Perhaps the worst thing to happen to journalism over the years is its simplistic over-reliance on the mere "appearance of impropriety" to justify big, splashy stories.
It's based on the assumption that everybody is corrupt. No actual wrongdoing need ever be found - just something that might look a bit fishy to a reporter's overly suspicious eyes. There's no need to prove anything; one or two distant connections is enough to justify destroying somebody's reputation - which didn't deserve protection anyway because everybody is evil.
And that brings us to Dave McKinney, who resigned last week as the Statehouse bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was a reversal of what's become the norm: In this case, a politician caught a journalist in the appearance-of-impropriety web.
