I don't have time to do this justice this morning, but I haven't seen a diary about it and it's a pretty big f'n deal.
Long time Chicago Sun Times political reporter Dave McKinney resigns after the Bruce Rauner campaign went to the Newspaper's owners to try to stop one of McKinney's stories from being published.
See below for the ugly details.
McKinney worked with respected local journalist Carol Marin on a story about litigation concerning a former female CEO of the company LeapSource. The woman said that Bruce Rauner, the director of the company at the time, threatened her, threatened her family, and threatened to thwart her in future efforts in finding a job.
McKinney and Marin vetted the story for a month and it was approved for publication by the legal departments at the Sun Times, and NBC5 - Carol Marin's TV station.
See McKinney's resignation letter here:
http://davemckinney123.wordpress.com/...
Before the story was published, Rauner campaign staffers vowed to "go over the heads" of the reporters and editors to stop publication. They sent the paper an opposition research hit piece on McKinney's wife, Ann Liston. The fiction within the hit-piece said that McKinney's wife, Ann Liston, worked with a PAC to defeat Rauner.
Ms. Liston is indeed a political consultant, but had gone to great lengths to avoid a conflict of interest. She worked mostly on out-of-state campaigns and created a legally binding firewall between herself and the Illinois governor race. This was presented to Sun Times management and they approved.
McKinney's editor / Sun Times publisher Jim Kirk initially vehemently supported McKinney and the story and told the Rauner campaign that what they were doing bordered on defamation, and was spurious and sexist.
However, two days later, McKinney was pulled from the story and told to go on leave. He was offered other jobs at the paper, all demotions.
He consulted a respected former federal prosecutor, whose involvement caused the company to immediately reinstate him, saying he had "no restrictions."
However his first day back he was told to leave the LeapSource thing alone for now.
Three days later, the newspaper reversed its years-old tradition of not doing endorsements and wrote a gushing endorsement of Bruce Rauner for governor. This was completely bizarre, and their explanation for writing the endorsement was senseless and obviously contrived.
McKinney had seen enough and decided to resign. His boss, Jim Kirk, now says that he was calling all the shots and didn't get any pressure from the ownership, but following the timeline of events I find this completely unbelievable, as do most people who have written about it in the Chicago media.
Eric Zorn, the Chicago Tribune reporter in the WGN video below, wonders who wrote the Rauner endorsement, because he's pretty sure that it's no one that's currently on the Sun Times Editorial Board.
The Chicago Sun Times is shameful, and this whole story should be getting far more attention than it is.
Excellent WGN TV coverage:
http://youtu.be/...
Chicago Tribune coverage:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...