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| KIRK: Killed criticism? Or delayed it? |
For
what the newspaper wound up publishing buried on Page 14 of the front section
was an Associated Press story that turned up in other newspapers across the
state – one about how Kirk’s campaign manager engaged in tactics meant to cut
off an anticipated Tribune story.
IF
WE’RE TO believe the Kirk people, the Tribune was threatening to expose a story
that would show how obnoxious and bordering-on-tyrannical the senator could be
toward his staff.
Supposedly,
he verbally harassed four people who worked for him. Which led the Kirk people
to come up with affidavits from those staffers saying they never said the
things that the Tribune was supposedly going to report they said about their
boss.
Kirk
people even went so far as to accuse a Tribune reporter of harassing the
senator’s 79-year-old mother in efforts to gather information for this story
that we have yet to see.
As
it turned out, the Kirk people turned to the Capitol Fax newsletter, which on
Friday published details provided by Kirk meant to undermine the story and
portray it as some sort of personal vendetta by a particular reporter (whom I
must admit to not knowing personally, even though there are some Chicago
Tribune people whom I do know).
THE
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES published their own account – one that included a response by
Chicago Tribune management that basically said they stood by their reporter’s
reporting without elaborating further.
That
caused the Associated Press to pick up on the Kirk peoples’ tactic and make it
news – which is what the Tribune published on Sunday.
I
don’t know how odd this particular tactic ought to be regarded as – because it
isn’t odd for someone to try to undermine a story they have concerns about.
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| Story on hold? Or spiked? |
During
my time as a reporter-type person, I have had enough political people try to
intimidate me into not writing something (a bit of advice to those who want to
bully, it usually motivates me all the more to write something). Or maybe they
scream to my editor in hopes she/he will give them what they want in order to
make the rant go away!
IT
ALSO ISN’T odd for someone to want to hurt a news media outlet with a potential
story by peddling it somewhere else – usually somewhere where they think it
will be written up more sympathetically.
Meaning
the person who had hoped for some sort of “exclusive” story winds up having
that ego-perk undermined.
Kirk
people said they timed their response out of the belief that this “story” would
be in the Tribune on Sunday – which it wasn’t. Although for all I know, it may
wind up in the Monday paper and you may have read it before you even saw this
commentary.
Personally,
the tactic strikes me as being petty – and probably reflects poorly on the Kirk
people. Because coming up with that many statements from people saying they
didn’t say what the newspaper may have said they said makes me wonder if they
bullied their staff into “taking back” their thoughts.
WHICH
MAY WELL play into the theme of the alleged story (I haven’t seen it yet, so
maybe it doesn’t exist).
Could
this be from someone who just wants to garner support from those people who will
believe anything they’re told – so long as it starts out as an Internet rant?
Which usually is the path toward collecting information that is total junk!
My
own opinion is that a story claiming a political person engages in tyrannical behavior
isn’t that newsworthy – most people who run for office have over-bloated egos
and think (on a certain level) that no one ought to be questioning them. It seems to me to be more the material for an item that the Chicago Sun-Times' Michael Sneed would write.
But
after reading how much the Kirk people don’t us to read this, it makes me (and
I suspect many others) want to see the end result to figure out for ourselves
what the big deal was.
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