On today’s how we discuss three examples of media coverage of crime and violence in Chicago that perfectly demonstrate just how bad the coverage of these issues is in Chicago. There is little doubt that the tried and true methods of covering crime and violence in Chicago on a daily basis serves nobody’s interest but the outlets and journalists’ themselves.

The internet has served not as an empowering tool for the media to crime and violence in a more nuanced and thoughtful way without the space and time restrictions that printing deadline or nightly newscasts put on local journalists. Instead it has mostly served to increase space available for the same horrible reporting. The secondary problem the internet has allowed for is the ever increasing pressure from political operations that disguise themselves as media outlets and push “reporting” that serves a fringe political ideology. Unfortunately for Chicago, there too many fringe political operations that put pressure on local media to report the news inline with their political ideology.

All of this leads us to the three media stories we we discuss on today’s show:

68 bullets fired in Near North shootout, but man accused of taking part only faces misdemeanor after prosecutors reject felony charges

All three are horrific in their own way. Sometimes it is heard to figure out if a report on crime and violence in Chicago in Chicago is from a mainstream outlet or one of the fringe political operations if you read them without knowing what outlet it was coming from. Crime and violence reporting has always been an issues in Chicago unfortunately the internet has not brought about a boom in meaningful and thoughtful coverage of these issues.