Journalistic and Political Malpractice

In today’s episode, we cover a few examples of both journalistic and political malpractice in Chicago. There is little doubt that the Chicago media routinely generates proof of malpractice when covering the Chicago Police Department. Not to be undone, politicians throughout Illinois make sure to keep up their malpractice numbers on an almost daily basis. This unfortunately forces residents of the city and the state to put up with an unrelenting storm of malpractice.

The first journalistic act of malpractice that we dive into is the Chicago Sun-Times’ coverage of the episode involving the traffic stop of the niece of CPD Chief of Internal Affairs, Yolanda Talley. The reporting has been sensationalized, relying on a single source to report on abhorrent behavior within the CPD.  A week later, the Sun-Times still hasn’t found another source to confirm the behavior, yet they also haven’t retracted the reporting.

Next, we move to the malpractice of ABC 7 Chicago’s Stacey Baca.  She basically read 3 press releases on-air about the Magnificent Mile Association’s complaints about prosecutors and judges. Baca seems to be clueless regarding the state of the social science research completed on these topics, that provides empirical evidence that the claims made by the Association just aren’t supported by the facts. Baca also seems to be unaware that the Chicago Tribune published a story recently proving the similar claims made by Mayor Lightfoot and CPD Superintendent David Brown are not based on any facts. To do this story without including the research and the Chicago Tribune reporting is just basic malpractice.

We finish today’s podcast by taking a closer look at some great journalism proving that GOP gubernatorial candidate and Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin’s campaign is one big act of political malpractice. Coming out as a staunch supporter of hard-on-crime policies and boasting about his 5 years as a prosecutor, but ignoring his 15 years of criminal defense defending people accused of the most serious crimes, is a prime example of political malpractice. Not to mention Irvin is suddenly a supporter of all lives mattering when just a few years ago he was a very strong supporter of Black Lives Matter and defunding the police.