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The inside story on a billion-dollar chemical company’s fight to keep its secrets from the public
After the Cicero Independiente and MuckRock published investigative articles about air pollution and the chemicals company Koppers, it hired a public-relations firm to organize a secret, behind-the-scenes campaign to influence local officials.
Koppers disputes most recent environmental violations but plant records reveal two decades of run-ins with Illinois EPA
After the Illinois EPA sent them a lengthy violations notice last fall, Koppers executives began selling stock at an unprecedented rate. After MuckRock and the Cicero Independiente reported on those violations, the publicly-traded company hired a crisis communications firm to meet with elected officials and manage the community fallout.
After critical series, Cicero town president calls Independiente journalists ‘jerks’ and threatens to ban them from speaking at public meetings
Cicero Town Board President Larry Dominick, in publicly-recorded comments at the end of a biweekly town meeting on Dec. 12, said the Cicero Independiente‘s staffers routinely don’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and, as a result, “from now on, I don’t think I’ll let anyone there talk that does not stand for the pledge.”