Why Pack Journalism Sucks: Rethinking Chicago's Mayoral Race

 

<Brandon Johnson, after winning last week's mayoral runoff

https://workingfamilies.org/2023/04/victory-in-chicago-for-brandon-johnson/>

Pack Journalism (noun): 

<Journalism that is practiced by reporters in a group and that is marked by uniformity of news coverage and lack of original thought or initiative.>

(Merriam Webster's Dictionary)

<i.>

If you want a fitting metaphor for, "What's wrong with this picture," the opening paragraphs of this Chicago Sun-Times  article, from January 25, 2021, should suffice. The story focuses on a hotly-debated police training center project that Mayor Lori Lightfoot had opposed, as Police Board President, which now apparently seemed far-reaching enough to win her support: 

"Allocating funds for a police academy 'is viewed by many as further affirmation that needs of the people will never be prioritized over those of the police,' she said on that day.

"A month after taking office, Lightfoot dramatically changed her tune and embraced the project she had condemned, making it bigger and more expensive.

"On Wednesday, Lightfoot completed her about-face on a project that was once the target of nationwide protests, cutting the ribbon on the $170 million complex at 701 N. Kilbourn Ave., along the 4300 and 4400 blocks of West Chicago Avenue."

For progressives who'd supported her 2019 election, the groundbreaking marked one of many maddening 180-degree retreats from the themes she'd promoted during her campaign -- including greater accountability over one of the nation's most dysfunctional police departments.

As the writer notes, despite the protests, Liightfoot doubled down -- figuratively, and literally -- on the project, whose cost had once been estimated at $95 million. For Activist Ja'Mal Green, who became Lightfoot's youngest ,mayoral challenger, at 27, the center served as an especially glaring snapshot of his city's misplaced priorities:

“Making sure that young people have safe spaces, job opportunities, apprenticeships. Schools should be open throughout the day and on weekends. These are priorities. We have done none of those things. We couldn’t even get swimming pools open in the summer.

“The fact that young people are slapped with curfews instead of given safe spaces, but we had all of this money to put toward a police academy to do right now, while young people are literally suffering. It’s just about the timing and the prioritization, about how do we care or not care about people in the neighborhoods.”

Fast forward to February 2023. With Lightfoot looking more and more like a one-term mayor, how did the mainstream media characterize her failure to make last week's runoff?

In a word, with the C-word: crime, crime, and more crime, as verdicts poured in from CNN ("the latest demonstration of growing concerns about crime in one of the nation's largest cities"), The New York Times ("a resounding defeat that reflected widespread dissatisfaction from voters over her handling of crime and policing in the nation's third largest city"), and Vox.com ("a referendum on her first four years in office and on crime in Chicago").

<"I Feel A Little Chilly In Here..."/

The Reckoner>

<ii.>

Some media outlets proved way less restrained than others in their hysteria, such as Politico.com ("Calling All Police: Lightfoot Needs A Lifeline"), the ever-reactionary New York Post ("Chicago Mayoral Race Is A Warning To Big Cities Everywhere"), or Bloomberg.com ("Chicago Mayor's Loss Has One Cause: Crime"). 

Still, we should expect a lot more from our established media outlets, who continued to treat the runoff between the eventual winner, progressive Brandon Johnson, and former Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Paul Vallas, as a personality-driven clash of wills. Only, one that crime (and its twin sister, COVID) would continue to dominate, as any number of headlines suggested:

"Chicago Mayor Candidate Backed By Police Makes It To Runoff" (Bloomberg, 2/28/23).

"Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's Struggle To Be Reelected" (New York Magazine, 2/21/23).

"Chicago Mayor's Race Shows Impact of Crime In COVID's Wake" (The San Diego Union-Tribune, 3/01/23).

"Chicago Mayor's Race Dominated By Concerns About City Crime" (US News & World Report, 2/25/23).

"In Chicago Mayor's Race, Two Hopefuls Reflect Democrats' Split" (Associated Press, 3/19/03)

"Progressive And Centrist Democrats Clash In Chicago Mayoral Race" (Financial Times, 4/06/23).

Notice the uniformity in style, and tone? This is what pack journalism does -- boil the prevailing narrative into one convenient, soggy, steam-pocked tea bag. Once the gatekeepers on the ground settle on one, nothing else is allowed to pierce the fog that results.

<"Idle Chatter":
The Reckoner>

<iii.>

Much of the coverage of the resulting Chicago runoff focused on claims that Johnson either planned to "defund the police," or at least, make that idea the centerpiece of his policymaking approach, if he ever made it to City Hall.

That seems like the gist of Politco.com's piece, which characterizes Johnson as "the left-wing challenger who’s threatening to deny her (Lightfoot) even a spot in the runoff." The writer makes a number of credibility-stretching claims, like this one: "What's more striking, and what's at the heart of Lightfoot's offensive, is that some of the same polls indicate that defunding the police is highly unpopular with Black voters."

Which polls, exactly? And which segment of Black voters? We're never told, beyond "some surveys I've seen," and "Polling from the campaigns and outside groups" -- surely, not the most reliable barometers in any race, no matter how heated, right?

Not done with speaking for all Black voters, the writer makes his biases clearer as the story progresses ("Vallas has resurrected himself as the tough-on-crime favorite of the Fraternal Order of Police [FOP]"). For added punch, he also nods to the election of New York Mayor Eric Adams, another rising star of the stack-'em-like-cordwood crowd.

So what did Johnson have to say about all this, exactly? Plenty, if you visit the Issues section of his campaign website, as Politico's writer should have done:

"As mayor, I will chart a new strategy for public safety, rather than relying on the same failed approaches that have brought trauma to communities across the city. I will work with police and first responders to invest in community-based interventions that de-escalate conflict, reduce violence and make our neighborhoods safer. I will create an Office of Community Safety, reopen the city’s mental health clinics, fully fund year-round youth employment, and foster partnerships between communities and law enforcement to make critical investments preventing crime before it happens."

Johnson proceeds to offer a detailed overview of how he plans to attack the situation, "by investing in the basics: good schools, good jobs, housing and mental health." His proposals range from reopening the city's 14 public health mental health clinics, to doubling the number of youth summer jobs to 60,000.

As you'd expect, much of Vallas's website focuses on ideas for revamping the Chicago Police Department. His proposals range from allowing former officers to return with the same rank that they left, to boosting the number of detectives by 10 percent, and hiring more officers to patrol public transit.

The closest he comes to acknowledging different (read: non-stacking) ideas is his call for a summit of city, state and officials to discuss "holistic solutions" to crime, such as "street violence interruption, youth violence reduction, youth diversion, and returning citizen support agencies and programs."

How Vallas planned to pull off such a gathering, after pledging so much political capital to his FOP fanbase, is anybody's guess. Vallas's loss makes the point moot, I suppose, but it's a fair question to ask future stack-'em-like-cordwood advocates. Vallas wasn't the first of that breed, and he won't be the last.

<Joint Rally Poster:
Bernie Sanders' Facebook page>

<iv.>

For all the hoopla projected onto Lightfoot's missteps, and the runoff that followed, what's striking is how many Chicagoans just shrugged off the whole spectacle. Only about 35 percent bothered to cast a ballot, which is roughly half the turnout for presidential elections. 

Judged by that metric, Johnson's seems less impressive than it looks. Yet, in another sense, the game wasn't close as the box score indicated. As the ballot counting continues (through April 18), Johnson's total has grown to 302,619 votes, versus 282,406 for Vallas. Though it's hardly a rout, the resulting margin -- just over 20,000 votes -- is decisive enough.

Among those who did vote, there seemed a clear interest in taking a different approach. Yet, by and large, the mainstream media largely missed the boat, with some exceptions. The American Prospect and The Intercept did a good job of peeking behind the curtains of power broking, as well as public media outlets, like WTTW (see below).

But those were the exceptions. The most damaging effect of pack journalism is that the good questions never get asked, which ensures that good ideas never get a hearing.

Let's start with the obvious ones. Statistics show one in four children, and one in 10 adults, are living in poverty, or incomes of 50% below the federal poverty line. Seventy-six percent of students receive free or subsidized meals, and an additional 16,000 students are homeless.

With so many struggling to survive, how can Chicago call itself a world-class city? Yes, crime has ratcheted to levels not seen since the 1990s, but aren't such glaring disparities a key driver of it? How much difference, realistically, would putting a cop on every corner make in such an environment, when crime becomes a more attractive, if high risk, option?

How could someone like Vallas credibly handle those issues, given his longtime involvement with the for-profit (charter) school movement, and a campaign funded largely by the city's wealthy white power structure? How deeply does he support core Democratic priorities, when he once toyed with switching parties?

Voters should also have gotten a deeper dive into city finances, which largely took a back seat to all the feverish chatter about crime. As mayor-elect, Johnson will inherit estimated deficits of $360 million for the city, and $628 million for its schools. How much can he accomplish, especially if the City Council and state lawmakers don't pass all the new taxes he's proposing to fund his programs?

The power structure needed to hear the toughest questions of all. As the Sun-Times noted (see my previous post, "When In Doubt, Stop Digging"), the Black political establishment lined up mostly behind Vallas, almost to a person. So did Illinois's senior Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin. 

Why did so many of them endorse someone whom voters have rejected for governor (2002 primary), lieutenant governor (2014), and yes, mayor of Chicago (2019)?  How can somebody who's struck out so often at the ballot box ever present himself as a serious candidate?

We'll never know, because those questions barely get asked, so nobody had to worry about trying to answer them. The problem is that accountability and transparency are critical ingredients to ensuring a vital democracy, or at least, one that bears some resemblance to what you studied in government class.

Spoon feeding voters a steady diet of "beauty pageant" or "horse race" models of news coverage that reduce issues to mere personality clashes, or mindless handicapping (Who's up? Who's down?), drastically undercuts those ideals.

But this is the final, unhappy result, when journalists hunt in packs. The swells can sleep soundly behind for yet another night, knowing they've copped another hall pass for their sneaky behavior, because the watchdogs are dozing along with them, or too distracted to care much themselves.

More than anything else, I hope that Johnson's victory finally forces some long-overdue discussion of the social costs of enshrining a top-down, pay-to-play political culture, and who really benefits from it. It sure hasn't been the average Chicagoan. --The Reckoner

Links To Go: Hurry. Hurry,
Before The Pack Tosses A Distraction Bomb:

The American Prospect:
Brandon Johnson's Ground Game
Defeats Obama Machine In Chicago:
https://prospect.org/politics/2023-04-05-brandon-johnson-defeats-obama-machine-chicago/

Brandon Johnson: The Plan For A Safer Chicago:
https://www.brandonforchicago.com/issues/public-safety

Politico.com: Calling All Police: Lightfoot Needs A Lifeline
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/28/lightfoot-chicago-mayoral-election-on-politics-00084669

Paul Vallas: Paul's Comprehensive Public Safety Plan:
https://www.paulvallas2023.com/publicsafety

The Intercept:
Is Chicago Mayoral Candidate
Paul Vallas A Republican?:
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/04/chicago-mayor-paul-vallas-republican/

WTTW: Brandon Johnson Defeats Paul Vallas:
https://news.wttw.com/2023/04/04/paul-vallas-leads-brandon-johnson-tight-chicago-mayoral-race