By Steven T. Jones and Sarah Phelan
San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken recently accepted an award and cash prize (he refuses to say how much) from the Center for Immigration Studies – which a Southern Poverty Law Center report in February 2009 criticized for its overtly racist roots and extreme anti-immigrant agenda – for his controversial articles on San Francisco’s Sanctuary City policies.
CIS paid for Van Derbeken to accept the award at the National Press Club and conservative Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders to introduce him earlier this month, an appearance they used to make derogatory comments about San Francisco, its values, and local immigrant rights activists, while saying little to rebuke the group for stirring up hateful nativist furor around what has become perhaps the country’s most divisive issue.
Van Derbeken and Ken Conner, the Chron’s assistant managing editor for news (who the reporter consulted before accepting the award), told the Guardian that they see nothing wrong with accepting the award and they don’t see it as validating the views of a group that has been desperately seeking mainstream credibility with which to push its anti-immigrant agenda.
“No one should mistake their decision to endorse my work for my endorsement of theirs,” Van Derbeken wrote via e-mail in response to questions, although he wouldn’t offer an opinion on the CIS agenda. He said he was unaware of the SPLC report when he accepted the award, and now that he’s seen it, he wrote, “I haven’t drawn any conclusions about it.”
Conner also dismissed concerns that accepting the award and its cash supplement amounts to validating the group and letting it benefit from the Chronicle name. “We don’t think that’s true. They gave us this award. We didn’t seek it,” Conner told us.