Sun-Times Won’t Judge Rosty
“We feel sadness over the prospect that a 42-year career of public service could end that way,” the Sun-Times commented. “We don’t judge the merits of the charges, and we acknowledge Rostenkowski’s gusty [sic] vow to fight it out. But after two years of rumors, the reality is here that a Chicago institution faces a shameful end. These are not happy times.”
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At another point in the same piece Neubauer, Brown, and Briggs wrote: “The ghost-payrolling allegations that would be contained in an indictment mirror a Sun-Times report last December that Rostenkowski’s payroll was filled with employees who did no work, tenants of his family-owned buildings, and double-dipping city workers.”
Hornung agreed the inconsistency could be unfathomable to the reading laity, but he reminded us of what his job is. “The editorial board at the end of the day, although it has considerable latitude in considering issues and weighing them, must come to conclusions that the editor and publisher are comfortable with.”
But editor Dennis Britton told us that both “The Case Against Rosty” and Hornung’s editorial were written too categorically. “What was intended to be said was that we were not judging the [legal] guilt or innocence of Rostenkowski,” Britton said. “I don’t want us to be in a position of judging someone’s guilt or innocence. Are we comfortable with what we have uncovered? Absolutely. Totally positive. Have we been vindicated at least by a grand jury? Yeah. It’s up to a jury to decide whether he’s guilty or innocent. If that doesn’t come across [in an editorial], it’s just a lack of attention.”
That Fairchild was accused by his law firm of padding his expense accounts by about half a million dollars and funneling work to the law firm of Chapman & Cutler, where his wife Maureen was a partner;
