Crain's Dope

The Corporate Knives Sharpen Among Anti-Union Journalist Hacks

By Jim Vail

Crain's Greg Hinz pimps for the wealthy

The business owned mainstream media in this city are sharks circling when they smell teachers union blood.

Crain's Chicago Business hack columnist Greg Hinz is paid to write that teachers pensions should be cut because the state can't pay them. Cut the billionaires taxes and make the working class pay. 

So he quickly picked up on my story about turmoil in the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund when I wrote last week that the board president Jeffery Blackwell voted himself in as the executive director, an ethically questionable action.

"The state continues to pony up more and more each year to pay retirement costs for its workers and public schools teachers in Illinois," he writes with indignation. "Pritzker's proposed 2022 budget would allot almost $9.4 billion to pensions just from its operating account, or general funds, up from $8.2 billion as recently as 2020. That's almost a quarter of all general funds operating."

Media blowhards like Hinz puff out their chests and pontificate how workers should no longer be entitled to their pensions, letting off the hook scam artist billionaires like Ken Griffen and their tax breaks.

But Hinz and his smirk goes a step further when it comes to ethics.

Apparently Hinz is challenged himself when it comes to the ethics of journalism. He takes information from my article and writes according to some sources Blackwell is interested in getting the job permanently. If he wrote this paper for a college class, he would be charged with plagiarism. Certainly no self-respecting corporate columnist hack like Hinz would dare to credit Second City Teachers news blog for his information. But didn't he learn in his writing classes that you source your information in any article. Did Hinz talk to "some sources"? No, I did. But he pawns it off like he did. 

What a guy.

The corporate media dude who wears an earring and is real hip.

Hip on behalf of billionaires. Teachers and the rest of us be damned!