Chicago TV reporter in hot water

My thoughts exactly.

Guy's wife disappears on the night she's getting ready to toss him from the house, he's been virtually uncooperative with police, he's having a pool party (allegedly) a couple of months after the fact while his wife is likely dead somewhere _ so what the hell, let's bring the kids over to swim with him.

 

For what it's worth...

A good friend of mine knows her very well. There is absolutely no doubt in his mind that her story about the sister calling her for an interview is legit. Clearly she fucked up badly by going out to the pool with the kids, but in his view there's no way she went there for a pool party, and his judgment carries a lot of weight with me.

It's not exactly a defense, obviously. It was very dumb and she has paid the price.

 

And, she's gone.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-070709jacobsonjul09,1,6178857.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

 

Some good insight from people here regarding this.

Jacobson attending a pool party whose host was a source may be totally innocent. And if she really wanted to attend, she should have not brought her kids and she should have worn something other than a bathing suit. This may not have been as big of a deal then. This wasn't an invitation for dinner or whatever. Many of us have eaten dinner with a source, had drinks or played golf. I know I do. Sometimes, stories you wrote or are writing come up, and yes, in an informal setting, people are more apt to open up. And a party like this was an informal setting, but Jacobson's judgement was not very good. Giving her the benefit of the doubt that all she was doing was trying to be social and get the guy to open up to her for a story, consider it a lesson learned.

 

This is worse than I thought. I figured the thread would be about her dating Mayor Daley.

 

A "pool party" involves a whole bunch of people coming over with a swimming theme.

Near as I can tell, this is one married reporter visiting a murder suspect who is not her husband, bringing the kids and wearing a two-piece. And nobody else along for the "party," thus making it "not really a party."

Not buying this "pool party" thing; poor choice of phrase by the Sun-Times. Also not buying the "buttering up a source" theory.

 

something's gettin' buttered up alright...

 

Have we abandoned the thought that she really might have been on the road to the pool with her kids when she got the call? Maybe when she got there, the father said "go swim. have fun". More importantly, maybe she hesitated saying yes, but he insisted. And what the hell was CBS doing in a neighbors yard video taping the man's house?

Oh, and this is an issue about gender.

 

No, it's about ethics. Not just journalistic ethics, but also personal ethics. She should not have been in that house in that situation with her children under any circumstances. The fact that she was assigned to cover the murder investigation of her male friend makes the situation exponentially worse.

All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. If it looks like a date and smells like a date, there's a pretty good chance that it is a date.

 

No one's said where the videotape came from. WBBM said it was made Friday, but didn't say who made it.

From the looks of it, it's a neighbor who made it.

 

I haven't rfeally seen anything that says for a fact there were others there. Maybe there were.

There is a difference, I think, in eating dinner with a coach or player, or having lunch with a source, even of the opposite sex, than going by yourself to the house of someone who may be a kidnapper/murderer (I don't know this case status but the spouse is always the No. 1 suspect).

 

Unless I've missed something, I don't believe she was the guy's friend. I don't believe she knew him beyond covering the story.