I would love to hear any alternatives from the city on this one, but we won't. It's hard to conclude for certain that they were wrong (IE they didn't actually believe a large scale illegal operation was being operated), although I do agree most of the presented evidence (which includes an email, in my mind the absolute most damning part of the evidence) suggests that the city (not the police) were conducting a shakedown.
> being promoted by Reason, which has a poor reputation for bias in reporting
They're a LIBERTARIAN magazine, it says "free minds and free markets" right on the mast head. They're 100% up front about their view of the world. What do you really expect?
This is like complaining that Jacobin is written by a bunch of socialists.
> This is like complaining that Jacobin is written by a bunch of socialists.
No, it's like suspecting that an article might be distorted to serve socialist ideological interests when Jacobin is the only source. Which is, of course, what any sane person would do, even if they share the outlet’s ideological orientation.
It just isn't a very interesting critique in and of itself. If the OP was pointing out how their ideological outlook influenced the facts presented in the story, or how they left some complicating factor out, then it would be useful. However C.J. Ciaramella, the author of the piece has a long history and good track record of reporting on police misconduct, and civil rights abuses. Moreover the article is covering reporting originally done by WXYZ Detroit, so it not even originally from Reason, they just picked it up for their audience.
My overarching point is that unless you can point to the ideology of the publication negatively influencing the reporting it's just lazy and useless criticism.
