While I fully expect this kind of smarmy self-stroking shit from the Kane County Chronicle and Shaw Media, I never thought I’d see the day when the once-proud Chicago Tribune would pull the same thing.
And I’ve been reading the Trib since the fifth grade!
Of course, we’re talking about the Chronicle’s absurd insistence on pursuing the 60 grand in Kane County IT tuition reimbursement for one employee story to the exclusion of all others.
Worse yet, despite The First Ward repeatedly pointing out that the Kane County Board approved each and every one of those 17 tuition expenses (trust me, Shaw media reads my stuff), fake reporter Brenda Schory refused to acknowledge that reality in five separate reports on the non-issue.
Meanwhile, that very same County Board is taking forever to distribute $103 million in COVID relief funds as they threaten to keep $99 million of that money for themselves. They’re doubling the county gas tax, increasing all manner of fees, and seriously considering a last-minute property tax hike to cover a “surprising” $16 million COVID-based deficit.
Oh! And in the face of all this fine fiscal havoc, the various County departments and elected officials are doing their damndest to go on a $10 million hiring spree. But the Chronicle can’t be bothered with reporting any of that, can they! Nope! Apparently focusing on a scant 0.024 percent of the County budget is something they consider to be “good journalism!”
And just when I thought the print media couldn’t possibly get any worse, today, November 12, 2021, the Chicago Tribune did the very same thing!
If you recall, in the months before Lollapalooza, that newspaper went ballistic over the prospect of the Midwest’s premier music festival turning into a veritable COVID superspreader event. Though they’d like you to forget about it, insipid columnist Rex Hupke and Heidi Stevens were the primary harbingers of untold doom.
Ah! But after Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters put the finishing touches on the event and all the pot smoke cleared, only 200 concert goers managed to catch the plague. There’s a really good reason the CDC has repeatedly declared that you can’t catch COVID outside.
But instead of running the requisite mea culpa editorial explaining how they got it wrong at every turn, instead the Tribune doubled down on their baseless propaganda by running a 2,000 plus word piece on how they really weren’t wrong after all and the festival “could’ve been better.”
“Could’ve been better?” Of the 385,000 attendees only 200 got the plague! The only way it could’ve been better is if Modest Mouse came up with an onstage COVID cure. No one can prove exactly where those 200 folks got the plague,either. Oh wait! In that same report a Minneapolis DJ claims he tested positive after the event but wasn’t counted in the final tally. Oh! So now 0.0025 percent of Lolla participants count as hard evidence for all sorts of chicanery? That’s good to know!
The bottom line is the Tribune got it completely wrong and now they’re simply trying to cover their own ample journalistic asses by creating some sort of self-satisfactory reality. And they were so sloppy in doing so, in a textbook case of the deflection self-defense mechanism, their “reporters” cited concert video showing young folks walking through the gates without presenting a vaccine card!
Really? They didn’t realize that only further supports the CDC’s point that we’re all safer in the sunshine? Whatever contact tracing lapses may or may not have occurred, with every local COVID case being reported to the State, there was no post-concert hospital crashing COVID spike.
How many times am I gonna have to say, “I never thought I’d see the day.” And since we’re talking, exactly when did the Chicago Tribune become a progressive Democratic newspaper?
Again, I expect this kind of self-serving bullshit from Shaw Media, the Chronicle, Brenda Schory, and the far left and right, but not from a formerly renowned newspaper like the Chicago Tribune.
Shame on all of you! Robert McCormick has gotta be doing 360s in his coffin.
