By Dick Meister
(Part five of a five part daily series on the farmworkers)
As SF Chronicle labor editor, I had been among the first to report on the campaign to win union rights for farm workers that had been launched under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, after I determined that he and his followers were dead serious about what so many others had tried and failed to do.
I devoted much of my time to covering what turned out to be a major worldwide story. But, as I soon found out, Chronicle management thought I was spending too much time on the story. Publisher Charles de Young Thieriot was angered about my stories on the poor state of farm workers and the emerging United Farm Workers union.
The miserable conditions of farm workers didn’t seem to trouble Thieriot. He was concerned above all with the interests of his fellow Burlingame Country Club members, and they included some of the state’s wealthiest agribusiness interests – the UFW’s chief targets. No one, including the publisher, accused me of slanting my stories in favor of the UFW. They were simply concerned that my stories, pro or con, called attention to Chavez and the union.
As the secretary of Chronicle Executive Editor Scott Newhall told me, Theriot often stormed into the editor’s office and slammed on his desk the morning’s paper which carried my UFW coverage. “We’ve got to Forget Chavez!”said Theriot. “Ignore him! He’s nothing but a damned agitator!”
Soon, my suggestions for stories on the farm workers – or anything else– were being ignored and labor coverage generally was reduced drastically. I was told by my immediate supervisor, City Editor Abe Mellinkoff, to quit complaining about it – or else.
The end came after I got word that the UFW was about to make peace with the state’s grape growers after five years of highly visible strikes and boycotts. Since I had already done a story on the generally undisclosed terms of the union contracts the UFW and growers were about to sign, Mellinkoff agreed I should do a color story from Delano, covering the feelings of the growers and farm workers as well as the general atmosphere.
I wrote such a story and dictated it by phone. But unknown to me, Mellinkoff turned immediately to a reporter at the Chronicle and had my story rewritten so it became little more than a reiteration of the contract terms I had disclosed the day before.
Mellinkoff apparently was not happy that my story from Delano had noted at some length the poor treatment of farm workers by the publisher’s grower friends that had led to the strikes and boycotts and eventually to contracts guaranteeing them decent treatment.
It was just one of many examples of how the Chronicle was abandoning balanced and thorough coverage of labor-management affairs in favor of coverage that downgraded, distorted or ignored labor’s side of the story. That’s how Charlie Theriot wanted it, and that’s how it was going to be.
I was left with no other choice. I quit.
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.