By Bruce B. Brugmann
Finally, two days after the election, Andrew S. Ross provided the first Hearst coverage of the Clean Energy Act initiative (Prop H) on the business page of the San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst.
At the bottom of the business page in the right hand corner, Ross wrote one paragraph in his “The Bottom Line” column:
“The combined piling on by business groups, public policy organizations, and newspaper editorials had its intended effect on San Francisco’s Prop H. But for those endlessly trying to take over PG&E, the motto will likely hold:
If, on the 20th time you don’t succeed, try another 20 times.”
Combined piling on? Did not PG&E’s victory have anything to do with deploying $l0 million plus and massed muscle? Did it not have anything to do with Hearst’s historic role as PG&E’s journalistic arm?
I also asked Ross in an email if he could explain, as a featured Hearst business writer, just how clean energy and cheap public power could hurt business? (It doesn’t of course hurt business in any of the 2,200 cities in the U.S. that have public power.) Ross did not answer by blogtime.
Meanwhile, Heather Knight did a PG&E victory story in the Wednesday Chronicle (ll/5/2008). It took her eight paragraphs to get to the critical point (PG&E’s $l0 million), which she presented as a kind of throwaway afterthought. And she once again retailed PG&E’s Big Lies without giving the Yes on H people a real chance to correct them or to correct them herself, which was the Hearst policy in covering the story. For God’s sakes, don’t correct a PG&E lie. Ever.
Ross and Knight keep thumping away on the number of times the issue has been on the ballot (ll), without mentioning the key issues: the underlying PG&E/Raker scandal. How San Francisco is the only city in the U.S. that is mandated by federal law (the Raker Act) to have a public power system. How the city endangers the entire Hetch Hetchy system by violating the original public power mandates of the act and exposing the system to the tear-down-the dam forces. How clean energy and public power would bring the same advantages to San Francisco that it does for 2,200 other cities in the country: public power that is clean, cheap, reliable, and accountable. How the Clean Energy Act would make San Francisco the world leader in clean and renewable energy and a world class sustainable city. How PG&E and Hearst working in deadly combination defeated ll ballot measures through the years and established the story as the biggest scandal in U.S. history. The Hearst bottom line: this nightmare for PG&E is over, done, those pesky clean energy and public people are gone, we will keep running PG&E greenwashing ads and PG&E greenwashing stories, editorials, and campaign endorsements for the duration. We’re moving on in lockstep with PG&E.
This is classic Hearst over the generations. The founder William Randolph Hearst was a key crusader for the Hetch Hetchy dam and public power for decades.
Then he made a shameful deal with a PG&E-controlled bank in t he mid-l920s to get much needed capital. In return, he agreed to reverse his position on Hetch Hetchy and support PG&E. Then he and his papers reversed field and became the major media players in helping PG&E defeat ll ballot measures through the years to buy out PG&E. And forever after the deal, Hearst worked with PG&E to black out and marginalize the scandal story. And today, in this election, Hearst tried its best to help PG&E bury the scandal for good.
Sorry, that won’t work any more. The battle goes on. B3, still watching PG&E doing all it can to keep the Potrero Hill/Mirant power plant pumping away and putting out poisonous fumes that I can see from my office window
Click here to read more about the Raker Act, Hearst and public power in San Francisco.