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88 10 Heat from Jesse Jackson Never underestimate the determination of a reporter in pursuit of a scoop. I know that because of the work being done by my legmen in our corner of the newsroom. In 1976, I have three assistants digging for stories for “Perspective,” and shoveling up some very good ones: city workers filling potholes for three hours in the morning, breaking for lunch for two hours, dumping what’s left of their asphalt into the Chicago River, then signing out at 2:30; city inspectors charging into a corner newsstand and ordering the owner to install a sink and toilet because, they declare, the candy and gum she’s selling is “food”; an alderman congesting traffic by making a street one-way in order to provide more parking for a friend’s restaurant; firemen using a hook-andladder to hang a sign outside a bar that one of them owns; the Department of Streets and Sanitation paying taxpayers’ money to a private trucker (the best precinct captain in a north-side ward) to spread salt while city trucks stand idle in a parking lot. Our stories come from anonymous letters or telephone calls, or from me or my legmen on patrol. We’re always on patrol, almost always with a camera in a pocket, sometimes in disguise. Members on my team average about thirty years old, are pursuing jobs in investigative journalism, and are being paid an average of $20,000 a year. In four or five years, they wear out or move on. In addition to exposing waste, corruption, and hypocrisy in government, they scrutinize city, state, and federal budgets and payrolls and analyze court decisions in our hunt for judges on the take. Because of the trouble I’ll be in if I make a mistake in a commentary, I choose my assistants very, very carefully. When they’ve been through my boot camp, they go places—the Washington bureau of CBS News, 60 Minutes, competing local newsrooms, an anchor chair in Chicago radio news, TV news management, an executive suite of a major newspaper. They are uniquely competent young journalists committed to accuracy; they are thorough, fair minded, and tireless. H E AT F R O M J E S S E J A C K S O N 89 One of the best stories we’ve dug up, I’d say the most controversial, is about Reverend Jesse Jackson preaching paucity from the pulpit while househunting in the suburbs. I’ll tell you the story, but first a word about how hard it is working a story on Reverend Jackson—in battling the Chicago media, mainstream and ever-so-white, Jackson almost always counts on winning; so the harder he’s hit, the stiffer he defends. The more he yelps, the more his friends and supporters do too, the more access he has to news executives. He takes his grievances directly to the top and doesn’t walk away until satisfied it’s redressed. Now, here’s the story: The reverend is looking at a place for a second home near Libertyville, forty miles northwest of the Chicago, a twenty-five-acre estate that’s priced at $295,000. He hears my commentary about his house hunting and doesn’t like it. Not one bit. He calls Channel 2 management demanding equal time, and being the man in Chicago most feared by the media, he gets it—on the set with Bill and me on the ten o’clock news. “That was a racially motivated report,” Jackson says of this “Perspective,” “designed to keep the black in his place. I had just a casual look at the home near Libertyville. I had no intention to buy. My wife and five children live under tremendous pressure. I want to get away. I want to have a hideaway. I need one, but I cannot afford one. It was just a casual look. I had no intention to buy.” He is steaming. “I’ve visited the White House, but I don’t plan to buy it.” “I reported on the air your statement that you’re not buying,” I respond. “I said it twice in the commentary.” “Then why did you use the story at all?” “Because you are a prominent and interesting person. What you do is news.” Kurtis and people working in the newsroom are becoming uncomfortable. The Reverend Jackson: “There are two bad aspects to your story. One is that I might...

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