It’s instructive to observe how most local news outlets covered Ken Griffin’s $10 million handout to Chicago law enforcement.
CPD officials partly credit a recent decline in gun violence to the support centers (through March, the number of homicides in Chicago was down 17 percent) but the truth is no one knows for sure why Chicago’s homicide rate spiked two years ago and has dropped to pre-2016 levels in the past year.
But no other local media outlet I could find mentioned any of this. Nor did they recap the other notable news story that Griffin was involved with this week—that he temporarily halted construction of a football field-size house on his $230 million oceanfront property south of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. Chicago media were busy instead describing Griffin, who also donated $20 million to Bruce Rauner’s reelection campaign—as a “philanthropist” who also gave $125 million to the University of Chicago’s economics department and $12 million for walking and bicycle paths along the Lakefront Trail.
