One cheer for the Chicago Tribune for not blowing the Blago probe

posted at 9:42 am on December 10, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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The Chicago Tribune reports today that it had the story on Governor Rod Blagojevich’s full spectrum of corruption but held off on reporting key elements at the request of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.  Fitzgerald wanted to keep certain aspects of the investigation secret to allow Blagojevich to hang himself, and the Tribune responded with civic responsibility and coordinated its publication of those elements with Fitzgerald’s office.  However, their self-congratulatory report leaves out a certain amount of motivation:

As the federal probe into Gov. Rod Blagojevich intensified in recent weeks, editors and reporters at the Chicago Tribune balanced a competitive story with a rare request from U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald’s office: To hold off on what they uncovered until a key phase in the investigation could be carried out. …

Since October, the Tribune has broken several stories on the Blagojevich probe, but in some cases withheld information because of the government’s request. …

“We thought we’d never have the opportunity to install the bug or place the telephone tap and we made an urgent request for the Tribune not to publish that story,” Fitzgerald said. “That is a very rare thing for us to do and it’s an even rarer thing for a newspaper to grant.

“I have to take my hat off that the Tribune withheld that story for a substantial period of time, which otherwise might have compromised the investigation from ever happening,” he said.

The Tribune does deserve credit for exercising editorial restraint.  We certainly haven’t seen that from the New York Times, for instance, which took delight in exposing a series of secret counterterrorist operations over the last few years, rendering them all but useless.  Withholding this information certainly kept Blagojevich from feeling concerned about his telephone conversations, as the transcriptions proved.

But let’s not pretend that civic pride provided the only motivation for the Tribune Company in this case:

Angry over critical editorials, Gov. Rod Blagojevich threatened to withhold state money for Wrigley Field renovations unless members of the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board were fired, authorities charged Tuesday.

A series of secretly recorded telephone calls showed Blagojevich maneuvering behind the scenes in recent weeks to pressure Tribune Co., which owns both the ballpark and the newspaper, according to court records.

In one recorded conversation, Blagojevich uttered a series of profanities about the paper’s editorial writers, saying that “our recommendation is fire all those [expletive] people, get ‘em the [expletive] out of there and get us some editorial support.”

In another call, the governor’s wife, Patricia, allegedly can be heard yelling in the background and urging her husband to “hold up that [expletive] Cubs [expletive].”

The Tribune had a particular animus for Blagojevich after this ham-handed attempt to bully their editorial board.  They wanted him gone, and they wouldn’t have minded losing a scoop or two to the competition to get it.  The Tribune had bigger fish to fry: millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for Wrigley Field renovations, which are now all but guaranteed after Blagojevich’s extortion attempts got exposed by Fitzgerald.

So yes, one cheer for the Tribune’s exercise of editorial responsibility.  Too bad that taxpayers will pay for it.

Update: Rick Moran writes at The American Thinker that tax money may have had Zell ready to dance to Blagojevich’s tune:

But the sale of Wrigley field will involve massive taxes — something on the order of $100 million dollars in capital gains. Zell had a approached the Illinois Finance Authority (IFA) in order to strike a deal where, according to the criminal complaint, the IFA would take title to Wrigley Field thus saving Zell a lot of cash.

Enter Blagojevich, who told his chief of staff John Harris (also arrested today) to make it clear to Zell that no help from the IFA would be forthcoming unless some members of the Chicago Tribune editorial board were fired.

In a November 4 phone call with Harris, Blagojevich told his aide “”our recommendation is fire all those [expletive] people, get ‘em the [expletive] out of there and get us some editorial support.”

Harris reported back on November 11 that Zell “got the message and is very sensitive to the issue.” Later, Harris told Blagojevich that there were “certain corporate reorganizations and budget cuts coming and, reading between the lines, he’s (Zell) going after that section.”

No firings have taken place yet and it is doubtful that Zell will make a move now that this deal is in the open. I suppose he saw it as a cost of doing business and $100 million is a lot of cash. But the thought that he would buckle to the whims of this strutting peacock of a politician who wanted journalists, who were only doing the job they were being paid to do, axed because they were telling the truth about his corruption stinks of rank cowardice.

That makes “civic responsibility” an even more palatable option, doesn’t it?

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