Glenn Greenwald helped raise funds for Smith and Jamie Kalven's investigative Invisible Institute, and other journalists who do police accountability reporting. Greenwald interviewed Smith:
GREENWALD: One
of the things that I’ve always wondered about in reading about the work you did
in this case is there are obviously a lot of big media outlets in Chicago
like The Chicago Tribune and a bunch of network
affiliates and other reasonably well founded media outlets. Why did it fall on
you to pursue this case on the courts? . . .
SMITH: . . .
It’s not so much like a really obvious failure it’s more of like, just a
general trusting on their part of government and process. You know, I was a
newspaper reporter for five years in Ohio and I got into the same groove of
trusting my sources and like getting into a relationship with my sources. And
so when they say, “Oh, the investigation is ongoing, to release a video would
mean to screw up our investigation,” then I’m sorry to say that I was one of
those reporters that just didn’t say boo to that. And over the years I’ve
kind of developed this independent mindset that I think is really important in
our work and I wish more people had it.
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