RFI in the News

Township Spent $106,000 on Ads Pushing Nobel Peace Prize for S.C. Church

ICPR Executive Director Sarah Brune is quoted in this article.

via Chicago Tribune

“Thornton Township spent more than $106,000 on an advertising push aimed at garnering support for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a South Carolina church that was the site of a tragic 2015 mass shooting, newly-released records show.

The township, which includes some of the poorest communities in the south suburbs, spent $106,257 on radio and newspaper ads around the Chicago market, mainly aimed at predominantly African-American audiences, records show. Thornton Township’s ad purchases followed a $46,000 taxpayer-funded trip to South Carolina taken by township supervisor Frank Zuccarelli and 14 other delegates in September, which the Daily Southtown detailed earlier this month.

In a previous interview, Zuccarelli said the four-day trip’s “main purpose” was to “get knowledge from the people directly in Charleston as to why their reaction was so much different than the reactions in Ferguson and Baltimore,” a reference to police-involved killings of young African-Americans in those cities that generated nationwide outrage and violent protests.”

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