Ambush Journalism Comes to Chicago's Mayoral Race

By Kevin Robinson in News on Oct 14, 2010 1:30PM

A video of WIND personality Bill Kelly trying to ambush mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel made the rounds on the internet late yesterday afternoon. Kelly, who lost to Judy Baar Topinka in the Republican primary for state comptroller last winter, tried to corner Emanuel at what looks like the Columbus Day parade, peppering him with loaded questions ("There is a lot of people that speculate that the stimulus was actually just a payback to your Wall Street friends that made you a multi multi millionaire. What do you say to those people?") and pushing in front of other reporters and interrupting their questions.

Aside from Jay Levine freaking out at 2:20 in the video ("Let him finish or I'm gonna deck you!"), the video reveals a few things about the political zeitgeist in Chicago today. The first is how awkward Emanuel can be when he's campaigning - as though he's still not used to working with media and voters on a local level, as opposed to dealing with media in the controlled environment of Washington, D.C. The second is the apparent rise of alternative media, even in a solid blue city like Chicago, and how the mainstream media reacts to those people. That doesn't give Kelly a pass for what he did - alt media have a responsibility to handle themselves respectfully and professionally with candidates and elected officials, even if they don't agree with their policies and politics.