By now it’s traditional for politicians to knock around the press like Mike Tyson’s sparring partners. Yet even Nixon waited to be kicked around before he complained about it. As a mayoral candidate, Roland Burris may have begun a new trend when he started attacking his media coverage before it was possible for him to have any media coverage–namely, at his very first press conference.
He didn’t suffer from antagonistic reporting, either. In classifying the articles as positive, negative, or neutral, we’ve given Burris every benefit of the doubt. Anything slightly questionable for Burris became neutral or negative; anything slightly questionable for Daley became neutral or positive. Under this Burris-friendly system, Burris finished with 27 positive stories to Daley’s 15. Burris received only 7 negative stories to Daley’s 23, and of the remaining neutral stories, Burris had 7 and Daley had 8.
Political consultant Don Rose wasn’t impressed with the coverage of Burris, but sees no organized effort to squeeze him out. “Almost every opposition campaign since Harold Washington has complained of press coverage,” says Rose. “I think it’s happened pretty consistently because the press coverage is generally pretty poor, as far as covering issues and really getting into the campaign….[Burris] was not particularly singled out for inadequate coverage, but as a candidate for major office he probably feels it more.”
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Burris’s coverage was, in fact, downright kind. Only one negative story cropped up on Burris’s past, and it didn’t originate with reporters. On March 16 the Chicago Council of Lawyers released a report blasting the Illinois attorney general’s office for, among other sins, a payroll so bloated with political hires that there isn’t enough money left to attract and retain top-notch attorneys. Far from exploiting the report, the Tribune and Sun-Times each ran only one article on it. The Sun-Times account was on the bottom of page 18, and didn’t use Burris’s name in the headline. The Tribune story was in the middle of page 8 of the Chicagoland section. Both articles noted the possible political intentions in the timing of the report’s release, and both concentrated heavily on the fact that the report’s findings applied to every attorney general going back to Republican Tyrone Fahner in 1983.
Burris also got a pass on his involvement with the Rolando Cruz case. Cruz has been on death row for the last decade but is widely believed to be innocent of the 1983 sexual assault and murder of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. He is currently awaiting a third trial after his second conviction was overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court. Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote a string of 15 columns examining the questionable evidence used to convict Cruz and the suppression of the fact that child rapist and murderer Brian Dugan had confessed to the Nicarico murder after Cruz’s first conviction. In 1992 Assistant Attorney General Mary Brigid Kenney resigned from Burris’s office rather than write a brief supporting Cruz’s conviction for his second hearing before the Illinois Supreme Court. “I was being asked to help execute an innocent man,” Zorn quoted her letter to Burris. “Unfortunately, you have seen fit to ignore evidence in this case.” Burris refused to reconsider, telling reporters, “It’s not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think.”
According to Flannery, “He got more coverage and was taken more seriously by the news media than any other politician I can recall–and I’ve been in this for 22 years–who raised as little money as he did, whatever the final number is, and who in the end made as poor a showing as he did.”
“He launched into a big thing, ‘We’re going to hold your feet to the fire,’ singled out Andy Shaw, said Andy Shaw had been painting Mayor Daley as invincible, and so on,” says Fornek. Burris supporters actually booed Shaw, says Kirby.
