Undiscoverable City
Feb. 21st, 2019 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueI've had a hard time with this Jussee Smollett story, but for different reasons than are immediately obvious. My first instinct is to trust a victim who reports a crime; that's not perfect but it's more likely than a coin toss to be correct, so it's the side I err on. With Smollett, there was immediately a rabid "he has to be lying" outcry, but it came from right wing internet conspiaracy theorists - people who had no knowledge or standing, whose ideas about how the world functions seem more drawn from games and television than from reality ("why wouldn't he give police his phone?" I wouldn't either; "a camera would have caught it" friends I remember how hard it was to get an angle on the Boston Marathon Bombing). Ultimately, I figured "whatever, let the investigation go and eventually more information will come to light."
But. The thing that bothered me, like a lot, was side comments and eye-cutting that came from WLS, a local TV news station in Chicago, where a few of the anchors seemed pretty convinced from the outset that it was fake. They didn't say why they thought that. They just seemed to think that.
This frustrated me because in my very informed opinion, WLS is one of the best local news stations in the country. It's not the absolute best, which is probably WMUR in New Hampshire. But it's good. It does real reporting. I'd put it in the top five of local news stations in the U.S. The average local news station, you get an hour of programming that is 50% weather and traffic reports, 25% entertainment news, 10% national packages, and 15% local stories but the local stories are restaurant reviews. There's not real reporting going on. WLS does real reporting. That's something I value, especially in Chicago, where there aren't big national bureaus like in New York and DC.
Why would WLS anchors be skeptical of Smollett's story, as a gut instinct? I had no idea. Honestly, I still don't know.
Then last week, WLS (aka ABC 7) broke a big story about how police thought Smollett was lying and had staged the attack. They quoted anonymous police sources. I hate anonymous sources; they're bad journalistic practice. And the way these anonymous sources specifically were quoted, it could have been a couple of random policemen who weren't working on the case. Immediately, the Chicago police pushed back and put out an official report that no they didn't think that, and all the national media piled on WLS for this shitty report.
This left me feeling very confused about WLS and the choices being made by WLS, who are generally on the side of truth and are not people taken in by weird right-wing internet conspiracies. It was a strange story to break with sourcing that thin. It was the kind of thing where, assuming Smollett was innocent, I would absolutely expect him to sue for defamation, and win. You can't accuse somebody of something like that on grounds that nebulous. The official Chicago police statement, contradicting these anonymous sources, would be heavy evidence of WLS's irresponsibility.
What complicates matters is, the Chicago police are not trustworthy. It's a corrupt department currently operating under a consent degree (federal supervision). It has a long history of torturing false confessions out of people and of planting evidence, a history which now has to be taught in Chicago public schools because it's that relevant to the public safety of Chicago residents. The recent Laquan McDonald case, in which a white police officer was sentenced to prison for shooting a black teenager 17 times, most of them while the teenager was on the ground - that officer's defense was literally "this is what we're taught to do as Chicago police officers and I shouldn't be the one taking the brunt of this anger; I'm not a bad apple. I'm doing the job I was told to do by my superiors." I believe him; this sounds exactly like the kind of thing that department would tell its officers to do (although I still think he should go to jail). The department had lied about and covered up the incident for I think 17 months before journalists and activists were able to prove it had happened.
I'm sure there are some Chicago police that are good people, but if I see a police spokesman from Chicago, I do not assume they're telling the truth. Some of the main people I trust to parse who the honest ones are and who the liars are? WLS. But with anonymous sourcing like this, after some sort of grouchy expressions of bias around this story? I also do not expect anonymous police sources to tell the truth. It weirded me out. Was there some weird homophobic thing I needed to worry about with WLS?
And then a couple of days later, Chicago prosecutors charge Smollett for lying in exactly the way WLS had reported they were going to.
Chicago prosecutors are still acting weird about it, like "well we took this before a grand jury, but it's not the grand jury making the charge." And they're making a big deal about Smollett writing a check to somebody...who was his personal trainer. And their main witnesses are black immigrant men, who frankly are exactly the kind of people I would expect Chicago police to lean on in unethical ways. Yet it's not exactly like I'm rooting for the idea that attacks like this are likely? I still don't know what to think.
But I guess I'm relieved that WLS's anonymous sources were reliable. I was upset by the idea that I might not be able to count on that news station in the way I had thought I could. I care about whether they get the story right in the end, more than I care about what the story is. There will be other stories, and I need WLS to be trustworthy about them. I want Chicago to not be an uniscoverable city.
But. The thing that bothered me, like a lot, was side comments and eye-cutting that came from WLS, a local TV news station in Chicago, where a few of the anchors seemed pretty convinced from the outset that it was fake. They didn't say why they thought that. They just seemed to think that.
This frustrated me because in my very informed opinion, WLS is one of the best local news stations in the country. It's not the absolute best, which is probably WMUR in New Hampshire. But it's good. It does real reporting. I'd put it in the top five of local news stations in the U.S. The average local news station, you get an hour of programming that is 50% weather and traffic reports, 25% entertainment news, 10% national packages, and 15% local stories but the local stories are restaurant reviews. There's not real reporting going on. WLS does real reporting. That's something I value, especially in Chicago, where there aren't big national bureaus like in New York and DC.
Why would WLS anchors be skeptical of Smollett's story, as a gut instinct? I had no idea. Honestly, I still don't know.
Then last week, WLS (aka ABC 7) broke a big story about how police thought Smollett was lying and had staged the attack. They quoted anonymous police sources. I hate anonymous sources; they're bad journalistic practice. And the way these anonymous sources specifically were quoted, it could have been a couple of random policemen who weren't working on the case. Immediately, the Chicago police pushed back and put out an official report that no they didn't think that, and all the national media piled on WLS for this shitty report.
This left me feeling very confused about WLS and the choices being made by WLS, who are generally on the side of truth and are not people taken in by weird right-wing internet conspiracies. It was a strange story to break with sourcing that thin. It was the kind of thing where, assuming Smollett was innocent, I would absolutely expect him to sue for defamation, and win. You can't accuse somebody of something like that on grounds that nebulous. The official Chicago police statement, contradicting these anonymous sources, would be heavy evidence of WLS's irresponsibility.
What complicates matters is, the Chicago police are not trustworthy. It's a corrupt department currently operating under a consent degree (federal supervision). It has a long history of torturing false confessions out of people and of planting evidence, a history which now has to be taught in Chicago public schools because it's that relevant to the public safety of Chicago residents. The recent Laquan McDonald case, in which a white police officer was sentenced to prison for shooting a black teenager 17 times, most of them while the teenager was on the ground - that officer's defense was literally "this is what we're taught to do as Chicago police officers and I shouldn't be the one taking the brunt of this anger; I'm not a bad apple. I'm doing the job I was told to do by my superiors." I believe him; this sounds exactly like the kind of thing that department would tell its officers to do (although I still think he should go to jail). The department had lied about and covered up the incident for I think 17 months before journalists and activists were able to prove it had happened.
I'm sure there are some Chicago police that are good people, but if I see a police spokesman from Chicago, I do not assume they're telling the truth. Some of the main people I trust to parse who the honest ones are and who the liars are? WLS. But with anonymous sourcing like this, after some sort of grouchy expressions of bias around this story? I also do not expect anonymous police sources to tell the truth. It weirded me out. Was there some weird homophobic thing I needed to worry about with WLS?
And then a couple of days later, Chicago prosecutors charge Smollett for lying in exactly the way WLS had reported they were going to.
Chicago prosecutors are still acting weird about it, like "well we took this before a grand jury, but it's not the grand jury making the charge." And they're making a big deal about Smollett writing a check to somebody...who was his personal trainer. And their main witnesses are black immigrant men, who frankly are exactly the kind of people I would expect Chicago police to lean on in unethical ways. Yet it's not exactly like I'm rooting for the idea that attacks like this are likely? I still don't know what to think.
But I guess I'm relieved that WLS's anonymous sources were reliable. I was upset by the idea that I might not be able to count on that news station in the way I had thought I could. I care about whether they get the story right in the end, more than I care about what the story is. There will be other stories, and I need WLS to be trustworthy about them. I want Chicago to not be an uniscoverable city.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-22 01:46 am (UTC)It's kind of weird that he's being charged, though. Lots of people do worse things, like disappearing 7000 people and don't get charged.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-22 02:08 am (UTC)Also as of the August statistics, CPD only solve 1 in 20 shooting cases at this point (their clearance rate for all murders is 28%, also low, criminal sexual assault clearance rate is 26.8%) so if we're going to talk about wasting investigative resources, I know where my eyes are looking, and it's not this guy.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-22 06:06 am (UTC)