?
How much lower is confidence in the media in Chicago, a place
where the media is clearly out of control?
It’s time for the FOP to take on Chicago’s media machine. It’s
time there was a new voice for the police and for the citizens suffering under
the exploding gang violence in the city.
It’s time for a Blue Voice.
Blue Voice Slate...
