Whipped Cream Difficulties

The Chicago Sun-Times is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Mirage Tavern stories by rerunning the entire series, one story a day, as they originally appeared in the paper (they also promise extras from their archives and those of the Better Government Association).

For the young and those who don’t remember, the paper and the BGA teamed up, bought a bar (which they named the “Mirage Tavern”), outfitted it with hidden cameras and recording devices, and then proceeded to record a parade of city employees and officials coming in and demanding payoffs. (Wikipedia summary here.)

I particularly like this quote from the Wikipedia entry:

The shakedown amounts were small, typically less than $100, as the reporters learned of what they later called “the supermarket approach to graft–low prices, high volume” that inspectors tended to prefer as the safest way of doing illegal business.

This is backed up by the paper’s reporting: for example, it took $10 to pass a fire inspection, even though there was exposed electrical wiring and other issues in the building’s basement.

The HouChron at the time ran Mike Rokyo’s work a couple of days out of the week, so I kind of knew Chicago was corrupt, but hearing second-hand about the Mirage Tavern investigation was the first time that I realized just how crooked the city was.

(Interestingly, the series was nominated and recommended for a Pulitzer Prize for “Local Investigative Specialized Reporting”. However, the Pulitzer board rejected the jury’s recommendation of the Sun-Times series, apparently because Ben Bradlee and other folks were butthurt over the Sun-Times methods.)

(Hattip: His Jim-ness.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2013 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Clippings, Law, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.