166 NBC'S EGA BGA from a newspaper-oriented medium to that of television. The first joint venture was with Mike Wallace of Sixty Minutes, in which they did a report on Medicaid rip-offs. From then on, Brunner and the TV networks formed a team, especially with the national networks. A former staff investigator, Ron Berher, put it this way: If you wanted to go up the ladder at the BGA, you didn't want to put in time on a local story. Nobody gave a shit about them. The joke was 'at if you did a local story, maybe Terry would mention it at a Friday otaff meeting and say, "Nice job." But it was the 20/20 stories that got you invited to the barbecue dinners at the Brunner's house. This close relationship with TV led Brunner to eventually sign an agreement with 20/20 in 1979 to do eight investigative reports during the next year. This may sound like a great success story to the reader, but it must be remembered that the BGA was founded to act as a watchdog in Illinois, and that it was "privately funded" On top of this, while it is one thing to be on the lookout for violations of the public's rights, it is another to be actively seeking to fill eight spots on a national television program. A conflict of interests could easily occur. Now let me plug another ingredient in: Who are the trustees of the BGA? According to Seth S. King, in a New York Times, January 4, 1970, article: "The Association's board of directors includes the heads of many of Chicago's largest corporations and business concerns. These provide most of the funds for its annual budget which reached $175,000 last year." Thus, it is more than likely that certain trustees, with vested interests, could affect the kinds of investigations the BGA initiated. In fact, Terry Brunner stated that, and I quote from Nancy Banks article in the Reader, August 6, 1976: "The board of directors and the board of trustees formulate general policies and help set priorities." While my theory about the origin of the BGA probe of Cattle King may be conjecture, what allowed the BGA to go national in its coverage is not. In 1979 the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation provided a $2,500,000 donation to the BGA over a five year period. This, in addition to their yearly private contributions, gave them an annual budget of $800,000, and with this they expanded their staff to thirty and opened a branch office in Washington, DC. This expansion led to my difficulties, because with an office in Washington, DC, they could lead and propagandize with the national government and other branches of the media. First we need to trace the BGA's evolution from a newspaper to a television medium. Along with their 20/20 contract, the BGA continued to provide stories, or investigative support for stories, to Sixty Minutes and later to the NBC's First Camera program. This caused a change in their philosophy and approach to news NBC'S BGA \< stories According to William Mullen in "A Civic Watchdog Under Fire," April 1981: "On the surface, it would seem the BGA has never been more successful. Below the surface, however, that impression may not be entirely accurate." Mullen goes on to state that the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune had already cut relations with the BGA by 1981 due to questionable motives and shoddy research, as well as devious reporting techniques. William Jones, the managing editor of the Tribune, is quoted by Mullen as saying: "Newspapers have been working less and less with the BGA. We've had this uncomfortable feeling over the last couple of years that-the organization JBGA] tends now to look more at drama than substance." Jones goes on to add: "In trying to go national, in many ways the BGA has gone Hollywood. They are thinking more now in terms of film footage than about the content of their investigations." Later in the article, Ralph Otwell, editor of the Sun Times, says: The strength of the BGA at one time was that it could provide the people to check records and document examinations for reporters whose papers didn't have the staff to do these things. Television has different demands, and obviously to work with them, the BGA had to change its approach. This approach led to the same type of tactics that the BGA used against Cattle King. In Mullen's article, Jones accurately identified this approach when referring to a proposed BGA article on the irregularities in the taking of the 1980 census: Their approach was a little too cowboy and Indian. The Tribune is not against undercover reporting, but it has to be done under extremely controlled circumstances only where a story can't be obtained any other way. We basically feel at this point we have more confidence in our own investigations than the BGA's. What theSw/i Times and the Tribune recognized by 1981, so did Channel 2, WBBM-TV, of Chicago. In an hour long documentary in April of that year, producers Scott Craig and Molly Bedell and reporter Bill Kurds took the BGA to the cleaners. They exposed them, especially in the case of the show provided for ABC's 20/20, "Arson for Profit in Uptown," for making a story out of hot air. According to Gary Deeb, TV and radio critic of the Sun Times : "Channel 2 proves that the circumstantial evidence gathered by ABC and the BGA may have seemed rather electrifying on the air, but was weak and inconclusive in reality." Deeb goes on to quote Craig and Bedell of accusing the BGA of "never letting the facts get in the way of a good story." In this story, ABC and the BGA did a job on Charles Roberts, slumlord, and his associates, accusing them of "making money as their buildings burn and tenants die" (20/20 program). In Channel 2's analysis, they showed that Roberts didn't own most of the buildings that he was accused of destroying, and that he had sold most of them before the fires occurred. To sum it up, the prosecuting