The city, state and country are broke so we can’t afford to meet our pension obligations to retired workers. I am sure that you have heard this before in every mainstream media source from your local newspaper to your local right-wing radio beacon of hope. Whenever you are near someone talking like this from the media you should consider slapping the taste out of their mouths because they should know better.  That they don’t know better says a lot about how bad they are at their jobs. The reason I’m writing on this today is that last week the laughably inane Retiree Health Care Commission report claimed to demonstrate that Chicago cannot pay its retirees pensions and one of my favorite stenographers to power Fran Speilman ran with the story like she was Gayle Sayers headed for open field. To call both this conclusion and Fran’s enthusiastic embrace of it foregone is an understatement of epic proportions.

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The city, state and country are broke so we can’t afford to meet our pension obligations to retired workers. I am sure that you have heard this before in every mainstream media source from your local newspaper to your local right-wing radio beacon of hope. Whenever you are near someone talking like this from the media you should consider slapping the taste out of their mouths because they should know better.  That they don’t know better says a lot about how bad they are at their jobs. The reason I’m writing on this today is that last week the laughably inane Retiree Health Care Commission report claimed to demonstrate that Chicago cannot pay its retirees pensions and one of my favorite stenographers to power Fran Speilman ran with the story like she was Gayle Sayers headed for open field. To call both this conclusion and Fran’s enthusiastic embrace of it foregone is an understatement of epic proportions.

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Usually a Tutorial hackfest article focuses on one media “professional” that is unworthy of opposable thumbs and cognitive reasoning skills but the NATO Summit being what it was, we figured that we’d go more… global. We concentrated on the combined mainstream media might of the Tribune, Sun-Times and WBEZ because that’s where most people get the best mainstream news that they are going to get in Chicago. That coverage would lead one to believe that most of the members of the Chicago Media Complex couldn’t cover an end table with a football field sized table cloth. Their aggregate performance being so inept that renowned media critic Ellen Ripley had the best solution for our media complex: “…nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

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When Mayor Rahm Emanuel says: “I misspoke, and I take responsibility for the confusion,” that tighter protest rules and higher fines for thwarting police would be temporary measures designed just for a pair of spring meetings of international leaders in Chicago he’s lying. Hal Dardick knows this but this isn’t about Hal’s inability to find his way out of a damn closet. This is about the collective failure of the entire press corps to start reporting on the systematic stripping of the public’s right to assemble and dissent with some damn context. Mayor Emanuel’s ordinance is designed to crackdown on, limit and place controls on the NATO/G-8 protests and what the means is taking a fish-billie to the knees and face of the 1st and 4th Amendments. Maybe I’m too stupid to breathe without directions but I thought it was the media’s job to embody the 1st Amendment and to defend the 4th Amendment?

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There are times when I’m glad my grandfather is dead because if he were alive to see what’s happened and is happening to this country it would kill him. If he saw this video where Mayor Rahm Emanuel was run off a Chicago street, something our angry little marmoset of a Mayor had better get used to, and the media’s reaction to it then he’d probably spend his last days serving a life sentence. This would be true because my granddad was from Texas and the media’s reaction would have caused him to reach for his concealed carry and thin out the stenographer, talking head and videographer pool. Then he would have looked at me when I came to visit and said something like: “If’n they can’t do their damn jobs they sure as hell can stop doing the Mayor’s job for him.”

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One of the hallmarks of bad public policy is mounting a perpetual campaign in place of substantive public policy as you actually eliminate or cut the public service in question. It’s bad public policy because good public policy begins by having an honest discussion of what you plan to do in regards to delivering or not delivering a service. In the case the CTA the Emanuel Administration wants to cut its pensions, wages, benefits and corners on safety for both the public and CTA employees. A decent media would begin by pointing out that this is exactly what the Emanuel Administration plans to do because that’s what they’ve done in every other department they’ve had over for dinner… as dinner so why would this be any different? But we have our media is actively participating in the Emanuel Administration’s campaign ploy of turning the public who receives public transit service against the people who provide the public transit service for far less than what the private sector would charge for working under simil

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Maybe it’s not Alejandro’s fault that he can’t reason his way out of a closet. This could be because he’s been reading the Sun-Times to get his information on the present hot education topic: Should kids go to school 90 more minutes or it is should teachers be paid for teaching 90 more minutes? It doesn’t matter this is a public policy “discussion” that is so damn stupid it makes my head hurt to believe that the media is talking about it. Some facts before we get to helping Alejandro find his way out of the closet.

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A stenographer writes down what they are told without reflection, analysis or skepticism. A reporter writes things down without regard to context or analysis. A journalist writes things down with ample reflection, deep context and real analysis. When the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) stop talking to each other a stenographer writes down what both sides said. We need media people like Rosiland Rossi, Fran Spielman, Mary Schmich, John Byrne and Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah to really step up their collective games in regards to what happens to our public schools because right now they are erring on the side of the stenographer that sometimes tries to be a reporter. Usually this is the part where I repost their reportage and point out things that both of my cats and most toddlers would have caught with one phone call and/or any knowledge of the actual piece of public policy being reported on and not written what they wrote. But I think they think that criticism means that they are doin

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I start my day out around five or six in the morning every day and over the course of the day I read six to seven newspapers. Today though I was struck by the Chicago Tribune’s web page content for its “Politics” section and it reminded me just how hard the 4th Estate has let us all down. I actually found myself wanting to choke the life out whatever idiot editor decided this was news I think a little context could be used here to help those of look for some news… get some g$&*#&damn news!

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Community dynamics, for twenty years Mayor Daley offered community groups a simple choice. They could either take their place in the Machine; which meant providing the proper black or brown face to cover for the damage the Administration would do to any community not in the underdeveloped Loop and in return they’d get jobs, contracts and be allowed to profit to the best of their ability.

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Fran Speilman did and Kathy Bergen both did a story on the Car Care trade show pulling out of McCormick Place. One of these reporters gave us, the reader, enough context to have some idea what the hell actually happened. The other reporter made it more about the superhuman prowess of our Mayor and how he is going to never allow this sort of thing to never happen again.

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When I think of the South Loop Elementary School you know the first thing that comes to my tiny mind is? I think about all the things I’ve read about overcrowding at that particular school which is making a lot of news in and of itself. http://www.chicagojournal.com/News/02-16-2011/CPS_evaluates_options_for_overcrowded,_high_performing_South_Loop_School. I also think about all the schools in the South Loop area that are equally overcrowded if not more so. http://www.chicagotalks.org/2011/06/01/south-loop-schools-face-overcrowding-challenge/, What I would not do under any circumstances if someone had the bad sense to allow me write news is donate my column inches to the epic news story Mayor Emanuel winning over a six-year old kid.

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Some politicians need public relations departments to make them look good. Others have the Chicago Press Corps to take care of that for them. This time it was Fran Spielman who left her journalistic skills in her other set of pants and went all stenographer on us when she gave us a blow by blow description of Mayor Emanuel’s appearance on” Windy City Live,”.

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Our media friends like the City Council; is already settling into its traditional role as context-free stenographer and cheerleader for the powers that be. The political reporters at the Sun-Times could not wait to tell us that there are six changes to watch for in short order without telling us a damn thing about what any of it means. The tragedy here is that even money says Abdon Pallasch and the rest of the Sun-Times staff may actually have no clue how to provide you and me with context because as shocking as it might be to you and I they don’t see context as their job.

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It takes a special kind of “reporter” to transform a story of ethical misbehavior into an explanation of how someone powerful is not actually committing the ethical violation that they have clearly committed. Fortunately we have Stephen Di Benedetto, whose capacity to do this is likely to get him a plumb spot in the front of the press corps when Mayor Emanuel explains how hurling the Earth into the Sun is a snow removal cost-cutting measure.

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