The Tribune’s coverage of Chicago’s road salt status was riddled with factual errors and contained a major lapse of journalistic ethics that demands correction.
Your original article appeared Feb. 10 and reported the city’s plans to purchase another 70,000 tons of salt. It also raised the question (based largely on anonymous sources) of whether Streets and Sanitation oversalted Chicago’s main thoroughfares earlier in the winter.
Before the article was published, the city gave the Tribune a response to this inaccurate charge. However, not one word of it appeared in print.
Even more appalling was the Tribune’s erroneous report that Streets and Sanitation has “exhausted” a supply of nearly 350,000 tons of road salt.
Chicago’s original supply of road salt for the 1993-94 winter was only 303,000 tons, of which 40,000 tons has yet to be delivered. We also had about 40,000 tons left from the stock already on hand. This means the Tribune exaggerated the city’s use of salt by an incredible 127,000 tons.
Even as other communities were desperately trying to replenish their exhausted stock, Chicago had enough road salt to maintain public safety and was able to keep its supply lines open.
