› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Which John Lennon did you know? Initially, I was too young to know him as anything more than the moptop behind the chipped bobble-headed garage-sale find — and as one of the songwriters behind my parental units’ token soft-rock gatefold, the Beatles’ Love Songs (Capitol, 1977) (the “White Album”’s “acid rock,” as Moms described it, went way beyond the pale). That’s all the Lennon I could grasp until the Rolling Stone cover pic that accompanied news of his 1980 murder — that coverlineless image picturing a nude Lennon fetally curled around a clothed Yoko Ono. If you dug the raw romanticism of that Annie Leibovitz image and Lennon’s 10-point program to success, excess, then bread-baking, Sean-rearing semiretired rock-star redemption, then you were with us. If you didn’t and you were disgusted, you weren’t — go hang with the Yoko-booing minions at, say, the recent Elvis Costello–Alan Toussaint Paramount show. It was that simple when you were an already media-saturated brat ready to draw battle lines and take pop music dead seriously.
Nowadays, the very undead but still much-pondered Bob Dylan may inspire a higher page count than Lennon when it comes to critical essays, encyclopedias, and that ilk. But I’d venture that Lennon’s influence continues to echo subtly through the culture, starting with the recommended banishing of “Imagine” from Clear Channel airwaves shortly after 9/11 and continuing through to some recent docs, DVDs, and dispatches from his estate.
Ignore the critically mauled 2005 musical Lennon and don’t wait for a Martin Scorsese PBS-approved documentary treatment — though, oh, to glimpse Abel Ferrera’s charred take on Lennon’s Bad Lieutenant–style “lost weekend” with Harry Nilsson. For somewhat unvarnished, intimate footage of Lennon with Ono in their Ascot, England, estate studio and shooting hoops with Miles Davis, check Gimme Some Truth: The Making of John Lennon’s “Imagine” (2000) — the material of Lennon warbling “Jealous Guy” and trianguutf8g in the studio with a very active Ono and a stoic Phil Spector is eye-cleansing.
After sampling Lennon and Ono’s frank BBC interview there, you’ll want even more truth — so turn to last year’s The Dick Cavett Show: John and Yoko Collection DVD, which collects three 1971–72 episodes featuring the gabby couple. It encompasses some of Lennon’s most in-depth US TV interviews, as the relaxed, wise-cracking musician sparred and jabbed with the clearly nervous and very deeply tanned Cavett in between sizable excerpts of Ono’s great Fly and Lennon’s Erection, a cinematic “construct” if there ever was one. Even more astounding than Cavett’s half-baked monologues are the lengthy stretches of airtime devoted to Lennon and Ono explaining their 1972 deportation case — one suspects even Jon Stewart would yelp, “TMI!” — and the pair’s impassioned, controversial performance of “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” (worth it alone to Bay Area–philes when Lennon pulls out a Ron Dellums quote to back up the lyrics) and Ono’s still-nervy, saxed-up “We’re All Water.” The versions of Lennon visible here are familiar and complementary — John as the willful dreamer and the provocative righter of wrongs, be it the plight of American Indians or the lack of consideration given Ono’s art. And one wonders, will network TV ever be quite this maddening — and challenging — again?
Scenes from both The Dick Cavett Show: John and Yoko Collection and Gimme Some Truth surface in The US vs. John Lennon, a new feature film revealing the latest Lennon iteration: the musician as a political animal hounded by the Nixon administration and threatened with deportation. Lennon considered a peace-promoting concert tour following Nixon’s reelection jaunt around the country — and posed a serious enough threat to Tricky Dicky, in the very year millions of 18-year-old Beatles fans were given the vote for the first time, that the US government moved to stop him. Focusing on Lennon’s significance as an activist who devoted his personal life (transforming the Lennon-Ono honeymoon into the peacenik, media-lovin’ bed-in) and considerable platform to antiwar efforts, filmmakers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld (Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of “Smile”) worked with documents released as a result of a Freedom of Information Act suit (aided and abetted by Jon Weiner, who consulted and wrote Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files) to make their film. Supported by commentators ranging from Ono and Noam Chomsky to Angela Davis and G. Gordon Liddy, the two have fashioned a sleek, informative primer on the importance of being Lennon and the historical context he emerged from. The only images they wish they had included but didn’t, Leaf told me, were World War II pictures of a bomb-besieged Liverpool and war-torn Japan.
“What’s important to note is that being for peace meant more than being nonviolent for John and Yoko,” he explained from an office in Century City. “This was in their bones, if you will. John saw firsthand what war caused.”
Leaf and his partner have had the film in mind since the mid-’90s, when Lennon’s FBI file was opened. After the disappointments of 2004, it’s intoxicating to imagine an artist and his listeners changing history, and at the very least The US vs. John Lennon allows one to dream, even briefly. Why was Lennon such a menace? “I think what terrifies power the most is truth,” Leaf says. “When truth is spoken without fear of consequence, it is threatening, and when John and Yoko embarked on their campaign for peace, they weren’t promoting themselves or a record but peace or nonviolence.” SFBG
THE US VS. JOHN LENNON
Opens Fri/29 in Bay Area theaters
See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com
Media
Lennon’s boom
Hip buzz phrases
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION Usually I don’t let the PR e-mails get to me. My standard procedure is to review and delete these missives from alternate marketplace universes where people care about incremental changes to the graphic user interface in a piece of useless software. But last week when the bizarrely clueless announcement from domain-name megaregistrar Dotster arrived in my inbox, I just couldn’t stand aside and let it pass.
Maybe I was feeling particularly grumpy because the ongoing Hewlett-Packard scandal is constantly reminding me that all my nightmares about the corporate surveillance of media types are, in fact, true. Whatever the reason, I just got plain pissed off by Dotster’s craven bid to appeal to youth with its new PimpedEmail product for MySpace users. For $7.95 per month, Dotster will sell you access to a “pimped” domain name via your MySpace account. Apparently, according to the press release, these domains “tend to favor hip buzz phrases … for example, if a visitor types ‘Stephanie’ into the DDS search box and clicks ‘Name Search,’ the results might include stephanieisthebomb.com, stephanyshizzle.com, or worldofstephanie.com.”
OK, it’s true that what leaps out immediately here is the slap-your-head stupidity of these “hip buzz phrases” — my personal favorite is worldofstephanie, which has to be one of the buzzingest, hippest phrases I’ve ever encountered. But what pushed me over the line from merely bemused to actually offended is Dotster’s crass attempt to suck money out of one of the most cash-strapped communities on MySpace: unknown musicians trying to get people interested in their music.
Most of the suggestions for how to use PimpedEmail involve using it to promote unknown bands. “A new group calling itself Nikki Blast could use band search to register nikkiblastrocks.com,” suggests Dotster. Then “they can set up as many e-mail addresses as they like using that domain extension. For example, the drummer could be madbeatz@nikkiblastrocks.com, and the band could award loyal fans with their own addresses such as timmy@nikkiblastrocks.com.” Hmmm, could “madbeatz” be another one of those hip buzz phrases? What about “rocks”?
Of course these suggestions won’t necessarily control youth behavior, partly because they’re just lame. And I’ll admit that MySpace teaming up with Dotster isn’t nearly as problematic as MySpace collaborating with state governments to police what kids are doing on one of the world’s largest social networks. But PimpedEmail is more insidious than you might think. It pushes conformity under the guise of cool; it turns the ideal of freely sharing band information into something that requires payment by the month.
No, it’s not surprising that the News Corp.–owned MySpace is figuring out ways to accessorize its free service with little nuggets at teen prices. I still reserve the right to be grossed out when it happens.
More depressing still is the way PimpedEmail pulls the covers over the true process involved in doing one of the most basic tasks of any Web user: getting a domain name and setting up e-mail. The Dotster press release describes its service as a “unique Domain Discovery System (DDS),” adding helpfully that “visitors to the service’s Web site can generate unique domains.”
Huh? There’s nothing “unique” here — this is the usual way one searches for domains and buys them online. Every time I’ve ever bought a domain, apparently, I’ve had a “unique” experience when I searched to see if annaleenewitz.com (for example) was available and then purchased it. The only thing that’s different here is that instead of getting boring suggestions for domains (like annaleecompany.com), you’ll get allegedly cool ones (like annaleeshizzle.com).
The misrepresentations here go beyond the usual “we’re unique” marketing ploys. Dotster makes it seem that getting a domain and getting e-mail are the same thing — and that the easiest way to do both is through MySpace. Let’s leave aside the privacy issues involved in tying your MySpace page together with your e-mail and domain services. I’m more worried that services like PimpedEmail will actually lower technical literacy in Web users by hiding what’s really going on when you create the address madleetz@worldofannalee.com. Not only does PimpedEmail take money away from its users, it takes away their knowledge of how domain names work — and by extension, it takes away just a bit more of their power. SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who’s got all the hip buzz phrases, like “get funky” and “far out” and “make the scene.”
Be a liver
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
Many years ago, I contracted the Hepatitis C virus (HCV). I had many partners before tests became available. None, to my knowledge, has contracted HCV from sexual contact with me. I know it’s possible to pass it through sexual contact but it’s very rare. It requires blood to blood contact: someone would need to stick their bloody penis in some equally bloody orifice on my body — not gonna happen! I’m always safe when it comes to anal sex. As for oral, well, that does give the opportunity to examine my partner more closely. Am I obligated to tell every partner I have about my HCV status?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) consider HCV to be a sexually transmitted disease, but health departments of other countries — Australia for example — do not. My faith in the truthfulness of an agency of the US government in the current political climate is doubtful, especially when it comes to sexual matters.
I’m not a slut, but I satisfy my needs when they arise. I’ve never had an STD of any kind. I don’t know if it matters, but I’m a transsexual woman.
Love,
Liver It Up
Dear Liv:
Nope, doesn’t matter a bit!
It is maddening that we still know so little about sexual transmission of hep C. There are studies, but they contradict each other, are too specific to generalize from, or are otherwise just not capable of answering the big question: can you for sure get this from fucking? Seeing as the virus is pretty common though, there really ought to be more cases of transmission between monogamous non-drug-injecting partners. The cases just aren’t there, so it is tempting to shrug and say, “Guess it isn’t sexually transmitted after all.” If hep C were the common cold, I’d be cool with that, but seeing as it’s the leading cause of liver transplants in the United States and can totally kill you, we can’t be quite that cavalier about it.
It’s worth noting that while the CDC groups HCV with the sexually transmitted diseases on its Web site, it has little to say about actually getting it through sex. Click on the link and you get a list of risk factors (transfusion or organ transplant before routine testing was implemented, injection drug use, etc.) with nary a mention of sex of any sort. And when you dig a little deeper you find this: “HCV can be spread by sex, but this does not occur very often. If you are having sex, but not with one steady partner: You and your partners can get other diseases spread by having sex (e.g., AIDS, hepatitis B, gonorrhea or chlamydia).”
This is really a nice bit of legerdemain: “Sure, it could happen, but we don’t want to be quoted saying it could happen to you, so, uh, don’t get the clap.” I was guilty of the same sort of sleight of hand way back when I was working as a women’s safer-sex educator but really didn’t believe that the population we were reaching was actually at the slightest risk of contracting HIV through sex. No matter how stridently the AIDS establishment insisted that everyone was at equal risk, it wasn’t and still isn’t true, so I’d hand the girls the AIDS-prevention pamphlet I was paid to distribute and then tell them how not to get warts. Win-win, as far as I was concerned.
So do you have to tell everyone? This may be more of a question for that ethics guy than for me, but I kinda want his job anyway, so I’m going to have to say yes. You can play it down, you can say the chances of exchanging enough blood during sex are extremely low and you’ll be using condoms anyway, but since there have been cases of sexual transmission (no, we don’t really know what those people were doing, only what they say they were doing), we can’t pretend that there’s zero risk. “Almost zero” isn’t zero. I’m really sorry.
I had to do this, kind of. I discovered that a forever-ago partner had developed the disease, and as much as I would rather have sporked my own eyes out, I called the people I’d seen since (thankfully, there weren’t many of these) and informed them of the teensy-weensy risk. Nobody cared. I do hope I called them back after I finally got tested … um … all clear, guys, OK?
As for the right-wing antisex conspiracy, well, I’m with you as far as not trusting this administration as far as I could throw them — and really, really wanting to throw them — but the CDC is not so bad (and anyway the World Health Organization agrees with it about HCV). Look up Dr. Julie Gerberding, the Bush-appointed director of the CDC, and you’ll find her support for safer-sex education reviled and her appointment tsk-tsked on the Web sites of Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and Accuracy in Media, among others. The enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.
Free the Media!
WHAT: Free the Media!
WHEN: Thursday September 21st, 8pm-midnight
WHERE: Crash (34 Mason Street between Eddy and Turk)
Blogger and video-journalist Josh Wolf has been ordered back to jail for refusing to let a federal grand jury have unedited footage of a July 2005 protest demonstration.
Free the Media! Is a benefit to raise money for the Rise Up Network legal defense fund for freelance journalists.
Speakers at Thursday’s event will include Josh Wolf (on the eve of his return to prison), Bruce Brugmann, editor and publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian; San Francisco Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly; filmmaker Kevin Epps; Sarah Olson, Truthout.org journalist; Jeff Perlstein, executive director of the Media Alliance; Richard Knee, acting Journalism Division chair of the National Writers Union’s Bay Area chapter; and Njeri Sims, filmmaker.
Live music by Magnetism. Chuck Gonzalez to DJ.
Chumby!
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION On a shelf above my fireplace, snuggled next to a Totoro stuffed animal and a stack of books about movies, there is a puffy, tan creature about the size of a Nerf football that has a three-and-a-half-inch computer screen for a face. If you squeeze the creature’s body, a menu pops up on the screen — from there, you can log on to my wi-fi network. This quasi-plush animal is in fact a hardware prototype of a cute little wi-fi thing that’s designed to “think.” It’s called a Chumby, and it’s about to change your life.
Using the Chumby.com Web site, you can register your Chumby, name it (mine’s called Tribble), and then load different “widgets” into its brain. The widgets change what’s displayed on the Chumby’s face: you can have a digital clock, headlines from Digg.com, a stock market ticker, or pictures scraped from CuteOverload.com. Because the Chumby is always online via wi-fi, it can spend the day peacefully cycling through pictures of kittens interspersed with stock quotes. The result is a nontechnological-looking object that’s halfway between being a very lazy cat and a very simple computer.
Chumby-makers Chumby Industries, staffed in part by hardware maestros Joe Grand and Andrew “bunnie” Huang, wanted to create something that would bring the Web into people’s lives without being as intrusive as computers are. When the Chumby is running, you can glance at it every once in a while to see what’s happening in the news, but you can’t grab it and start trolling for data the way you might if it were a laptop. You stay connected to the online world but don’t get disconnected from the real one.
What makes the Chumby dramatically different from other consumer electronics is that its hardware and most of its software are open source. That means you’re permitted to modify, hack, reverse engineer, and optimize the device to your heart’s delight. Chumby Industries encourages people to build new widgets and submit them to the Chumby Web site so other people can use them. Same goes for hardware hacks.
When was the last time you bought an electronic gizmo that was truly yours? Most devices come with warnings not to modify them unless you want to void your warranty. Some companies even threaten lawsuits if you reverse-engineer their products. But the Chumby is designed to be ripped apart and sewn shut again by its users. I mean that literally and figuratively — you can hack its hardware, but you can also take the Chumby’s electronic components out of its plush case and install them inside a teddy bear or leather boot.
This is a piece of consumer electronics in the most meaningful sense of that term. Consumers can do what they want with it.
Right now, the Chumby is only available on a limited basis to people who don’t mind playing around with what bunnie calls “alpha hardware.” That means my Chumby is a prototype. It crashes; it falls off the wi-fi network randomly; it keeps resetting its clock to a random date in 1969.
Once Chumby Industries gets the bugs out, though, you’ll start seeing nonalpha Chumbys for sale.
The Chumby may be unique in openness, but it’s not the first “smart” object on the market. There’s a “smart bunny” called a Nabaztag (www.nabaztag.com) that’s not quite as sophisticated as the Chumby but can still go online and read the weather to you. Looking sort of like a cross between an iPod and a Japanese cartoon character, the Nabaztag can stream MP3s from the Web, light up in different colors, do live traffic updates, and be an alarm clock. Like the Chumby, it’s a paracomputer, a thing that communicates Web data to you without actually being a Web browser.
Futurists predict that in the next five years our homes will be packed with “thinking” things that get their intelligence via wi-fi. Chairs will sing; coffee pots will read you the morning paper; desks will get your voicemail. I’m not interested in any of that. I have enough trouble dealing with chairs that are completely silent. But I do like the idea of having many ways of accessing digital information. Computers can provide rich sources of detail, but other devices will offer just a snapshot framed by waggling bunny ears.
As soon as the Chumby hardware is a little more stable, I’m making it into my alarm clock. I like the idea of waking up to streaming MP3s and a few news headlines. And if I want to shut it off, I’ll just squeeze. I’m telling you, the squeeze interface is genius. Genius! SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who sometimes wishes her cat could display the latest headlines from BoingBoing.
The terror of Prop. 90
OPINION San Francisco could see an end to rent control — and minimum-wage requirements and a lot of zoning regulation and environmental protection laws and much more — if Proposition 90 passes this November. We could see an end to limits on condo conversions and an end to requirements that developers build affordable housing units and even an end to limits on the height and density of new developments. That’s because Prop. 90 is a clever trap that purports to restrict the use of eminent domain but in reality eliminates all government regulation of land use.
Prop. 90 really says little about eminent domain; it just uses the notion of restricting the ability of government to seize private land as the bait. Most of the initiative is aimed at ending all government regulation of property. Its concept is simple: if any government regulation reduces the actual or potential value of property — even by a dollar — then the government would have to reimburse the property owner the difference.
For example, if a landlord would be able to get $3,000 a month on the open market for an apartment but rent control limits what a long-term tenant has to pay to $1,500, then the landlord would be able under Prop. 90 to sue San Francisco for the difference. Think about that: about 200,000 rental units in the city are under rent control. Say the average difference between the market rent and the rent-controlled amount is $500 per month. That would mean landlords could collectively sue San Francisco for $200 million each month, or $2.4 billion each year. Since San Francisco obviously can’t afford to put half its annual budget into compensating landlords, there would be no choice but to repeal rent control.
Landlords would also be able to sue for the difference between what their buildings are worth as rental properties and what they are worth as condominiums. Any property owner denied the ability to convert to condominiums could then sue for that difference in value. Since a property subdivided into condos is worth about 50 percent more, this bill would be huge.
The list of disasters goes on and on. If a developer is required to make 15 percent of the units in a housing project affordable, then the developer could sue to make San Francisco pay for the lost income. If zoning laws limit heights in a neighborhood to three stories but a developer wants to build a 10-story condo tower, the developer could sue the city for the lost value of those seven stories of condos.
And it’s not just land-use and tenant protection. The city and the state both have minimum-wage laws; potentially, every business owner could sue to demand compensation for the loss of income that came from mandating higher wages than the market might have allowed. That would be the end of minimum-wage laws. Environmental protection and mitigation could face the same fate.
Prop. 90 is by far the worst measure on this year’s ballot; in fact, it’s the worst measure to come along in quite some time. It’s a plot by right-wingers to gut the ability of government at any level to force businesses and property owners to accept even basic standards of behavior in the name of the public good. The measure hasn’t gotten a whole lot of media attention, but defeating it should be a top priority for every decent Californian. SFBG
Ted Gullicksen
Ted Gullicksen is director of the San Francisco Tenants Union.
Judge seals file in MediaNews trial
Some documents to be kept under wraps in suit claiming purchase of Times, Mercury News creates local monopoly
To the good: this is not a Bruce Blog head. This is the head and subhead on a surprisingly good story by George Avalos in today’s Contra Costa Times that gives some indication that the old Knight-Ridder fighting spirit on public access and accountability is still in play despite the new ownership of MediaNews Group/Dean Singleton.
More to the good: the story, unlike the Chronicle/Hearst coverage, lays out one of the key points of the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit: that, as the lead says, “a wide range of documents could be kept secret in a lawsuit involving a realty executive and the owner of most of the Bay Area’s newspapers, including the Times.” Still more: the ruling by a federal judge “enables the parties in the suit, including defendants MediaNews, Hearst, Gannett Co., Stephens Group Inc, and a partnership of several of the newspaper companies, to keep numerous documents confidential and free from public scrutiny.” And Avalos got a key point into his story with a quote from Reilly attorney Daniel Shulman: “Newspapers believe the public should know about everything, unless it is information about newspapers.”
To the bad: Avalos allowed Media News/Dean Singleton to put its position in the story via an anonymous “representative for one of the newspaper companies that are defendants in the lawsuit.” This anonymous source put forth without gulping the monopoly boilerplate position: gosh, golly, gee, “the newspaper companies could be hurt competitively if some of the information is released to the public.”
Unsolicited advice to reporters and editors who have the uneviable task of covering the monopolizing moves of their monopolizing superiors: Do not let them get away with anonymous quotes from anonymous executives. Tell them to speak by name and title or the Bruce Blog will get them.
The critical point: there is a big difference between sealing records in a standard civil lawsuit between two competing companies and sealing records in a lawsuit that aims to, as Avalos rightly puts it, “derail and unravel the MediaNews Group purchases of the newspapers” and stop MediaNews from wielding “monopoly power over the Bay Area newspaper market.”
The Galloping Conglomerati, as I call them, already operate in effect unregulated public utilities, because of their monopoly positions in their (mostly) one newspaper towns. And, unlike PG@E and other utilities, they are exempt from public regulation because of the First Amendment. Now they are quietly seeking to lock up the area for good and impose in effect a regional unregulated public utility under one partnership on the entire Bay Area. This is heavy stuff and every major development in this saga ought to be on the front page of every paper and lead the broadcast news of every station in the Bay Area.
Go, Clint, go!!! B3, still blogging away on behalf of independent and competitive journalism
Eureka! Finally, Hearst covers the censored story and admits it is partnering with Singleton
And now this: Are the Conglomerati going to buy the Santa Cruz Sentinel?
The timing was exquisite. This morning, in preparing to appear on the Will and Willie show on 960 the Quake, I checked the Chronicle/Hearst to see if there were any timely new developments on the biggest censored media story of the year—how the Conglomerati are censoring and trivializing their coverage of their move to regional monopoly. (See my blogs and the Guardian’s Project Censored package in last week’s edition).
I checked first to see if a Hearst policy story was tucked away as it often is on page 2 of the business section under the “Daily Digest” head. (The last one was a Reuters story out of New York.) Today I found that the Chronicle moved the story up a notch but still buried it under the fold on page l of the business section under a head that read “Complex deal ties Bay Area papers” and continued the Hearst strategy to confuse and bore anybody trying to follow its monopolizing shenanigans.
And so I was able to report on how Hearst portrayed the unprecedented deal: folks, this is a complex deal and a complex story and it doesn’t affect you and please don’t bother reading about it. Just move on.
But I noted that the story did acknowledge what the Bruce Blog and the Guardian had been reporting for weeks: that Hearst and MediaNews Group/Dean Singleton were partners in the regional monopoly deal, according to a sworn affidavit by James Asher, Hearst’s senior vice president and chief legal and development officer, filed in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit against Hearst and Singleton. And the story used this lead to characterize the partnership: “The two companies that own all the major daily newspapers in the Bay Area could become even more closely intertwined, according to a court papers filed in a federal antitrust lawsuit.” The second paragraph said that “New York’s Hearst Corp. could become part owner of MediaNews, a Denver company that owns the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Marin Independent Journal and several other Bay Area. papers.”
I also pointed out that, to my knowledge, none of the Conglomerati (Hearst/Singleton/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens chains) had (a) run the big Project Censored story and all had (b) censored and/or trivialized their coverage of their own deal. And I noted that all of this confirmed in 96-point Tempo Bold the value and virtue of Project Censored.
I was also happy to congratulate Willie Brown and Will Durst (the Will and Willie duo) and producer Paul Wells for being the only mainstream media show to my knowledge to give Project Censored an airing (featuring an extensive interview yesterday of Censored Project Director Peter Phillips and my Censored update today.)
Later, when I got back to my office, I found that a Peninsula Press Club blog jumped on paragraph eight in the Chronicle story, which said that the two parties in the lawsuit on Monday had “agreed to seal documents in the lawsuit unless they are already public information.” The blog noted that “newspapers usually fight attempts to suppress public records” and labeled the move a “self-imposed secrecy order” by Hearst and Singleton. It all but asked the obvious question: Will this kind of secrecy be yet another adverse effect of the coming of the Conglomerati? B3
Postscript: And now this: the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported today that the Conglomerati may soon own yet another daily on the outside ring of the Bay Area: the Sentinel, which competes for now with the nearby Monterey Herald/Hearst/Singleton and is up for sale by its owner Ottaway/Dow Jones. The Sentinel reported that “bids for the Sentinel are due today and while no one is making public who, if anyone, is interested in the paper, industry analysts name William Dean Singleton…” Media consultant John Morton said, “‘I wouldn’t rule out anybody, but the most likely buyer is the one who owns the most newspapers in the area.’” Hearst and Singleton papers didn’t carry this story. When will they?
Impertinent questions: Where are the antitrust consolidators in Justice and AG Bill Lockyer’s office? Will they once again remove all pebbles and hurdles in the path of yet another clustering consolidation?
Callers to the Quake show had good questions: what can be done about this march to newspaper monopoly? Not much, I said, ending with my stock answer: support your local alternatives.
Personal note to the caller who said I brought up these issues when he was a student in a journalism class I taught at Cal-State-Hayward in the early l970s: answer my blog or send me an email at bruce@sfbg.com and let’s catch up.
Death by satire
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION In honor of George W. Bush’s efforts to stop torture by setting up secret CIA prisons and promote freedom by expanding government surveillance powers, I think we should spend a few days contemputf8g another great thing this administration has done for the world: it has reinvigorated political satire.
What was The Daily Show before the USA PATRIOT Act? And where would international pranksters the Yes Men be today without this administration’s asshattish policies?
Thanks to the Internet, satire can be instant and lethal. Certainly it’s not always pretty, but it’s more effective as social criticism than it was in an era before jesters could respond within hours to current events and broadcast their pranks globally.
I’m still a big fan of the widely condemned fake execution video made by three San Francisco multimedia geeks in 2004. Benjamin Vanderford, who plays experimental music in several bands, decided to make the video in response to the media hysteria around the Nick Berg execution video. He’s said that the video wasn’t a partisan protest of the war itself, but instead a wake-up call to the media, which he criticized on his Web site (videohoax.ctyme.com) for doing “no fact-finding” and being so “centralized” that they’ll reprint anything from Reuters or the Associated Press without verifying it.
With the help of Laurie Kirchner and Robert Martin, Vanderford filmed himself tied up in a dingy room as if he’d been kidnapped in Iraq. He stated his real name and address and urged the United States to get out of Iraq. Islamic chants played in the background, and every few seconds a picture of a grisly execution appeared. “We need to leave this country alone or all of us will die like this,” Vanderford said before the video cut to a grainy image of somebody sawing his head off with a butcher knife.
He and his buddies made the video available on their hard drives to anyone using the P2P networks Kazaa and Soulseek. Because the Berg execution video was all over the news, thousands of people were scouring P2P networks for anything with the word “execution” in the title. The video soon turned up on an Islamic Web site, which is how the US media got wind of it. AP and several papers published stories about the video without ever bothering to look up Vanderford, verify his existence, or check the address he used in the video (which was his real home address).
Sure, the message was ugly and the video is actually quite disturbing to watch. But it was the very best kind of social satire — it proved Vanderford’s point that the media were so eager to lap up any news that could feed the terrorism frenzy that they weren’t bothering to do even the most rudimentary fact-checking. Of course, the news outlets whose shoddy practices had been unmasked by this prank were quick to condemn Vanderford and cover their asses. Fox ran a bogus segment featuring a “legal adviser” who said Vanderford had broken the law (he hadn’t), and AP deputy editor Tom Kent claimed that his organization did eventually check the veracity of the tape by “banging” on Vanderford’s door at 4 a.m. and filming him in his underwear answering questions about the hoax (you can see clips of this seminaked interview online).
Possibly the stupidest responses to the hoax came from people who claimed that it hurt people and therefore Vanderford and pals should be punished. Stanford professor of communications Ted Glasser told the San Jose Mercury News that releasing the video was “like bombing a building to see if security measures are in place.” Despite the foolishness of this comment, it reveals how strongly people are affected by well-aimed satire.
I’d rather watch a dozen fake execution videos if it would make the media more careful about buying into government and corporate propaganda. I live for the day when satire is like bombing a building — because nobody actually bombs anyone anymore.
See, that’s the beauty of satire — it hurts, but only in your conscience. SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who can’t wait to watch videos of the Yes Men masquerading as HUD officials in New Orleans.
California’s secret police
EDITORIAL If a doctor does something really terrible and is suspended from the practice of medicine, the record is public: anyone — a potential future patient, for example — can check with the medical licensing board and find out what happened. Same goes for lawyers — discipline cases are not only public, but the legal papers routinely publish the details of the charges and the state bar association’s decisions. Judges? Same deal. Even the Pentagon, which is not known for its interest in sunshine, makes public the charges against soldiers accused of vioutf8g the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
That’s the way it should be: people who have tremendous power over the lives of others ought to be held accountable to the public.
But last week, the California Supreme Court issued one of the most disturbing decisions in years, ruling 6–1 that police disciplinary records must be for the most part secret.
The impact is so far-reaching it’s hard to fathom. As G.W. Schulz reports on page 15, it’s entirely possible that under this new standard, key details in some of the most important police-abuse cases of the past decade — from the so-called riders in Oakland to the Ramparts scandal in Los Angeles and Fajitagate in San Francisco — would have been kept under wraps. Under the broadest possible interpretation, the public will never know the names of the cops who break the law under color of authority, the bad actors who beat people up, harass (and sometimes assault) women, steal, lie, forge reports, frame suspects, fire their weapons without case, and — all too often — kill people without cause.
State law already gives cops, deputy sheriffs, and prison guards rights that go far beyond what any other public employees enjoy but has never been interpreted to bar the public entirely from disciplinary cases.
But in 2003, the San Diego County Civil Service Commission closed a hearing on the appeal of the disciplinary case of a sheriff’s deputy, and the San Diego Union-Tribune went to court to get access to the records. The resulting case went all the way to the state’s high court and ended with one of the worst rulings for the press and public interest in this state in half a century or more. Tom Newton, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, told the Los Angeles Times that in the wake of the ruling “we have pretty much of a secret police force in this state.”
The state legislature needs to take this on immediately. Mark Leno, the San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee (and who worked diligently and effectively to improve the Public Records Act this past session), would be a perfect person to work with sunshine advocates to draft a bill that would make the secrecy ruling moot.
In the meantime, it’s still not clear exactly how far local government will have to go to protect the rights of peace officers to abuse their public trust without any public oversight. Sunshine advocates say that San Francisco, which has always held open hearings on major police discipline cases, may not have to immediately halt the practice. The Police Commission, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on the issue Sept. 17, needs to carefully weigh the arguments of activists and media representatives before making any new policy — and must write any new rules to side as much as possible with openness. For starters, all hearings should be presumed public unless an accused officer objects — and a full hearing on that objection should precede any closure.
There’s another step city leaders can take: every year or two, the cops come along with a request for legislation that would even further sweeten their union contracts. If the San Francisco Police Officers Association is going to demand secrecy in every single disciplinary hearing, that should be the end to all progressive support for more pay, more benefits, and more goodies for an armed force that refuses to accept even basic public oversight. SFBG
Five years after
EDITORIAL Here’s the painful but undeniable truth: five years after a pair of airplanes flew into the Twin Towers in New York, killing almost 3,000 people, the world — and the United States — is a decidedly less secure place.
Sure, would-be terrorists can’t carry box cutters (or toothpaste) onto planes anymore. It’s harder to open cockpit doors. Some flights have fully armed undercover air marshals on board. Security screeners make passengers take off their shoes.
But the nation is bogged down in a deadly, pointless war, the Middle East is a powder keg — and all over the globe, the United States is increasingly seen as an enemy.
Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian of London on Sept. 11, described a fanciful interview with Osama bin Laden, in which he asked the secretive al-Qaeda leader how he was doing five years after the attacks. Fine, bin Laden says: the United States could have turned the attacks into a rallying point against terrorism but did exactly the opposite.
“Bin Laden need not have worried,” Jenkins wrote. “He would agree, as did the CIA’s al-Qaida analyst in Peter Taylor’s recent documentary, that the Americans have done his job for him. They panicked. They drove the Taliban back into the mountains, restoring the latter’s credibility in the Arab street and turning al-Qaida into heroes. They persecuted Muslims across America. They occupied Iraq and declared Iran a sworn enemy. They backed an Israeli war against Lebanon’s Shias. Soon every tinpot Muslim malcontent was citing al-Qaida as his inspiration. Bin Laden’s tiny organisation, which might have been starved of funds and friends in 2001, had become a worldwide jihadist phenomenon.
“I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power…. As for European support for America’s world leadership, that has plummeted from 64% in 2002 to 37% this year.”
This will be the enduring historical legacy of the Bush administration: At last count, 2,996 dead or presumed dead at the World Trade Center. At last count, 2,668 US soldiers dead in Iraq. At least 41,650 civilian casualties of that war.
The goodwill of the world squandered. Endless enemies all around. And every Republican running for reelection to Congress will have to deal with that. SFBG
The Kirby grip: A talk with director of This Film is Not Yet Rated
While briefly in San Francisco during an intense media tour promoting his much-buzzed doc This Film is Not Yet Rated, filmmaker Kirby Dick sat down with Jonathan L. Knapp to discuss the process of challenging a powerful institution, John Waters, chasing Jack Valenti, and media conglomeration.
Guardian: Thank you for taking time to meet with me; you seem to be doing an insane amount of press for this movie.
Kirby Dick: Actually, I find that the press outside of New York and LA do far more interesting interviews, so I’m happy to be here.
Project Censored on the Will and Willie show at 8:05 a.m. Wednesday on 960 the Quake radio
Why didn’t the Conglomerati Media cover this major local news story?
Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored, will make a rare mainstream media appearance at 8:05 a.m. Wednesday morning (Sept. l3) to discuss the l0 big stories the nation’s major news media refused to cover last year, as the Bay Guardian put it in its cover story of the last issue.
Peter will explain lay out the stories and explain why the media
censored the following top l0 stories (in descending order):
l. The Feds and the Media Muddy the Debate over Internet Freedom.
2. Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technology to Iran.
3. World Oceans in Extreme Danger.
4. Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the United States.
5. High-tech Genocide in Congo.
6. Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy.
7. U.S. Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq.
8. Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act.
9. World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall.
10. Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians.
And then there are the junk food news stories that got far more attention than they deserved:
(l) Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Got Together. (2) Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson Break Up. (3) “American Idol” Hits an All-Time High. (4) The Runaway Bride who didn’t. (5) Martha Stewart is Back in Town. (6) “Brokeback Mountain” Breaks Through. (7) Britney Spears (it just wouldn’t be a list without her. (8) MySpace Infiltrates our Space. (9) Steroids in Baseball Get Pumped Up. (l0) “The DaVinci Code” ad nauseam.
A tip of the derby to Willie Brown and Will Durst and Producer Paul Wells and the Quake/Clear Channel Radio for being the only mainstream media in the Bay Area to our knowledge to give the proper publicity to this important local story and local project (Sonoma State University).
Memo to Phillips, Will and Willie: ask if anybody has spotted the story in any mainstream media. That proves the censorship point.
I (B3) will appear on the show at 9:05 Thursday morning (Sept. l4) to discuss why the local regional monopoly (Hearst/Singleton/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens) has not only blacked out this major story but also one of the biggest local censored stories of the year (the regional monopoly). Memo to the editors and city desks of the Conglomerati: why did you black out these major censored stories? B3
Finally, the Conglomerati do a bit of reporting (actually only a little bit)
The Contra Costa Times report that Hearst could end up “partly” owning the Times and the San Jose Mercury News
I was about to start my daily blog by twitting the Hearst/Chronicle for its two telling heads in today’s paper: front page in big type (“HEWLETT-PACKARD SAYS IT SPIED ON REPORTERS.” And then a David Lazarus special across the top of the business page: “HP’s investigation broke state laws, attorney general says.” Good stories, important subject, good to see the AG awakening from his slumbers, but……why can’t Hearst and the AG move on the big CENSORED media monopoly story that I have been blogging on for days and George Schulz laid out in our current Project Censored package, “The Silent Scandal, How does media concentration affect the news we read? Just check out the coverage of the latest newspaper merger.”
Then I got a rocket from my reliable source in Contra Costa County who reported that the Times had run a major story today by George Avalos stating in its lead that Hearst “could wind up being partly owned by the current owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, according to documents filed in connection with a federal antitrust suit.” Its head: “Media firms’ deal disclosed, Lawsuit declaration reveals new details about MediaNews, Hearst financial arrangements.” The Merc ran a six-paragraph story, from “Mercury News Wire Services,” saying the same thing. The Oakland Tribune/Singleton ran a short version of the Avalos story. And the Chronicle/Hearst as usual blacked it all out and have yet to report its financial and stock involvement that in effect partners Hearst and Singleton.
Amazing. The documents have been publicly available for weeks. But only now, after the Bruce blogs and the Schultz story, have two Media News papers reported some critical details of the regional monopoly. And Hearst, with its vast business and court political reporting staff, somehow can’t cover the story.
Why?
There were significant quotes in the Times story: “Executives with MediaNews refused to comment. Frank Vega, publisher of the Chronicle, said, ‘I really don’t have any comment about the lawsuit. This is a Hearst-MediaNews deal.’” In other words, Dean Singleton/MediaNews out of Denver and Hearst out of New York are calling the shots and that is a prime reason for the local censored coverage in all Hearst/ Singleton papers. Impertinent question: Why don’t MediaNews executives and Vega demand that their editorial staffs cover the story or perhaps demand that they be allowed to cover the story?
Read the Times and Merc stories below, then read my previous blogs and the Schulz story to get a fuller perspective on what is going down here: a quiet move by Hearst/Singleton, aided and abetted by McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens, and facilitated by Justice and Atty. Gen. Bill (the Consolidator) Lockyer, to kill newspaper competition in the Bay Area and impose deadly regional monopoly. That is the real story and I hope the Conglomerati begin to allow their reporters and editors to start doing real reporting on the biggest censored story of the year. I am certain they would love to do it, allegro furioso.
Memo to Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto: you are doing good, keep on rolling. Memo to Carl Jensen and Peter Phillips at Project Censored: congratulations, you have once again confirmed the value of your project. Memo to the Conglomerati publishers: Publish the Censored stories and give us a ray of hope for the future of journalism in the Bay Area.
Meanwhile, to get the news on monopoly journalism. read the Bruce Blog, dammit! B3
P.S. Reporting in on Sunday evening: still no Hearst/Singleton/Gannett/McClatchy/Stephens story on the Project Censored package.
Eureka! Censored! Eureka! Will the Conglomerati publish the Censored stories?
Memo the readers of the Conglomerati (Singleton/Hearst/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens papers):
Keep a sharp eye out to see if any of the papers of these big chains publish the Project Censored story. Or if they comment on it or on any of this year’s censored picks. Or if they run any real coverage of the coming of the regional newspaper monopoly, the Guardian’s pick as the biggest local censored story.
(So far, at blog presstime, my agents and I have not spotted any.)
If they don’t run the story, it would be further confirmation of the reason the Guardian is happy to run the story every year as a front page special, which is then run on the website of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) and in alternative papers throughout the country. It is confirmation of the fact that not only does the mainstream media censor or trivialize lots of major stories in favor of “junk food news,” but it even censors a major local story out of Sonoma State University that has become the longest running media censorship project in the country (30 years). Delicious: censoring the censored story.
Let the Guardian and the Bruce blog know if you spot anything.
Eurekaism is now more rampant than ever. Where it will all end knows only God and Dean Singleton.
P.S. All of this censorship only illustrates a key problem with the mainstream press. The bloggers have been blogging away on these stories throughout the year and they will continue to blog away on major stories the mainstream press (and its wire service, the Associated Press) censor or trivialize. B3, blogging away at sfbg.com
The business of censoring labor
Most people, of course, work for a living. They spend at least half their lives working and, in fact, define themselves by their jobs. They obviously would be interested in and obviously need expert information on a regular basis about that most important aspect of their lives.
But the news media in effect censor that vital information. Their primary attention is not focused on those who do society¹s work. With the rare exception of such issues as the attempts to raise the minimum wage, or on special occasions like Labor Day, the media generally are not concerned with workers’ daily efforts to make a living. The media concentrate instead on the corporate interests and other employers like themselves who finance, direct and profit from the work.
Workers’ attempts to get a greater share of the profits and better working conditions by using the only effective tool available to them – collective action – are given only slight and frequently biased media attention. Strikes are an exception, but that coverage is usually concerned mainly with the strikes’ adverse effect on the general public.
Given their complexity and importance, collective bargaining and union activity generally should be among the most thoroughly and fairly covered of all subjects. Once, most newspapers had labor reporters to provide extensive if not always fair coverage. But almost no papers have such specialists today. With a very few exceptions, radio and television stations have never had them.
At most papers, in the Bay Area and elsewhere, labor coverage has been turned over to the business section. Since the material there is meant for readers who have a particular interest in business and a generally negative view of unions, the stories naturally are slanted that way by business reporters, who have little apparent understanding of labor.
The business pages typically downgrade, distort or simply ignore union views. They show little concern for general readers, including those who support unions or might want to if they had the opportunity to read thorough, balanced and expert accounts of their activities.
How about describing the country¹s major labor federation, the AFL-CIO, as a “trade association?” Or referring to democratically elected union leaders as “bosses?” The San Francisco Chronicle business page has made those petty but illustrative gaffes and, like the rest of the Bay Area¹s mainstream media, far more serious gaffes.
The list of important labor issues that have been ignored censored is seemingly endless. To cite just a few examples, the media:
— Frequently note that union membership is declining while failing to report that a principal cause is failure of the federal government to adequately enforce the laws that supposedly guarantee workers the right to unionize without employer interference.
— Fail to report numerous other anti-union actions of the Bush
administration, including its virtual non-enforcement of most other laws designed to protect workers.
— Rarely take notice of the on-the-job hazards that cause 6,000 deaths and more than 2 million serious injuries a year, and the need to strengthen and adequately enforce the job safety laws.
— Ignore labor¹s role as an advocate for the working people, union and non-union alike, who make up the vast bulk of the population, by characterizing labor as a “special interest.”
— Almost never report the views of union members and leaders on the major issues of the day. The views often are voiced at meetings of local labor councils and other union bodies that reporters ignore, while routinely seeking out the views of corporate and business executives.
— Pay little, if any, attention to many major union campaigns. Most recently, that’s notably included a nationwide drive to get McDonald’s to guarantee decent pay and working conditions to the impoverished tomato pickers whose work is essential to the hugely profitable fast-food industry.
So, despite the great importance of labor, despite most people¹s vested interest in it, despite the need to inform them fully about it, the media provide little that’s of real value to them in their working lives, and much that¹s prejudicial to their collective action.
Copyright © 2006 Dick Meister, former labor editor of the Chronicle and of KQED-TV’s Newsroom. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.
Weaponizing data
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION I was in front of a computer when the Twin Towers went down. The morning light flooded Charlie’s tiny studio apartment kitchen, where she’d parked her computer desk in a spot that another person would have used for a breakfast nook.
“Holy shit,” she said. “Look at the Washington Post!” I stared blearily at the monitor, coffee mug in my hand, and saw pictures of smoke. Charlie continued clicking and clicking on news. It was everywhere: live streams and up-to-the-second photographs of the towers as they burned.
One had fallen. Then the other one did. That morning we consumed hundreds of images and lines of electronic text, at the edge of a future I couldn’t fathom. Shit was going to happen, that’s all I knew.
My phone rang an hour later: it was Ed, whose plane from Japan to San Francisco had been diverted to Vancouver. No planes were entering or leaving US airspace.
What happened in geographical space was just the thin end of the wedge.
Shifts more dramatic than anything I could have imagined occurred on our electronic communication networks. The phone system and the Internet formed a new ground zero, a place where “fighting terrorism” became a force more socially disruptive than terrorism itself.
In the weeks that followed, flags and half-baked, vengeful ideas
spattered the mediascape online. ISPs allowed the government to install “carnivore” devices on network backbones, thus allowing the government to eavesdrop on everybody’s Internet traffic. Passage of the USA-PATRIOT Act allowed law enforcement to send secret subpoenas to online service providers for information about their customers.
Those of us critical of the US policies that led to the attack literally whispered to each other about it. We were afraid to say what we thought of the government crackdowns.
Something changed the Internet forever during the surreal years after the attack on the World Trade Center, when we went to war with a country whose citizens and leaders had nothing to do with what happened on September 11, 2001. Data mining was weaponized.
The ability to track hidden information patterns in vast piles of
unsifted data, once the purview of obscure academic articles and some start-ups with weird names like Inktomi and Google, became the touchstone of government efforts to track down terrorists. If a lack of intel is what allowed the terrorists to get us, then by gum, the spooks were going to get as much intel as they possibly could.
As a result, we got John Poindexter pushing misguided programs like Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA), which would allegedly be a giant computer operation in which all the data in the universe would be crunched and “patterns” would emerge to lead government agents to dens of bomb-making bad guys. It also led to the NSA’s now infamous (and probably illegal) surveillance of all the telephone and Internet data passing through AT&T’s wires — as well as the wires of several other major network providers.
Both of these programs rely on the idea that you can find a terrorist
needle in a haystack of data. And both were made far more dangerous by the rise of consumer products like Gmail, Flickr, and MySpace — giant databases of personal information, often tagged with keywords for easy searching. As many pundits (including myself) have said, we’re creating our own surveillance treasure trove.
But what that analysis leaves out is something near and dear to the
American spirit: the people have weapons too. It isn’t just the
government that can turn data mining into a weapon. The citizens can do it too, often better. And so the years since the Sept. 11 attacks have witnessed a blooming of what Dan Gillmor calls “citizen journalism.”
When the mainstream media wouldn’t report what was going on, people turned to alternative sources of news, including online sources. Bloggers became the new investigative reporters.
The groundwork laid by these subversive data miners continues today. The community of online journalists and researchers revealed that an AP photo of the fires in Beirut had been doctored. Bloggers sounded the alarm when upstart photographer Josh Wolf was arrested for refusing to hand over to police video he’d taken of a G-8 protest in San Francisco.
It’s no accident that the rise of blogging coincides with the rise of
government surveillance online. The people are watching too. SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who is watching the watchers.
The runners-up
11. DANGERS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD CONFIRMED
Sources: “Revealed: Health Fears over Secret Study into GM Food,” Geoffrey Lean, Independent (UK), May 22, 2005; “Monsanto’s GE Corn Experiments on Rats Continue to Generate Global Controversy,” GM Free Cymru, Organic Consumers Association Web site, June 2, 2005; “GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could Be Harmed,” Geoffrey Lean, Independent (UK), Jan. 8, 2006; “New Suspicions About GMOs,” Herve Kempf, le Monde and Truthout, Feb. 9, 2006
12. PENTAGON PLANS TO BUILD NEW LAND MINES
Sources: “After 10-Year Hiatus, Pentagon Eyes New Landmine,” Isaac Baker, Inter Press Service, Aug. 3, 2005; “Development and Production of Landmines,” Human Rights Watch Web site, August 2005
13. NEW EVIDENCE ESTABLISHES DANGERS OF ROUNDUP
Source: “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller,” Chee Yoke Heong, Third World Resurgence, no. 176, April 2005
14. HOMELAND SECURITY CONTRACTS KBR TO BUILD DETENTION CENTERS IN THE UNITED STATES
Sources: “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps,” Peter Dale Scott, New America Media, Jan. 31, 2006; “10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention Camps Revives Proposals from Oliver North,” Peter Dale Scott, New America Media, Feb. 21, 2006; “Bush’s Mysterious ‘New Programs,’” Nat Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, Feb. 21, 2006; “Detention Camp Jitters,” Maureen Farrell, BuzzFlash
15. CHEMICAL INDUSTRY IS THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY’S PRIMARY RESEARCH PARTNER
Sources: “Chemical Industry Is Now EPA’s Main Research Partner,” Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Oct. 5, 2005; “EPA Becoming Arm of Corporate R&D,” Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Oct. 6, 2005
16. ECUADOR AND MEXICO DEFY UNITED STATES ON INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
Sources: “Ecuador Refuses to Sign ICC Immunity Deal for US Citizens,” Alexander Martinez, Agence France-Presse (School of the Americas Watch), June 22, 2005; “Mexico Defies Washington on the International Criminal Court,” Katherine Stapp, Inter Press Service, Nov. 2, 2005
17. IRAQ INVASION PROMOTES OPEC AGENDA
Sources: “OPEC and the Economic Conquest of Iraq,” Greg Palast, Harper’s in coordination with BBC Television Newsnight, Oct. 24, 2005; “Bush Didn’t Bungle Iraq, You Fools: The Mission Was Indeed Accomplished,” Greg Palast, Guardian (UK), March 20, 2006
18. PHYSICIST CHALLENGES OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY
Sources: “Y. Professor Thinks Bombs, Not Planes, Toppled WTC,” Elaine Jarvik, Deseret Morning News, Nov. 10, 2005; “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?,” Steven E. Jones, Brigham Young University Web site, Winter 2005; “BYU Professor’s Group Accuses US Officials of Lying about 9/11,” Elaine Jarvik, Deseret Morning News, Jan. 26, 2006
19. DESTRUCTION OF RAINFORESTS WORST EVER
Source: “Revealed: The True Devastation of the Rainforest,” Steve Connor, Independent (UK), Oct. 21, 2005
20. BOTTLED WATER: A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM
Source: “Bottled Water: Nectar of the Frauds?,” Abid Aslam, OneWorld.net, Feb. 5, 2006
21. GOLD MINING THREATENS ANCIENT ANDEAN GLACIERS
Sources: “Barrick Gold Strikes Opposition in South,” Glenn Walker, CorpWatch.com, June 20, 2005; “Chile: ‘Yes’ to Gold Mine, But Don’t Touch the Glaciers,” Daniela Estrada, Inter Press Service, Feb. 15, 2006
22. BILLIONS IN HOMELAND SECURITY SPENDING UNDISCLOSED
Source: “Billions in States’ Homeland Purchases Kept in the Dark,” Eileen Sullivan, Congressional Quarterly, June 22, 2005
23. US OIL TARGETS KYOTO IN EUROPE
Sources: “Oil Industry Targets EU Climate Policy,” David Adam, Guardian (UK), Dec. 8, 2005; “How America Plotted to Stop Kyoto Deal,” Andrew Buncombe, Independent (UK), Dec. 8, 2005
24. CHENEY’S HALLIBURTON STOCK ROSE MORE THAN 3,000 PERCENT LAST YEAR
Sources: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Rose 3,281 Percent Last Year, Senator Finds,” John Byrne, Raw Story, Oct. 2005; “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Soar to $9.2 Million,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s Web site
25. US MILITARY IN PARAGUAY THREATENS REGION
Sources: “Fears Mount as US Opens New Military Installation in Paraguay,” Benjamin Dangl, Upside Down World, Oct. 5, 2005; “Dark Armies, Secret Bases, and Rummy, Oh My!,” Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus, Nov. 21, 2005; “US Military Moves in Paraguay Rattle Regional Relations,” Sam Logan and Matthew Flynn, International Relations Center, Dec. 14, 2005 SFBG
The silent scandal
Editor’s note: This story has been altered to correct an error. The original version stated that an Examiner editor had admitted in court testimony to providing positive coverage to politicians in exchange for help with a business deal. The person who testified to that was not an editor, but Publisher Tim White, and he was talking about editorial, not news, coverage.
› gwschulz@sfbg.com
After William Randolph Hearst flunked out of Harvard in the 1880s, he pursued a new career path, asking his wealthy father for only one thing: the San Francisco Examiner.
Young William didn’t stop with the Examiner — over his lifetime, he accumulated dozens of newspapers nationwide. Eventually, one in five Americans regularly read a Hearst paper.
That seems like a lot of power and influence, and it was. But it’s nothing compared to what the heirs to Hearst’s media mogul mantle are doing today.
In fact, the Hearst Corp. is working with another acquisitive newspaper magnate, William Dean Singleton, to lock up the entire Bay Area daily newspaper market. If the project succeeds, one of the most sophisticated, politically active regions in the nation may have exactly one daily news voice.
That worries Clint Reilly.
The political consultant turned real estate investor has sued the Hearst Corp., owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, for the second time in a decade to stop a partnership he fears will eliminate the variety of voices among newspapers in the Bay Area.
It’s an amazing story, full of politics, big money, secretive arrangements, and juicy executive bonuses. What’s at stake? Control over one of the most lucrative businesses in Northern California.
But for the most part, you aren’t reading about it in the daily papers — which means you aren’t seeing it on TV or hearing about it on the radio.
In fact, the blackout of the inside details of the Singleton deal and Reilly’s effort to stop it is one of the greatest local censored stories of the year — and the way the press has failed to cover it demonstrates exactly what’s wrong with monopoly ownership of the major news media.
The story began in the spring when one of the nation’s more respected newspaper chains, Knight Ridder, was forced to put itself up for sale after Bruce Sherman, a prominent shareholder, decided that the company’s relatively healthy profit margins (and dozens of Pulitzers) were simply not enough.
It’s the nature of publicly traded companies to be vulnerable to shareholder insurrections, unless they have multiple classes of stock. Knight Ridder didn’t, and although its former chief executive, P. Anthony Ridder, later said he regretted the sale, Knight Ridder went on the block.
The Sacramento-based McClatchy chain bought the much bigger Knight Ridder but needed to sell some of the papers to make the deal work.
In the Bay Area, Knight Ridder’s two prime properties, the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times, were bought by MediaNews Group, the Denver-based conglomerate run by Singleton. That was a problem from the start: Singleton already owned the Oakland Tribune, the Marin Independent Journal, the San Mateo County Times, and a series of smaller local papers on both sides of the bay. The two former Knight Ridder papers would give him a near-monopoly on daily newspaper ownership in the region; in fact, there was only one daily in the area that would be in a position to compete with Singleton. That was the San Francisco Chronicle.
But in one of the strangest deals in newspaper history, Hearst — the erstwhile competitor — joined in the action, buying two of the McClatchy papers (the Monterey Herald and the St. Paul Pioneer Dispatch) and then immediately turning them over to Singleton, in exchange for some stock in MediaNews operations outside of California.
When news of the transactions first broke, MediaNews publications and the Hearst’s Chron covered it extensively, more than once putting the billion-dollar partnership on the front pages. (The transactions also involve a company formed by MediaNews and two of its other competitors, the Stephens Group and Gannett Co., called the California Newspapers Partnership.)
Since then, however, coverage has been overshadowed by JonBenet Ramsey and local crime news. The real story of what happened between Hearst and Singleton and how it would devastate local media competition never made the papers.
If this had been a deal involving any other local big business that had a huge impact on the local economy and details as fishy as this, a competitive paper would have been all over it. And yet, even the Chron was largely silent.
In fact, when Attorney General Bill Lockyer decided not to take any action to block the deal, the Chron relegated the news to a five-paragraph Reuters wire story out of New York, buried in the briefs in the business section. The original Reuters story was cut; the news of Reilly’s suit and his allegations didn’t make it into the Chron version.
At times, the new Singleton papers have treated the story with upbeat glee: in early August, the Merc proclaimed in a headline that the area’s “New media king is having fun.”
The story noted: “MediaNews is privately held, a step removed from the Wall Street pressure that forced the Mercury News’ previous owner, Knight Ridder, to put itself up for sale…. Singleton is its leader, and by all accounts, a man who lives, breathes and loves newspapers.”
Longtime media critic and former UC Berkeley journalism school dean Ben Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly, told the Guardian that most of the coverage so far has focused on the business side of the transactions.
“The coverage I’ve seen has simply described the devices they used to divide the McClatchy chain and did not describe how cleverly it was designed to avoid an antitrust action,” Bagdikian said.
Here’s some of what the daily papers have ignored:
The Hearst deal was certainly good for MediaNews, because on the same day the agreement was signed, top executives at the company were awarded $1.88 million in bonuses. MediaNews president Joseph Lodovic earned the chief bonus of $1 million, while the president of MediaNews Group Interactive, Eric Grilly, received over $100,000 in bonuses on top of a $1.25 million severance package for retirement. The figures were disclosed in the company’s most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Hearst has insisted repeatedly that its investment in MediaNews involves only tracking stock, meaning its up-and-down value rests solely on the performance of MediaNews businesses outside of California. Such a structure may help the two companies comply with antitrust rules — for now.
But in a little-noticed footnote included in a July memo filed by Hearst in response to Reilly’s lawsuit, the company revealed that its tracking stock could still be converted to MediaNews common stock in the future — meaning it would then have a stake in the entire company, including its Bay Area holdings. “The tracking stock will be convertible into ordinary MNG common stock, but that will require a separate, future transaction and its own Hart-Scott-Rodino review,” the July 25 document states.
In other words, public records — information freely available to the 17-odd business reporters at the Chronicle — show that Hearst’s fundamental presentation of the deal is inaccurate. Hearst is not just a peripheral player in this deal; the company is a direct partner with Singleton and thus has no economic incentive whatsoever to compete with the Denver billionaire.
And that means there will be no real news competition either.Reilly has been in politics most of his adult life, and he knows what happens when one entity controls the news media: perspectives and candidates that aren’t in favor with the daily papers don’t get fair coverage.
Newspapers, he told us recently, are charged with checking the tyranny of government; without competition they will fail to check the tyranny of themselves.
“The combination intended to be formed by these defendants constitutes nothing less than the formation of a newspaper trust covering the Greater San Francisco Bay Area,” Reilly’s suit states, “implemented through anticompetitive acquisitions of competing newspapers, horizontal divisions of markets and customers, and agreements not to compete, whether expressed or implied.”
A federal judge recently tossed Reilly’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Hearst transaction. But Reilly’s overall lawsuit, designed to stop Hearst’s $300 million investment in MediaNews, will still wind its way through the courts, and Judge Susan Illston signaled in her last order that she would “seriously consider” forcing MediaNews to give up some of its assets if the court finds the company’s transactions to be anticompetitive.
There are clear grounds to do that. In fact, as Reilly’s attorney, Joe Alioto, points out in his legal filings, the monopolists have made the argument themselves. When Reilly sued to block the Examiner-Chronicle deal in 2000, Hearst, which wanted to buy the Chron and shutter the Examiner, argued that closing the Examiner would have no competitive impact — since all the other competing Bay Area papers provided the reader and advertiser with a choice. Now the lawyers are arguing just the opposite — that the Chron and the outlying papers never competed in the first place.
Hearst will more than likely argue in court that since its newspapers face unprecedented competition from online content, there’s technically no such thing as a one-newspaper town. The world is globally connected now, this thinking goes, and the Chron and MediaNews both face competition from popular blogs such as Daily Kos and Valleywag on the West Coast and Gawker and Wonkette on the East Coast.
But that ignores a media reality: for all the power and influence of bloggers and online outlets, daily newspapers still have the ability to set the news agenda for a region. Among other things, local TV news and radio stations regularly take their cues from the daily papers — meaning that a story the dailies ignore or mangle never gets a real chance.
MediaNews argues in its most recent memo to Judge Illston that “any potential anticompetitive effect of the transactions against which the Complaint is directed is greatly offset and outweighed by the efficiencies that will result from those transactions.”
“Efficiencies” isn’t actually defined, but if the past is any indication, jobs could be the first place MediaNews looks to “efficiently” save money for its investors — at the cost of performing the traditional role of a newspaper to monitor government.
Reporting — real reporting — is expensive. It requires experienced journalists, and a good paper should give them the time and resources not only to watch day-to-day events but also to dig deep, below the headlines.
That’s not the monopoly media style.
Speaking in general terms, Jon Marshall, who runs the blog Newsgems and teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, wrote us in an e-mail that newspapers have to be willing to invest in innovation now, while there’s still time.
“If newspapers really want to win back readers, they’ll need to start offering more outstanding feature stories that really dig deep and have a big impact on their communities,” Marshall wrote. “Readers need a reason to turn to newspapers rather than all the other content that’s now available through the Web. Newspapers will have a hard time creating these outstanding stories on a consistent basis if they keep paying their current skimpy entry-level salaries.”
The pattern Singleton is known to follow isn’t unique. A recent survey conducted by journalism students at Arizona State University revealed that the nation’s largest newspapers are giving reduced resources to investigative and enterprise reporting as media companies trim budgets to maintain or increase profits. More than 60 percent of the papers surveyed, the report stated, don’t have investigative or projects teams.
Brant Houston, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, told us that while teams of reporters dedicated exclusively to investigations may be disappearing, many papers are willing to pull staffers away from their regularly assigned beats to make sure that big stories are thoroughly covered. But, he said, Wall Street’s haste to make money could backfire if readers head elsewhere in search of more exclusive content.
“I think everything is in flux right now,” Houston said. “Everyone’s trying to figure out what the next newsroom looks like.”
Luther Jackson, an executive officer of the San Jose Newspaper Guild, which represents staffers at the Merc, said it’s too early to determine the impact of MediaNews on the paper. The union just recently began new contract negotiations with the company, while the previous agreement, which expired in June, remains in place. Jackson said he didn’t believe the Merc’s Silicon Valley readers would tolerate any dramatic dip in quality coverage.
“We have a problem with the idea that you can cut your way to excellence,” Jackson said.
Just six years ago, after Reilly sued Hearst the first time to stop its purchase of the Chronicle and subsequent attempt to shut down the Examiner, trial testimony revealed that the Examiner had, in fact, abused its editorial power to advance its business interests. Examiner Publisher Tim White admitted in open court that he had traded favorable editorial coverage to then-mayor Willie Brown in exchange for his support of the Chronicle purchase.
Reilly lost that one — but for now this case is moving forward. The suit could be the last legal stand for people who still think it’s wrong for one person to dominate the news that an entire region of the country depends on — and at the very least will force the story of what really happened out into the open. SFBG
PS At press time, Judge Illston ordered the trial be put on the fast track and set a trial date for Feb. 26, 2007. See the Bruce blog at www.sfbg.com for more info.
Eureka! Here comes even more Eurekaism! (part 3)
Hearst was last seen covering the big Hearst/Singleton deal via Reuters out of New York. Now it is blacking out the story completely. A tale of two footnotes tells all.
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Just in time to update our annual Project Censored package, the Hearst/Chronicle demonstrated yet again how the galloping Conglomerati are covering the big story in Eureka (where the MediaNews Group/
Singleton are competing headon with a local upstart daily) — and blacking out the much bigger story in the Bay Area where Hearst and Singleton are destroying daily competition and forming a regional monopoly, aided and abetted by the McClatchy, Gannett, and Stephens newspaper chains.
The major new development: The federal judge in the
Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto lawsuit against the deal okayed an agreement between lawyers from both sides to fast-track the suit and set a trial date for Feb. 26.
Obvioiusly, this is a major local news story. Josh Richman, a staff writer for the Singleton’s East Bay group, wrote a story dated Saturday, Sept. 2, headlined “Newspaper suit put on legal fast track.” The story quoted Alioto as saying on Monday Sept. 4 that he and Reilly “are grateful that the court has ordered an expedited trial date in this very important antitrust case which seeks to prevent the monopolization of newspapers in the Bay Area.”
The story quoted MediaNews president Jody Lodovic as offering “no comment except to note that the case was accelerated by mutual agreement. Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer (B3 note: who he? where he? New York? ) said his company wouldn’t comment.” It is always great sport, of course, when publishers under fire say “no comment” to their own reporters.
Hearst’s last story on the deal came from the Reuters New Service out of New York (which it butchered, see my earlier blog.) This time, the Chronicle simply blacked out the story completely. The Singleton story left out a key point: that Hearst had invested $399 million in the deal and that the two major chains were becoming jolly good business and editorial partners in creating an unprecedented Bay Area newspaper monopoly. Both chains are sweating mightily to create the impression this is no big deal, there isn’t much of a story here, that Justice and the AG have cleared it, and Clint Reilly is just, well, Clint Reilly, and there is nothing to the lawsuit, and certainly nothing for anybody to worry about. Peace!
However, there is a deadly time bomb in the deal and it is hidden in a tiny footnote in Hearst’s July 25 filing in the suit. The footnote disclosed that Hearst is a major potential major investor and partner with Singleton. Here’s how it works: Hearst has stated repeatedly that its $299 million equity investment in MediaNews will be based on what is known as “tracking stock.” In other words, the value of the MediaNews stock will rise and fall depending solely on the performance of MediaNews businesses outside the Bay Area, which was a legal structure set up presumably to help the deal survive anticipated antitrust scrutiny.
However, Hearst admitted in the footnote that in the future the “tracking” stock “will be convertible into ordinary MNG common stock.” Hearst added that any such conversion will require additional antitrust review. Federal Judge Susan Illston picked up on the significance of this footnote in her own footnote in her ruling knocking out the Reilly request for temporary restraining order. She stated, “Although Hearst’s proposed interest in MediaNews does not include MediaNews Bay Area publications, Hearst implies in its filings that it will seek permission at a future time to convert its interest in MediaNews into MediaNews common stock.” (See the G.W. Schulz story in the current print and online Guardian).
Voila! In this mysterious tale of the two footnotes, the closely held secret is finally revealed: Hearst and Singleton are working hard to be partners, cheek to cheek, jowl to jowl, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. And this fact, among many others, demonstrates in 96 point Garamond Bold why they have employed Eurekaism and censored a big local story about newspaper monopoly, the local censored story of the year, while going hellbent to cover the story about Singleton’s competition in Eureka.
Stop the presses: Frances Dinkelspiel, in her Wednesday Aug. 30 blog (see link below), spotted a juicy Eureka and posted it under the head “Newspaper Coverage in the Bay Area is Shrinking.” Her lead: “the latest evidence of media consolidation in the Bay Area screamed out all over the front pages on Wednesday.”
She pointed out that the four major papers in the region (Hearst/Chronicle and the Singleton/Contra Costa Times/San Jose Mercury News/Oakland Tribune) all prominently displayed the same story–the story of the motorist who deliberately drove his car into l4 pedestrians, killed one man in Fremont, and injured l3 others in San Francisco.
“On Wednesday,” she said, “instead of four distinct stories on the region’s front pages, there were only two—one from the Chronicle and one from the MediaNews group.” (Merc reporters did the story for the three Singleton papers.) She concluded, “That’s a huge loss for Bay Area readers. Competition improves news coverage. What will readers miss out on in the future? What will readers miss out on in the future? This was just a police story; imagine the impact when the big story deals with corruption or another important, but less easily reported event. If fewer reporters are tracking the story, there will be fewer revelations.”
Eureka!
Postscript: Let’s keep the Eureka exercise going. Anybody who spots a Eurekaism, an example of the galloping Conglomerati censoring a local story, please send it along to the Guardian and the Bruce blog and any of the handful of independent voices left in the Bay Area. B3
$20 million to spy on the press
By Tim Redmond
This lovely little gem dropped Friday afternoon, just before the Labor Day weekend, when much of hte nation was’t paying attention: The Pentagon is looking for bidders on a $20 million contract to monitor news media coverage of Iraq I could save the generals and admirials some money:
Get a clue, folks. The once-fawning news media is turning strong against the war.
You can make the check out to me.
Bailed Wolf worries proposed federal reporter’s shield laws won’t protect independent press
By Sarah Phelan
Like a mole emerging from a hole, bespectacled freelance journalist Josh Wolf squinted into the September sunlight, as he stood on the steps outside the U.S. Court of Appeals 9th Circuit building on Seventh Street in San Francisco. It was the 24-year-old’s first taste of freedom after a month-long stint inside Dublin Federal Correctional Institute for refusing to give a federal grand jury video outtakes of an anarchist protest turned violent.
During his stretch at Dublin, Wolf was only able to breathe fresh air for an hour each day, and he looked as if was relishing the feeling of the sun on his skin, as he voiced his belief that what should have been a SFPD investigation into an assault on an officer, turned into a federal witch hunt, which so far has involved the FBI, the Joint Taskforce on Terrorism, a grand jury—and the thousands of tax payers’ dollars to prosecute and jail him.
As Wolf, who’d traded prison dudes for black jeans, blue shirt and white sneakers, began to speak, jackhammers went off across the the road, as if some evil mastermind was making a last ditch effort to censor the truth. The crowd of camera wielding, microphone-holding paparazzi pressed closer, as Wolf expressed his hope that the 9th Circuit’s decision to grant him bail was a positive sign. (A month earlier, District Court Judge Alsup denied Wolf bail, calling his case “a slamdunk for the federal government.”)
“The late Senator Paul Wellstone once said that significant social change comes from the bottom up,” said Wolf, who hopes his case will ultimately help cement the rights of the independent, as well as those of the traditional, media. Expressing concern that the federal shield laws that are currently on the table “do not encompass people who meet my criteria,” Wolf critiqued the proposed laws for only protecting those who are employed by or under contract with an established media outlet.
‘There should be a common law to protect journalists,” he said, voicing the belief that anyone who is involved in gathering and disseminating news and information is a journalist, whether they are paid for their activities or not.
“I am a journalist, I have a website, I’ve sold footage, including to MichaelMoore.com,” said Wolf, who worries that proposed federal reporter shield laws will create two classes of journalists, those that report and get paid, and those that do it out of volition. “It will create a corporatocracy in which only corporations are media,” he said. “It goes against the idea of a free and independent press.”
He also critiqued what he saw as an increasing abuse of grand juries, which were established to protect the rights of those accused, but increasingly appear to resemble military tribunals and are used so the feds to secretly coerce and investigate targets.
“There is no means that any extended stay in jail is going to bring about a coercive effect,” said Wolf, who believes the case of former New York Times journalist Judith Miller, as well as those of the two BALCO reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle who still face jail time, helped publicize his plight, as well as the blogosphere.
‘It’s egregious that the feds took up an investigation into an assault in a SFPD office,’ said Wolf, who believes that the alleged arson to a SFPD car was used as a hook, simply because SFPD receives federal funds.
“In my tape you hear someone yell, ‘Officer Down!’ That’s the extent of it,” said Wolf, in reply to the question of what interest the feds could possibly have in his clips on the cutting room floor.”
“I don’t want my case to be a reason why people don’t get involved in grassroots journalism,” he said,a cknowledging that his case shows there are risks, “An individual can decide what’s important and truly change thw world we live in,” he said, comparing that freedom to the restrictions imposed on journalists who work for corporate media.”
To help freelancers, Wolf would like to see more information out there on what independent journalists should do if they are subpoenaed. “Know your rights and how to protect them,” he advised.
By the way, when was the last time that an assault on a SFPD triggered a federal investigation, involving the FBI, the JTTF, a grand jury and a reporter doing jail time?