Reporter Ticketed-Too Many Questions
© Provided by The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) —
Officials in a suburban Chicago community have issued municipal citations to a local news reporter for what they say were persistent contacts with city officials seeking comment on treacherous fall flooding.
The tickets from Calumet City, a city of 35,000 located 24 miles (39 kilometers) south of Chicago, allege “interference/hampering of city employees" by Hank Sanders, a reporter for the Daily Southtown, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
It's the latest of several recent First Amendment dust-ups involving city officials and news outlets around the country, following this week's arrest of a small-town Alabama newspaper publisher and reporter after reporting on a grand jury investigation of a school district, and the August police raid of a newspaper and its publisher's home in Kansas tied to an apparent dispute a restaurant owner had with the paper.
Sanders reported in an Oct. 20 story that consultants told Calumet City administrators the city's stormwater infrastructure was in poor condition before flooding wrought by record September rains. Officials say Sanders continued to call and email city employees, drawing complaints including from Mayor Thaddeus Jones, who is also a Democratic state representative.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/illinois-city-tickets-reporter-for-asking-too-many-questions-in-latest-first-amendment-dustup/ar-AA1jlSAc?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c62240f103cc41e481c19924bd14e553&ei=7
