Chicago Tribune Has Published 10X More Editorials on Jussie Smollett Hoax Than on Lead Pipes Poisoning Poor Children
The disproportionate coverage shows how racism and class interests shapes editorial priorities.
Since the January 2019 case of actor Jussie Smollett faking a hate crime against himself, the Chicago Tribune editorial board has published 30 different editorials arguing for more severe punishment for the Class 4 felonies supposedly carried out by Smollett and/or taking time out to criticize Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx for not sufficiently prosecuting his case. In contrast, this same editorial board has published only three editorials on the lack of progress removing Chicago’s lead pipes poisoning poor black kids everyday.
The unwillingness of city officials for decades to replace the lead pipes in Chicago is an urgent public health crisis. In September of last year, the Guardian published a blockbuster report, complete with new scientific analysis, showing just how widespread lead contamination is in the Chicago water system.
Journalists Erin McCormick, Aliya Uteuova, and Taylor Moore found that “one in 20 tap water tests performed for thousands of Chicago residents found lead, a neurotoxic metal, at or above US government limits. In addition, they found that one-third had more lead than is permitted in bottled water” and “out of the 24,000 tests, approximately 1,000 homes had lead exceeding federal standards.” The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that lead levels in school drinking fountains should not exceed the threshold of 1 part per billion. “By this measure,” the Guardian reports, “71% of Chicago tests reviewed by the Guardian would not pass.”
Needless to say, nine of the top 10 zip codes with the largest percentages of high test results were neighborhoods with majorities of Black and Hispanic residents. Some cases are especially horrific. The report notes that “there were dozens of homes with shockingly high lead levels. One home, in the majority-Black neighborhood of South Chicago, had lead levels of 1,100 parts per billion (ppb) – 73 times the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit of 15ppb.”
The negative effects of lead in water are well documented. According to the World Health Organization, “Young children are particularly vulnerable to the toxic effects of lead and can suffer profound and permanent adverse health impacts, particularly on the development of the brain and nervous system. Lead also causes long-term harm in adults, including increased risk of high blood pressure and kidney damage.”
Yet, since the Jussie Smollet hoax over four years ago, the Chicago Tribune editorial board has published 10 times more editorials on the case specifically, or primarily focusing on the case, than on the subject of Chicago’s lead poisoning of poor black and brown kids. (The count can be found here.) This isn’t even commenting on the qualitative problems with the three lead pipes editorials that pay lip service to replacing the lead pipes but fret over “how the city will pay for it” and insist the solution must be “financially sound” and “cannot saddle taxpayers with an impossible price tag.”
Which is another way of saying it shouldn’t really happen. We can’t do major life-saving infrastructure programs that saddle the “taxpayer”—e.g. rich people. This low taxes, “free market” approach to letting poor people be poisoned ad infinitum is consistent with The Tribune’s notoriously conservative streak. The editorial board infamously endorsed libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016 and their editorial board mission statement sounds like a cica 2012 Ron Paul Youtube commenter:
The Tribune Editorial Board advocates for the equality of the individual, for personal responsibility, for a limited government role in the lives of the governed. The Tribune advocates for personal liberty, opportunity and enterprise, for free markets, free will and freedom of expression.
It’s not clear how obsessively knocking the State's Attorney for not throwing the book at a hate crime hoax fits into the editorial board’s philosophy of “personal liberty.” But suffice it to say they did not see the millions poured into the police presence, arrest, trial, and prosecution of Smollett as “saddling taxpayers.”
The Tribune editorial board seems keenly aware of how petty its repeated lobbying for more severe punishment of Smollett is, writing in one March 2022 editorial, “Chicago has more important things to worry about, and we have more important things to write about, than [Smollett].” I don’t know, do you? Because you keep writing about him all the time and demanding the Cook County State's Attorney make locking him up a major political priority.
Quantitatively, the paper's coverage isn’t much better. While Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne has been doing quality work covering the issue of lead pipe poisoning for years, his reporting (often co-bylined with other reporters such as Cecilia Reyes) pales in comparison to the half dozen reporters who have covered every single development of the Jussie Smollett case. A Google search shows 815 mentions of “lead pipes” in decades of reporting by the Tribune, and 4,240 mentions of “Smollett”––the vast bulk of which only appear since his hoax was revealed in early 2019.
Given the high stakes at work, the thousands of children being needlessly poisoned every day, one has to wonder: where are the scolding, moralistic editorials by The Tribune demanding city leaders stop the delays and inaction on fixing the very solvable problem of Chicago’s lead poisoning? Where is the faux courageous leadership they displayed in their March 2021 headline, “No, we’re not letting up: Release the full Jussie Smollett report”? They completely let up on demanding anyone in city government replace Chicago’s lead pipes. They yawned through two half ass editorials on the topic, hand-wrung about costs, and moved on.
The race-baiting effect of the Smollett case is clear. It allows Tribune editorial board members to hide behind ostensibly race-neutral appeals for justice and anti-corruption (the bulk of their editorials imply a Foxx-Big RaceHoax conspiracy to cover up the scandal) to go after Foxx for being too progressive and reformist for their “Tough on Crime” tastes. It’s all spectacle and innuendo and ultimately a gross misuse of public attention and precious editorial influence. Some media observers may say editorial boards don’t matter as much these days, and this is true to an extent. But, unfortunately, they matter to people who matter—namely, other newsmakers and lawmakers—so they’re still a useful window into elite opinion. And the hedge fund that owns the Tribune, Alden Global Capital, has made it clear that an otherwise obscure and relatively unimportant case of public misconduct is 10 times more important than tens of thousands of poor kids being poisoned by government neglect and indifference.