Chicago City Wire

Martin Preib with the Chicago Contrarian recently took issue with the Sun-Times’ coverage of the police-involved shooting that resulted in the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, questioning whether Chicago media are stirring civil unrest rather than reporting on facts.

Prieb said in his post that the Chicago Sun-Times failed to wait until all the evidence had been revealed before providing coverage that he characterized as inflammatory.

“Building the obligatory manufactured narrative against the police before the evidence is even revealed, the Chicago Sun-Times once again places police at risk with their bizarre article about a police shooting of an armed 13-year-old in Little Village,” he posted April 4.

In addition to not waiting for further details or the release of body camera footage, Preib said that the Sun-Times also focused on there being two other police-involved shootings in the past month while not including the fact that four officers were shot in that same timeframe.

“Why mention the one and not the other? The statistics for both officers shot and officers shooting assailants goes a long way in illuminating a central fact about Chicago barely touched on in the Sun-Times article: Chicago, more than ever, is out of control,” Preib wrote. “Criminals do not fear the police.”

Preib also called out what he believes to be the use of discriminatory word choices by the Sun-Times.

He said that the paper used the phrase “gunned down by police” in describing the incident, implying that it has already been determined the officer involved had no reasonable expectation he was acting in self-defense when he fired. He also questioned whether Matthew Topic, an attorney with Loevy and Loevy, who was quoted in the Sun-Times story, has a conflict of interest.

“An attorney for one of the most prominent law firms in the country, a firm renown for suing police officers for misconduct over the last three decades, has performed work for a newspaper that routinely writes about police misconduct?” Preib wrote. “What kind of work? How much? Doesn’t the Sun-Times see a conflict of interest there?”