Are Chicago Journalists Willing To 'Scrooten' Themselves?

CHICAGO — A couple weeks back, local reporters lamented the sudden firing of City Hall spin machine veteran Bill McCaffrey, who worked for three mayoral administrations and took home a six-figure salary to propagate and conceal government-sanctioned lies.

NBC reporter Phil Rogers tweeted: “Bill McCaffrey, long known (over 15 years in city government) for his honesty, fairness, and professionalism, fired as Law Department spokesman by Mayor Lori Lightfoot's administration. He will be sorely missed.”

CBS news anchor Brad Edwards called McCaffrey “the most trusted, yet loyal, spokesperson in City Hall for 15 years.”

Veteran political reporter Carol Marin tweeted: “Adding my voice other journos on the firing of Bill McCaffery@City Hall. Bill was a professional. With integrity. His leaving is the city's and the law department's great loss. And the citizens' most of all.”

As touching as that sounds, it’s not true.

McCaffrey — like the savviest government spokespeople — had a responsibility to attempt to persuade reporters to present the prevailing administration in a positive light regardless of circumstances. Or the facts.

I like McCaffrey. The guy has a great beard and a decent sense of humor. In my experience, he had a knack for being pleasantly unhelpful and honest about his duty protecting other people’s secrets. He was better than most at returning calls, juggling FOIA requests and serving up canned quotes that didn’t answer my questions.

But it’s baffling that local reporters would mourn the demise of a guy who excelled at keeping scandalous details of government corruption from the public. McCaffrey fended off reporters during his stint as the spokesman for former Corporation Counsel Steve Patton, the Rahm Emanuel-administration maestro who facilitated the shady $5 million payout to keep video of Laquan McDonald’s murder secret.

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Let’s call it like it is. The guy, by profession, was a public relations shill and roadblock to transparency. Sure, he could be charming and honest at times, but not honest enough for citizens who have grown tired of government practiced with an expected level of corruption, the Chicago Way.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot called out reporters who participated in the McCaffrey love fest on Twitter.

“Obviously, Bill McCaffrey was your buddy,” the mayor chided. “I hope we are not getting to a new standard in media here in Chicago where we have a bunch of unnamed sources, that there’s no other information provided. They’re just throwing out a bunch of chum on the water and people are biting at it as if it’s the truth.”

For the next couple news cycles, news stories seemed to suggest that reporters were right for praising McCaffrey because, according to unnamed sources, he got axed for quietly tipping off the media about a questionable property tax break procured by the mayor’s top lawyer.

We’ll probably never know if that’s true.

But the whole thing left me questioning whether it's time to end the game of treating insiders better than outsiders — namely, the very public who is ill served by both the co-opted and lazy media and the politicos who try to stuff them with crumbs like the flying rats that crap on the Picasso at Daley Plaza.

One of the ugly truths in a city controlled by a Democratic Machine is how relationships between reporters and government sources shape the news. In a city that had two mayors in 30 years, reporter-source relationships often last for decades. After a while, reporters and government sources start to treat each other like co-workers. We go to the same Starbucks. We meet up for a few drinks. We get invited to the same parties. Some reporters and government sources even marry each other.

Some reporters decide to stop reporting, get government jobs and become sources. In the last few years, some people who transitioned from reporter to government source have transitioned back to reporter again.

It’s a whole tangled web. And it’s not a topic that reporters like to talk about with people who might not understand the dynamic. Readers, that is. But maybe it’s time to try. In 2019, the FBI ushered in a new Chicago corruption crisis that lifted a reform-minded political outsider to a landslide mayoral victory over the Chicago Democratic Machine boss.

Voters in a city notoriously “not ready for reform” let it be known they’re well prepared for it now.

Generations of local reporters have uncovered and reported on countless corruption scandals that sent governors, aldermen and federal judges to prison and may have driven some bureaucrats to suicide. Still, a culture of corruption survives. Reporters cover the details and move on as if there's an expectation that the corrupt status-quo will never change.

Former Mayor Emanuel even coached the media with one of his favorite sayings: “Let's look forward, not backward.” That's not a mantra any reporter should embrace.

But it certainly might explain why news outlets continue to consider incumbency an automatic advantage come election time, fail to mention the clout who helped elevate candidates to higher office and silently bow to requests for decorum while being fed false narratives.

There were plenty of examples early in the 2019 mayoral campaign when local news outlets overemphasized the importance of organized labor endorsements and cited unscientific political polls to justify screaming headlines that suggested to voters that only Democratic Machine insiders had a shot at replacing Emanuel.

News stories oversold the teaching pedigree of the Democratic Party boss running for mayor and quoted clout-heavy candidates’ calls for reform as if they were true.

“Frankly, the media is doing a piss-poor job,” Lightfoot said back when every news outlet ranked her as a longshot in the mayor’s race.

Lightfoot was right then, and she’s right to rip reporters for fawning over the termination of a recently fired City Hall operative.

But it seems reporters don't want to hear it.

News outlets dismissed Lightfoot’s pointed criticism with a shrug.

“Things are a little bit messy at City Hall right now,” the Tribune wrote.

City Hall press corps dean, WLS AM 890’s Bill Cameron, who has covered Chicago politics since Richard J. Daley was boss and has seen it all, wrote off Lightfoot’s jab as just another dust-up between cynical reporters and a ticked-off mayor.

On the air, Cameron cleverly likened the conflict to the time former Mayor Richard M. Daley dodged questions by offering to take off his pants and said, “Scrutiny? Do you want to take my shorts? Give me a break. Go scrutinize yourself. I get scrootened every day.”

That was cute moment between reporters and a colorful mayor. The press corps erupted in laughter and the next day, Daley got skewered on TV, radio and in print for butchering the English language, yet again.

There probably aren’t a lot of people who remember what question Daley dodged that day. The memory that lingers is that Chicago’s last true boss who served 22 years in office and endured too many corruption scandals to count escaped it by clumsily asking reporters if they wanted to see his underpants.

Listening back to the tape of the former mayor’s funny sound bite, there's an overlooked nugget of wisdom that thin-skinned Chicago journalists, myself included, might need to hear right now as we report the doings of the mayor nobody sent plodding toward something she promises will look like reform.

There’s a chance it makes us all better.

Chicago reporters, go scrooten yourselves.