Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.
– Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840)
It wasn’t always this way. In 18th century England any reporting or publication of debates taking place in the House of Commons was strictly verboten. While the official records and vote tallies became a matter of public record, the debates themselves were considered highly secretive and a matter of parliamentary privilege.
Despite having always been a rule of the house, parliament formalized the matter in 1738. The resolution explicitly barred the reporting on debates and banned “newswriters” from the “strangers’ gallery”. Thereafter no one was allowed to take notes within the chamber; and any reporting had to be done by memory of those who were permitted limited access.
In spite of the ban – or because of it – public interest in the body politic continued to grow. Several newsletters and magazines including The Political State of Great Britain and Edward Cave’s The Gentleman’s Magazine skirted the ban and risked prosecution by publishing debate details. After a crackdown, the latter and a rival, London Magazine, turned to writing thinly-veiled fictional accounts of debates to avoid arrest.
The politicians’ argument then was the same as it is today; publishers simply could not be trusted to not distort or misrepresent the debate proceedings.
Eventually even the most brazen of publishers succumbed. And so it was that from 1746-1771 almost no accounts of debate were ever published. Fearing prosecution publishers simply remained silent. Naturally, parliament considered the embargo a rousing success.
Bowing to public pressure in 1771, parliament stopped enforcing the law. The actual resolution would not be repealed until 1803, at which time newswriters were restricted to the back row of the stranger’s gallery and had to pay a fee for each session they attended. (One could only imagine the supercilious hyperbolic bloviating which would come from modern reporters if they were charged to attend city council meetings.)
The Tide Turns
A hundred and some years later President Wilson would create the Committee on Public Information. Its sole purpose was to sell WWI to the American people through posters, pamphlets, and of course… the news. It just so happens that one man working at the committee is a 20-something Edward Bernays. Bernays, in addition to being Sigmund Freud’s nephew, is often called the “father” of modern public relations and would go on to write Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928). (Fun Fact: Bernays is the reason we all consider bacon to be a breakfast meat.)
The pendulum had swung. Wilson discovered that he was able to “tell the teller.” Properly leveraged, government was able to manipulate news media into swaying public opinion with relative ease. The power of the news media hadn’t changed. But politicians awareness and skill of how to leverage it had.
Over the next 60 or so years, the pendulum would complete (at least) another full cycle. At various points the media was both cozy and hostile with government, sometimes simultaneously.
Then came the 1980’s and the tectonic plates of the media landscape began shifting dramatically. In 1986 General Electric bought NBC. In 1995 Westinghouse would acquire CBS. Multinational corporations discovered that they too could “tell the teller” by simply owning them.
Throughout the last 255 years politicians, corporations and the public all agree; the power of the media cannot be understated.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
The acquisitions and mega-mergers of the 1980’s and 90’s together with the birth and rise of the internet sounded alarm bells in newsrooms across America. What would become of news reporters and by extension, journalism itself, if corporations were allowed to operate media conglomerates and anyone with a computer could create a website accessible to the masses?
Recognizing the gravity of the situation, a small cadre of journalists formed the Committee of Concerned Journalists (“CCJ”). Beginning in the summer of 1997, the group embarked on a multiyear effort which they described as “the most sustained, systematic and comprehensive examination ever conducted by journalists of news gathering and its responsibilities.”
The results of the CCJ’s efforts are described in the book Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Shoul10d Expect (2001). Written by the group’s founding chairman and former New York Times Washington bureau chief Bill Kovach together with Tom Rosenstiel, Elements of Journalism is now considered a standard text or required reading in journalism programs across the country.
Paraphrasing the book, the purpose of journalism is to:
Provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing, i.e. give the electorate the knowledge required to make informed decisions about their lives, communities, societies, and government.
That theme is supported by the standards put forth by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication which include:
- Informing the public in a manner that advances public knowledge and furthers civic engagement so people can participate in democracy.
- Holding government power accountable by serving as society’s “watchdog” and advancing the principles of the First Amendment including free expression and freedom of the press.
- Gathering, verifying, analyzing, and presenting fair, accurate, thorough and ethical information across platforms where facts are distinguished from opinion.
- Enabling the critical evaluation of information necessary to support self-governance in a diverse and democratic society.
This is what journalists are taught in undergraduate programs across the country. Journalism education is focused around the need for accurate reporting, maintaining ethical best practices, supporting democratic function, and providing the public with information it needs to engage in self-governance. These ideals are superior to publishing for the sake of entertainment, advocacy, or purely commercial aims.
Over Two Decades of Self-Destruction
In 2001 Kovach gave a telephone interview which was published in the Chicago Tribune on March 11th of that year. Now some 25+ years later, Kovach’s answers demonstrate that not only was he prescient, but that most of mainstream journalism has learned nothing over the past two decades. Consider the following exchanges:
Q: You write that in 1999 only 21 percent of Americans thought the press cared about people. That’s a staggering figure. How has it come to this?
A: It has come to this because of the changing nature of the organization of journalism… They identify NBC News, with General Electric, and they wonder, well, what’s the difference between NBC News and general Electric.
Twenty-five years later the situation has not improved. The most recent Gallup poll on the subject says that 70% of people have “not very much” or “none at all” confidence that mass media will report the news fully, accurately and fairly.
Q: Would you be in favor of professional accreditation for journalists?
A: No, because that gives someone outside the power to say you’re a journalist and you’re not. I think the public has to recognize information that is processed through what we call journalism and go to it when they need to make decisions. … I’m saying that there has to be a space in which journalism is practiced that people can identify and go to when they are looking for the kind of information on which they are going to make a decision about whether or not to support a piece of legislation or how to vote. When they make fundamental decisions they need hard facts, because making a decision on the basis of faulty information guarantees you will make a faulty decision.
This is coming from the man who literally wrote the book used at journalism schools throughout the nation.
So What Does Chicago’s Media Report?
Every civic minded individual can answer for themselves whether they believe Chicago’s media is providing them with hard facts, the information they need in order to make intelligent, informed decisions in matters of self-governance. But if over 50% of the students can’t read at grade level, pensions are only 25% funded, and your town leads the country in mass shootings, then it is safe to say the citizenry is making faulty decisions.
To date the Chicago Contrarian has interviewed 4 of next year’s mayoral candidates. Three of the 4 stated that crime is the number one issue facing the city. The 4th said that finance and crime were equally important challenges. It’s undeniable that Chicagoans are concerned about crime and looking for answers. So how does Chicago’s media report on crime?
On any given day the Chicago Tribune publishes between 120-200 articles. That makes it the leviathan of Chicago media, dwarfing the Sun-Times which manages to print only 70-75 stories per day. Startup Block Club Chicago ekes out 15-20 articles per day. The balance of outlets: WGN, ABC7, CBS2, & NBC5 all publish between 20-40 stories per day; however it should be noted they print a lot of articles about the weather and merely cut-and-paste stories from wire services. The conclusion is undeniable that the Tribune is Chicago’s media poster boy.
Compare those numbers with CWBChicago – the tiny reader-funded website focusing on crime – which gets by publishing 3-4 original public-safety pieces per day. In what is truly a David & Goliath situation, one may wonder which media outlet is more focused on providing the public with the information they need in order to make intelligent, informed decisions in matters of self-governance when it comes to crime in Chicago.
In the first nine days of September, CWB published 33 articles. In that same period, the Tribune printed around 1,250 stories. While it is true that the Tribune is a diversified newsroom publishing all matters of “news”, when it comes to informing the public about crime in Chicago, what are Tribune readers getting with their 40x number of stories?
Of the 33 articles published by CWB the Tribune covered only 3 of those stories.
Undoubtedly Tribune editors would lead you to believe that the stories it is not covering are minor and immaterial. If asked, the editors would surely proclaim that they are doing everything in their power to inform their readers such that they have the information they need in order to make intelligent, informed decisions in matters of self-governance as it relates to crime in Chicago. Let’s take a look.
Here are just some of the crime stories the Tribune missed in the first 9 days of September:
- Hit-and-run driver going 63 in a 30 zone kills woman on motorcycle.
- Man dressed as security guard maces passenger on Red Line.
- Potential corruption in the group to select the next police superintendent.
- Man and woman carjacked and pistol-whipped in tony River North.
- Sheriff’s nationwide join challenge to Cook County gun ban.
- Man in critical condition after Uptown park shooting.
- Man who attacked Red Line passenger was on pretrial release x2.
- Police looking to identify robbers of juvenile on the Blue Line.
And this author’s personal favorite… - Man kidnapped and robbed at Buckingham Fountain.
All of the stories the Tribune and other media outlets missed are in the table below.
It’s worth mentioning that the Tribune could certainly add these stories into its mix. The 30 missing stories would represent about a 2% increase in the published total. Even if the Tribune didn’t put them in the print edition, adding them to the website would cost essentially nothing. And there in-lies the rub; the Tribune doesn’t publish the missing stories because its editors feel they don’t comport with its agenda.
The editors at the Tribune want you to believe that riding the CTA is safe. By squelching a couple of “crime on the CTA” stories each week they push a narrative not based in reality. The Tribune essentially gaslights its readership with lies of omission. As the table shows, the Tribune is not alone.
Chicago’s mainstream media doesn’t want say out loud what you already know. That you can get shot at an Uptown park. Or that you might get kidnapped at Buckingham Fountain. Or that you can get carjacked while on your way home from “date night” and end up in the hospital. Or that weapon bans do not make communities safer; but actually embolden criminals.
The Tribune and other media outlets want you to believe that the SAFE-T Act is a rousing success. They can’t be bothered with stories about felons on electronic monitoring committing additional crimes. Those articles would not fit the official media narrative. Never mind what the public needs to know in order to make an informed decision regarding that legislation. Mainstream media decides what you need to know… and not know.
Now Chicago’s news editors would undoubtedly complain that several stories they missed in the list above are not new but follow-up on stories they already covered. What nonsense!
Take the Washington Park mass shooting as an example. Which is more likely: the Tribune’s editors believed tripling the award for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators of the mass shooting to $30,000 was unnewsworthy or, they simply did not want to print another piece – reminding the public – about a mass shooting in Chicago? The far more likely choice is they want the whole thing to go away. From here on out all that remains of that story are the wounded and dead bodies of the victims.
Similarly, Chicago’s mainstream media will rarely follow up on stories regarding the sentencing of everyday criminals. As is the case in the story missed above, why remind the public that in Chicago your life is worth less than a Pepsi?
Follow the Logic; Blame the Media
Just as it leads in terms of articles per day, the Tribune dominates in monthly website traffic. According to Semrush & Similarweb, the Tribune averages around 9 million monthly visitors. The Sun-Times gets a little bit more than half that. The TV stations serve between 2-5.7 million visitors with ABC7 receiving the most and CBS2 getting the least. Block Club Chicago averages only 1 million visits a month. Then we have lowly CWB. With 1/2 million monthly visitors CWB receives about 1/18 the traffic of the Tribune.
It is impossible to not conclude that right-thinking people cannot hate the mainstream media enough. (For look what they hath brought upon us.) In 9 days Chicago’s mainstream media buried at least 30 stories regarding crime in the city. That’s about 100 articles/month or over 1,200 articles/year. AND THAT’S ONLY STORIES RELATED TO CRIME!
What else is the Tribune and other mainstream media not telling us? How many stories regarding political corruption are buried? What is the truth regarding illegals and non-citizens voting? What are the taxpayers getting in return for the millions of their dollars siphoned off every year into non-profits & NGOs? The list goes on.
What Tribune readers don’t know is killing us; and they are the supermajority.
Tribune readers believe the CTA is safe because the Tribune tells them so.
Tribune readers believe the SAFE-T Act is a success because the Tribune tells them so.
Tribune readers believe “private ownership of guns” is bad because the Tribune tells them so.
But the reality is actually worse than that. Much worse.
Consider a well-meaning educated retired school teacher with a left-of-center leaning. Let’s call her Aunt Mary. If one were to ask Aunt Mary, “When you read a piece of news or acquire some tidbit of information, how do you decide whether or not it might be true?” Naturally Aunt Mary would be taken aback by the ridiculousness of the question. What educated adult is unable to decipher truth from fiction? Nevertheless, when pressed regarding the question’s seriousness, Aunt Mary may likely – and appropriately – respond with something like, “Well, if I read something that seems like it might be untrue or unbelievable I would see if I could confirm the fact by consulting other news sources. If other reputable news sources present the same information then I would conclude the fact is probably true.” How reasonable and thoughtful is that? One could not ask for a more considerate answer. But how does that play out in Chicago’s mainstream media?
What happens when Aunt Mary’s nephew sends her an article from CWB detailing an attack on a Lincoln Park Red Line train where the offender gouged the eyes (attempted to blind) the victim and then literally kicked him off of the train in the middle of the afternoon? Aunt Mary might naturally be suspicious of the article’s claims that the offender had been arrested half-a-dozen times and was on pretrial release at the time for not one, but two prior arrests. This is not the society she knows and has experienced over the last 70+ years.
Being a conscientious citizen Aunt Mary dutifully turns on the evening news and grabs a tablet. Surely such an attack would receive wide media attention with it taking place on public transportation in the middle of the afternoon, the severity of the assault, and the criminal history of the offender. Such an event is almost the very definition of “newsworthy”. But alas, not one mainstream news outlet carries the story. The whitewash is complete; it’s as if it never even happened. Aunt Mary concludes, perhaps reasonably, that her nephew was sharing right-wing disinformation.
Such is the state of media in Chicago.
Tribute readers exude a false haughty confidence in their political beliefs. Blissfully ignorant that they are the cause of so much suffering in the city.
To be clear, CWBChicago & Chicago Contrarian readers are not the problem. Readers of alternative media know the hard facts. They have the information they need in order to make intelligent, informed decisions in matters of self-governance. Tribune readers and those who consume only mainstream media do not.
Chicago’s rapid transit system is not safe because the Tribune has buried thousands of stories of crime on the CTA.
Imagine if the Tribune put aside its agenda and focused on disseminating the truth. Knowledge precedes action. If the citizenry was made aware of the reality it could demand change, the CTA would be made safer, and there would be fewer victims.
Chicago’s streets are not safe because the Tribune has buried thousands of stories demonstrating the failures of the SAFE-T Act.
Chicago regularly sees murder and mayhem committed by violent individuals who belong in jail but are out on electronic monitoring. There are literally hundreds of victims, including police officers, and over 50 dead bodies. It doesn’t need to be this way. If the Tribune would only acknowledge reality and print the truth, the citizenry would demand action, the law would change, and streets would be safer.
It warrants repeating that if over 50% of the students can’t read at grade level, pensions are only 25% funded, and your town leads the country in mass shootings, then it is inarguable that the citizenry is making horrible decisions. The only logical conclusion is that Chicago’s journalism class has failed to meet its responsibilities and shoulders a good portion of the blame.
Until Chicago’s mainstream media embraces Bill Kovach’s guidelines, and starts publishing the hard facts, the information the citizens need in order to make intelligent, informed decisions in matters of self-governance, Chicago will remain mired in crime and failure.