In the third installment of his five-part series, Tracy Siska of the Chicago Justice Project takes a look at the recent local media coverage of the anti-violence program CeaseFire. He concludes that the "public has been denied a serious and rigorous discussion" on the issue of whether to reinstate CeaseFire's state funding:
It is very important for the media to be ever vigilant about the so-called “effectiveness” of programs. We live in a city where just about every program has been bastardized or corrupted entirely. The media has a responsibility to seek out alternative voices to check what officials are telling them about the program is correct. Skogan and the researchers at Northwestern are famous for their pro-police and official program biases. Does this automatically invalidate any research done by the authors, maybe not. What it should do is force journalists to treat the results skeptically and seek out alternative ways to validate their results. It is pretty clear that along with [Tribune columnist] Eric Zorn and [journalist Alex] Kotlowitz both of the major dailies’ editorial boards also drank the cool-aid.
The supporters of Ceasefire were looking for validation in the way of the “independent study” from Northwestern and they gobbled up the results. The problem is that the study did not come down from the heavens but instead was authored out of Northwestern. This is the same group of authors that repeatedly validated the CAPS program, Chicago’s Alternative Policing Strategy.
The public has been denied a serious and rigorous discussion about the issues surrounding reinstituting the funding for Ceasefire because media failed to do its job.
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