Whipped Cream Difficulties

Interesting article from Topic: “The Story Behind the Chicago Newspaper That Bought a Bar”, an oral history of the Chicago Sun-Times Mirage investigation.

I know I’ve written about this before, but briefly: in 1977, the paper and the Better Government Association bought a bar and secretly recorded city employees taking bribes to ignore violations.

Zay: The payoff parade began before we opened. The health inspector, when he inspected us— I mean, the basement just had maggots glistening on the floor. Upstairs it was no better. He shook us down for a few bucks and passed the place.
Pam: I think one of the things that amazed us is that these inspectors sold out public safety on the cheap. They were not taking huge amounts. We were told to leave $10 for one inspector, and $25 for another inspector.

The paper published the results in 25 parts starting in January of 1978.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2017 at 9:14 am and is filed under Clippings, History, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.