Chicago and our selfie crisis

Last week, I outlined reporter Denise Dick’s work in reporting on questionable spending by Youngstown City Schools in contracting services from an unqualified person.

The theme last week was – were it not for work such as Denise’s, this critical scrutiny of our tax dollars and institutions would go unchecked.

Wow – a week later, the Youngstown schools’ hiring is minor compared with the staggering coverup exposed last week in Chicago.

It was there that the floor finally caved in this week on a fatal shooting of a teen by a police officer.

“Coverup” might be a premature term at this stage.

But calling it “massive, willful obfuscation of the facts and evidence to protect a wrong-doer of official standing” seems fair.

The Chicago episode is a horrible dance that taps into the mayor’s office, the county prosecutor, the city legal team, through the police and police union ranks and more. All appear to have fingerprints on this travesty.

Chicago relates back to Youngstown schools and more.

This staggering level of official arrogance and roughshod response is happening everywhere, and more often. Consider just our region in the past year or so – with an elected judge and elected county auditor both getting indicted.

It’s not “how things used to be.” It is a “here and now.” We are a selfie society with a horrific “worry about me” fixation.

This is happening at a time when the light-shiners – investigative print and TV reporters – are fewer in numbers.

If you are prone to corruption and are in a public position of power or access – this might be your golden era.

Chicago’s debacle – in which an officer killed a teen 13 months ago, purportedly in self-defense – is captured nicely in a Chicago Tribune editorial that I’ll excerpt here:

The questions keep piling up.

What did the other officers at the scene do or say after the shooting? Who is responsible for the false narrative that was relayed to reporters at the scene? A police union spokesman said Officer Jason Van Dyke fired in self-defense after Laquan McDonald lunged at him with a knife. Where did that information come from?

Why did police shoo witnesses from the scene, without so much as collecting their contact information?

Why did it take 13 months to charge Van Dyke with a crime, given that the video – and an equally damning autopsy report – were in hand within days?

What is the story behind the missing surveillance video at the nearby Burger King?

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced the charge against Van Dyke on Tuesday, hours before the city complied with the judge’s order to release the video.

In his haste to close this sordid chapter and fast-forward to “healing” the city, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has repeatedly framed this as the story of one bad actor who is being called to account for his actions.

But this can’t be filed away as the actions of a single rogue cop. It can’t be chalked up as yet another example of dysfunctional police disciplinary process.

This looks like an attempted cover-up.

If not for a whistleblower, it all might have ended with the “CYA” narrative supplied by the police union spokesman the night McDonald died.

Another truth in the pursuit of this story is that the court-ordered release of the video came not by actions of traditional media like the Tribune or others. It came from a freelance citizen journalist.

That’s another new normal for the next generation and issues such as Chicago and Youngstown schools – citizen journalists taking on roles once performed by traditional media.

It’s what I tried to reason with a bright 20-something last week – I think to no avail.

On Twitter, there is a group of them from the Valley who make a sport of Vindicator missteps.

I engaged one last week on Facebook and Twitter, then eventually we talked on this old-school thing called a phone.

He tried to reason with me that what I called petty bullying was his group’s effort to hold us to a higher standard.

I laughed. What they are seizing on are certainly Vindy imperfections – typos, punctuation and such. But I said the need for targeting a higher standard is not with us, but the greater community.

Amid our colorful chat, I finally said, “Your generation is screwed.

“The dirty work that we do that you undercut is work done by no one else. And in 20 years when the newspaper and local journalism is gone, what are your neighbors going to do about earthquakes, Mill Creek lakes, county auditors and more?”

Again – I think I argued to no avail.

The Chicago incident might be the most troubling episode I’ve seen since Bell, Calif., corruption.

Yet it is also promising in that citizen journalists stepped up to make democracy happen.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on Vindy.com. Tweet him, too, at @tfranko.