I appreciate the critical scrutiny Mike Miner gave my reporting on police abuses in Chicago public housing in his July 29 column [Hot Type]. He raises important questions that I hope readers of the ongoing series Kicking the Pigeon on “The View From the Ground” (www.viewfromtheground.com) will carry forward with them as the narrative unfolds.
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How are we to judge the reliability of a reporter? How is his work shaped by his personal and professional relationships? How does he come to know what he claims to know about the world? These are legitimate questions for readers to ask as they assess a work of reporting. No journalist who seeks to be accountable to his subject and his readers can reasonably object to such scrutiny. My purpose here is thus to deepen the questions raised in the column and to add some of my own.
This opposition between what the community claims to know and the blanket denial of the officers frames the next phase of Kicking the Pigeon.
