it's who you know
On May 20, 2:05 pm, dick thompson <rhomp2...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Article updated: 5/16/2011 1:19 PM
> The questions that Emanuel's press secretary won't answer
> Article
> Comments (28)
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> By Chuck Goudie
>
> Once Rahm Emanuel takes the oath and becomes Chicago' s mayor today, you
> will be hearing and seeing a lot more of a young woman named Tarrah
> Cooper. She is beginning the job of a lifetime, even though she doesn't
> have much life time behind her.
>
> Ms. Cooper (who pronounces her first name as Tair-uh, not Tahr-uh) is
> going to be the face of the Chicago mayor's office, as Mr. Emanuel's
> newly anointed press secretary. At the tender age of 25, she is
> certainly a fresh face.
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>
> Never having heard of Cooper before Emanuel returned to the Chicago
> political scene last fall, I was curious to find out about this person
> who would be responsible for espousing the positions and platforms of
> Chicago's first new administration in two decades; would be the go-to
> contact for information about important daily news stories; or, heaven
> forbid, be the public source in the office if there was a calamity of
> some kind.
>
> Last month, after learning that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
> Commission had issued a scathing report against Mr. Emanuel's school
> superintendent to-be, I contacted Ms. Cooper for a response. The EEOC in
> Rochester, N.Y., where Jean-Claude Brizard had been running the public
> schools, determined that he had an age, race and gender bias when firing
> a top administrator.
>
> I asked Cooper whether this had been known to Rahm Emanuel and why he
> nevertheless selected Brizard? Had Emanuel not known? Was Brizard's job
> offer being revoked?
>
> In our very first conversation, rather than simply answer the questions,
> Ms. Cooper stated that she wished to speak off the record. I informed
> her that I wouldn't have such a conversation, especially not with
> someone who is in the business of providing public information.
> Seemingly frustrated by that, she said that she'd have to call back.
>
> During a series of subsequent calls and emails, Ms. Cooper waged a
> relentless, several-hour campaign to convince me that such a finding by
> a federal panel against their choice to run the Chicago schools was not
> a news story. Sounding like a robocall, she persisted in the theme that
> this isn't a story.
>
> As we prepared the report for broadcast, Cooper also sent two emails
> containing misleading and false information. First she stated that an
> independent investigation found that Mr. Brizard did nothing wrong. But
> that report was prepared by a firm hired by Brizard's school board and
> hardly independent.
>
> Next she wrote that a court of law has proved that he did not do
> anything wrong.
>
> That was completely false. A civil suit is still in the early stages.
> Ms. Cooper, who did not respond to several requests for comment on this
> column, just graduated from the famous University of Missouri journalism
> school in 2008, so what she learned should still be fresh.
>
> She worked as a reporter on Mizzou's TV station and interned at MTV in
> New York.
>
> Before joining the Emanuel for Mayor campaign, she worked at the U.S.
> Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., where her bio
> states she helped to manage the Department's messaging, priorities and
> actions for numerous national incidents including the H1N1 epidemic, the
> December 25th and Times Square attempted bombings, the Haitian
> earthquake and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Based on DHS alerts,
> it seems she spent considerable time processing forms submitted by
> reporters to attend agency events.
>
> At city hall, she succeeds longtime mayoral press secretary Jackie
> Heard, who was paid a salary of nearly $180,000 per year. On April 23, I
> sent Ms. Cooper a number of questions for this column. They included:
>
> Is there a set of written guidelines or protocols that you are working
> from in dealing with reporters and news organizations?
>
> How involved is Mr. Emanuel in setting the tone for dealing with the
> press and in what manner? Does each story inquiry get run by him?
>
> Which of these best describes your view as press secretary in dealing
> with Chicago's major newspapers and TV and why: Tools for getting out
> message as we see it; aimed at embarrassing or uncovering negative
> aspects of the administration; a necessary evil that has to be controlled.
>
> How will your cooperation with news organizations be based on the
> nature and tone of their day-to-day coverage?
>
> Does your youthfulness and lack of experience symbolize what seems to
> be administration focused on hiring managers under 35?
>
> What qualifies you to be press secretary for the mayor of the
> third-largest city?
>
> How much will you be paid?
>
> What are your career aspirations?
>
> In more than three weeks she has yet to answer any of the questions.
> After asking a few times to meet me off the record, which I declined,
> Tarrah Cooper has stopped replying.
>
> It is interesting that the mayor's new press secretary felt no
> inhibition about displaying hundreds of personal photos on her public
> Facebook page, showing her partying with friends, in beach attire and at
> a slot machine.
>
> When you are 25, apparently some things are OK to be put on the record.
>
> Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief
> investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this
> column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email
> at chuckgou...@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ ChuckGoudie.
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