News

Beyond the Reilly settlement

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> gwschulz@sfbg.com

Click here to read the Guardian editorial on the Reilly victory

Shortly before Clint Reilly began a press conference April 25 announcing that he’d settled his federal antitrust suit against the Bay Area’s two largest newspaper companies, Cheryl Hurd of NBC affiliate KNTV, channel 11, loudly complained to the pack of reporters that she just didn’t quite get the story.

"Why does anybody care about this?" she asked, sounding annoyed as she waved the press release listing the terms of the settlement in the air. "I don’t even understand any of this. What’s this mean?"

She wasn’t the only confused reporter. In the week since the settlement was announced, the local media have downplayed or mangled what is actually a huge story: Reilly, acting on his own, with no support from federal or state regulators, managed to scuttle a deal that would have ended all newspaper competition in the Bay Area.

"Would I have liked to see it go further? Yeah," said Bruce Cain, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, who penned a declaration supporting Reilly’s case. "But at least he was able to stop more collaboration between those two companies, and he was able to establish the legal point that this has more than just economic consequences. It has consequences for the vitality of political news coverage in the Bay Area."

The settlement involved a lot of peripheral terms, but the essence was this: the Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, can no longer consider combining printing, distribution, and ad sales with MediaNews Group, which owns almost every other major local daily in the Bay Area.

Reilly announced that the deal prevents the supposed competitors from unfairly or illegally negotiating any major joint operating arrangement in the near future. The trial was scheduled to begin just days after the agreement was reached.

"Newspapers are the intellectual bridge between citizens and their government," Reilly told reporters. "To me, one Bay Area newspaper company owning every paid circulation daily newspaper would be a very bad thing for Bay Area newspaper readers and for public discourse."

The deal nixes a plan outlined in a letter unearthed during an early phase of the trial. The letter showed that Hearst and MediaNews wanted to consolidate distribution and advertising operations among their local papers to create additional revenue and save on expenses.

Hearst enabled MediaNews to complete the purchase of several major local dailies last year by investing $300 million in the company’s stock. To survive antitrust scrutiny, the deal was crafted to make the stock’s value hinge entirely on non-Bay Area assets. But documents revealed during the suit clearly show that Hearst had planned to convert the stock so that it included MediaNews papers here as well. The settlement also prevents that from happening.

According to the terms, Reilly will recommend private citizens for appointment to the editorial boards of every California Newspapers Partnership publication in the region, including the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, and the Oakland Tribune.

He will also get access to advertising space in the pages of the papers for a regular column.

Reilly had originally sought to force MediaNews to divest itself of the San Jose Mercury News and other papers, but that was a long shot at best. What’s remarkable is that he accomplished as much as he did when no government agency was willing to help.

"I see in a lot of places what’s happening is owners are trying to make as much money as possible," Cain told us. "I see this in local TV, I see this in print media. I’m sure there’s an element of survival sometimes, but I think a lot of it is just trying to get profit margins up."

The US Justice Department never made a serious effort to stop the deal. The Guardian recently confirmed that the state Attorney General’s Office under the newly elected Jerry Brown has dropped its probe into the transactions. Spokesperson David Kravets refused to explain why.

The state’s treasurer and former AG, Bill Lockyer, began the investigation, and when we asked for a comment on Brown’s decision, he declined, saying he had "moved on."

Gina Talamona, spokesperson for the federal Justice Department, said its examination of Hearst’s substantial investment in MediaNews continues. But MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton told us that he expects it will not only close soon but will also clear the companies to move ahead.

Singleton said his meetings with Reilly, a Bay Area native and former mayoral candidate, were civil and there were no terms of the settlement he was displeased with. But he still doesn’t believe Reilly had grounds to bring the suit.

"A lot of wild statements have been thrown out that are simply not true," Singleton said. "There’s no evidence whatsoever that we had any discussions with Hearst about doing anything with the Chronicle that would have been improper. In fact, we’ve had few discussions about anything with the Chronicle."

Perhaps there was nothing "improper" as far as justice officials were concerned. But a March 2006 letter from Hearst vice president James Asher to MediaNews president Joseph Lodovic that surfaced during the case shows Hearst required an agreement on consolidated distribution networks with MediaNews before the company would proceed with its side of the transaction.

So let’s go back to Hurd’s question: why should anyone care about newspaper mergers in an era when there are so many other sources of information?

John McManus is a part-time journalism professor at San Jose State University and director of GradeTheNews.org, a consumer Web site on Bay Area news quality. He was hired as a consultant by Clint Reilly’s legal team to provide analysis of how consolidated or noncompetitive media outlets might fail to provide the best, most valuable news stories possible to local consumers.

His answer is simple. "Everyone is affected by the quality of newspapers because they form the bottom of the food chain for news," McManus told us. "Probably about 85 percent of the original news reporting in the Bay Area comes from newspapers, because they have much larger staffs than television stations or radio stations or Web-only operations."

McManus did his Stanford PhD dissertation in 1987 on four television news stations scattered around California, spending a month at each of them. At one of the stations, he said, what appeared in the local newspaper was so important, a station producer would clip stories directly from it and attach them to the assignments reporters were expected to have prepared by that evening’s newscast.

"The situation has gotten worse since then," McManus told us, "because local TV news staffs have shrunk."

The settlement also did not include an agreement on what would happen to the mountain of records produced in the case leading up to the trial.

Hundreds of pages previously sealed by the newspaper companies were opened to the public after the Guardian and the East Bay nonprofit Media Alliance intervened in the case. Reilly’s lawyer, Joe Alioto, recently insisted that he would petition the judge to unveil more documents, such as full depositions of company executives and additional memos and e-mails.

The settlement comes with some caveats for critics of consolidation. McManus believes that Reilly ultimately "got a quarter of the loaf." Reilly, he said, may have protected the independence of the Chronicle, but MediaNews isn’t being forced to unload any of its Bay Area properties to balance the field.

"Without [Reilly] having liberated the Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times and the smaller papers from the grip of MediaNews," McManus said, "the Chronicle‘s fate may be sealed." *

Editors note: The daily papers in the Bay Area treated the news of the settlement as a one-day story, and not a terribly big one. The San Francisco Chronicle ran it below the fold in the business section with a one-column head. But over the next few days, there were a lot of development and arguments over the deal; the trade journal Editor and Publisher was all over it. But none of that made it into the supposedly competitive local daily press.

A lot of the back and forth appeared on chainlinks.org, a Web site run by the Newspaper Guild. A selection:

Hearst-MediaNews deal scuttled: Former Chronicle City Editor Alan Mutter on the Reilly settlement

Editor and Publisher on the disagreement over the settlement

Jerry Ceppos, former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, whines about the deal

Romanseko links to some of the first-day stories

Reilly’s victory

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EDITORIAL In the days following the historic settlement of Clint Reilly’s lawsuit against the Bay Area’s newspaper barons, the local dailies, the media blogs, and the trade publications such as Editor and Publisher were buzzing with debate and speculation over a few of the agreement’s terms.

Would Reilly actually get space in the local papers to make his political points every month? Where would that space go? Would it be paid ad space, or would he get it free? Would he be able to appoint a citizen member to the editorial boards of Dean Singleton’s dailies (including the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times)? Or could the papers’ managers reject his nominations?

Back and forth, back and forth. And all of it entirely missed the point.

This was the fine print of the deal, the stuff that, a few months from now, nobody will remember or care about. You could get the real news from the headline in a blog post by former Chronicle city editor Alan Mutter: "Hearst-MediaNews deal scuttled."

That’s what happened here: Reilly, acting with his own money, with no support from the federal or state regulators, broke up a deal that would have put the owners of the Chronicle directly in business with Singleton’s MediaNews Group, the owner of almost every other major daily in the region. It would have been the end of daily newspaper competition in the Bay Area.

The Hearst Corp., documents that came out during the suit showed, wanted to combine some printing, distribution, and sales efforts with MediaNews Group. And Hearst wanted to convert an investment in MediaNews into direct stock in the company’s local papers. That would have, in effect, made one of the last non-MediaNews papers in the area part of the same business group.

As G.W. Schulz reports in "Beyond the Reilly Settlement," on page 11, if Reilly hadn’t intervened, nobody would have known about it until it was over and too late to stop. That’s the point here, and that’s what journalists, political scientists, and critics ought to be talking about.

Instead, we’ve heard outrage from some editors over the fact that Reilly might get some space in the papers. It’s really a nonissue; he could have bought ad space for his opinions anyway, and all that the settlement did was give him that space free. And a lot of papers ask citizens to serve on advisory boards; Reilly’s nominees are very unlikely to change anyone’s editorial policies.

Meanwhile, where is the outrage over the original Hearst-MediaNews deal, which would have ended editorial competition the same way the 1965 joint operating agreement between the Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner did? Where is the outrage, for that matter, over the fact that the Chronicle is now putting ads not from Clint Reilly but from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. – greenwashing ads that are demonstrable lies – on the front page of the paper, without even a tagline that says "paid advertisement"? Where is the outrage over the fact that Democrats Bill Lockyer (the former attorney general) and Jerry Brown (who now holds the job) were ready to stand back and let all this happen?

And where is the concern among all these civic-minded types about the fact that despite Reilly’s best efforts, it’s entirely possible Hearst will wind up trying to sell the Chron to Singleton anyway – and none of the federal or state authorities seem to care?

Remember, if Reilly hadn’t sued, one of the most dangerous, rotten tricks in newspaper history might have gone unchallenged.

As it is, the full information only came to light because the Guardian and Media Alliance went into court to force it open – and now Reilly and his attorney, Joe Alioto, have the right under the settlement to seek federal Judge Susan Illston’s permission to make the remainder of the key records – including the settlement agreement – public. They should do so, immediately, and Illston should grant their request. The public interest in the newspaper barons’ schemes couldn’t possibly be greater. *

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/30/07)

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/30/07): At least 98 Iraqi civilians were killed today. 14 U.S. Soldiers were killed in Iraq in the past 72 hours.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 98 Iraqi civilians were killed today in violence across the country, according to the Associated Press:
32 civilian mourners killed today in a bombing of a Shiite funeral in Diyala.
5 civilians killed today in a car bombing in Baghdad.
4 civilians killed today in checkpoint bombing in Baghdad
4 cilvilians killed today when a tanker truck exploded near a restaurant in Ramadi.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

62,570 – 68,593: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 29 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/42/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:
Fourteen U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in Iraq during the past 72 hours, making April the sixth deadliest month of the Iraq war, according to CNN.

3,590: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source: http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/


The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/30/07): So far, $421 billion for the U.S., $53 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Carla Marinucci discovers (gasp!) bloggers!

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By Tim Redmond

Wow, Carla Marinucci is almost breathless at the discovery that a lot of bloggers are covering the state convention.

I like the Calitics post on this and the poll on the “whiney ass tittey baby” who anonymously criticized the bloggers. Even if I don’t think that’s how you spell titty.

And Carla: This is old news.

California Democratic Convention, 6 pm

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By Tim Redmond

I just spent an hour with the star of the day, the former senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel who made news at last night’s debate by asking Barack Obama who he’s going to nuke.

Gravel is a character. He says the other candidates are “frightening,” largely because he seems to think any of them might drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. He told us that “all of these people spend more on haircuts than I raised last quarter.” He calls the president at “mental midget.”

His main issue is a national initiative process (which, given what a mess the initiative process is in CA, makes me more than a little nervous.) But he’s way against the war, and in favor of talking to all parties in all countries. He would “immediately normalize relations with Cuba.” And he thinks the war on drugs has been a failure (“we should legalize all drugs.”)

gravela.jpg
(photo by Dave Rolland)

His other signature issue is abolishing the federal income tax and replacing it with a sales tax. We got into it a bit; I asked him how it could possibly be okay to let people making more than a billion dollars a year get away with not paying an income tax. He said that we’d get the money when they spent it — but of course, these guys don’t spend most of their money. They invest it, tie it up in tax shelters, put it in foundations, etc.

But I give him credit — he talked to me about federal tax policy for at least half an hour, which is its own kind of lunacy — and way more than any ot the other candidates would ever do. A fascinating piece of work.

What really happened at the Clint Reilly press conference on the settlement of the Hearst/Singleton lawsuit

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Okay, okay, after getting a note from my Contra Costa source who follows Singleton news coverage for me in the East Bay, I realized I better explain what happened to me after the Clint Reilly press conference Wednesday morning. My source said he saw my whacked up face in the blog below and “thought Phil Bronstein was up to his old tricks.”

This was a reference to the famous incident in l993 when Reilly, then a political consultant, was invited to the old Hearst Examiner by then publisher Will Hearst to advise the Examiner on how to grow its circulation.
As the three sat in the Hearst conference room, an argument ensued between Bronstein and Riley and Reilly was soon taken out of the Examiner on a stretcher with a broken ankle. He sued the Examiner for assault and battery and collected a reported $600,000 in an out of court settlement. |Guess what: Hearst/Examiner/Bronstein have had it in for Riley ever since and have treated him shabbily in their news and editorial columns.

No, no, I explained to my source. I am a Ft.Carson-trained advanced infantryman and a Korea veteran (cold war), and I could handle Bronstein. I explained that I was walking back to the parking garage from the Merchants Exchange Building, where Reilly held the press conference, with my associate Paula Connelly and G. W. Schulz, the Guardian reporter on the story. Just as we were approaching the garage, I tripped on a rise in a grate on the sidewalk. I fell ingloriously face first on the hardest and most unyielding sidewalk north of the Tehachapis and whacked both knees and my face and started a nice shiner on my right eye. I must have looked as if I were staggering into the street after a barroom brawl.

Barons back off newspaper trial

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See bottom of story for full Web package of Guardian newspaper-transaction coverage and documents related to the Reilly suit

Click here for the Reilly press conference documents.

Click here for the famous April 26, 2006 letter.

Well, it’s over before it ever truly began.

Clint Reilly’s federal civil suit against the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group, filed last year in an attempt to block the would-be competitors from sharing monopoly control of the Bay Area’s daily newspaper establishment, ended today in a settlement that left Reilly claiming victory.

The deal blocks any future business deals between Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, and MediaNews, which now owns almost every other daily in the region.

The settlement saved some of the nation’s biggest newspaper barons from the prospect of a long and embarrassing trial that could have produced alarming revelations about the way the big publishers do business.

The case was set to go before a judge and jury April 30.

But in exchange, Reilly says he got most of what he was asking for – in particular, an end to the prospect of a Hearst-Media News business deal.

At a morning press conference April 25, Reilly announced that the settlement puts the Chronicle back into competition with local MediaNews properties.

“The purpose of my lawsuit,” Reilly told reporters, “was to ensure we will not have one company or one partnership owning every single paid subscription daily newspaper in the Bay Area … I strongly believe in newspaper competition. Newspapers create the record of our civic life.”

The local real-estate investor and former mayoral candidate forced the two companies, along with minority business partners the Stephens Group and Gannett Co., to promise they wouldn’t carry out the terms of a now-famous letter dated April 26, 2006 that outlined how Hearst and MediaNews could consolidate distribution and advertising operations among their local papers to create revenue.

That was just one of many proposed plans Reilly’s suit called a violation of federal antitrust laws. Also according to the settlement, Hearst’s $300 million stock investment in MediaNews, which CEO William Dean Singleton relied upon to complete his takeovers last spring of the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Monterey County Herald, and eventually, the Torrance Daily Breeze near Los Angeles, would rise and fall in value based only on the performance of MediaNews assets outside of the Bay Area.

The “tracking stock” scheme, as it’s known, was initially conceived this way to clear Hearst and MediaNews of immediate antitrust scrutiny by justice-department officials, but Hearst hoped it would later be converted into general MediaNews stock that included its Bay Area papers, a fact confirmed by records unearthed in an earlier phase of Reilly’s suit. Hearst, it turned out, much preferred that its huge investment include the totality of MediaNews.

But today’s settlement would keep that from happening, according to terms laid out between the parties, some of which they’ve agreed not to disclose.

Any talk of conjoined operations during the next three years between the companies would have to first be divulged to Reilly and his legal team.

Singleton has also agreed to turn over all executive meeting minutes of the California Newspapers Partnership, formed originally with Gannett and Stephens in 1999, that detail any negotiations with the Chronicle or other major media companies looking to do business with MediaNews in the Bay Area for the next three years.

In addition, Reilly will be permitted to recommend a citizen for appointment to the editorial boards of CNP’s Bay Area newspapers and will himself serve on the editorial board of at least one of them.

“The ten-month-long legal battle gave us a chance to see confidential documents between Hearst and MediaNews, Stephens and Gannett,” Reilly said. “Numerous documents show these newspaper companies and their executives are capable of the very cover-ups they so vigorously prosecute in politicians, executives and celebrities. I believe that their primary motivation for settling this case was their fear of exposing questionable competitive practices to public scrutiny.

“This is the second time Reilly has done this,” his attorney, Joe Alioto, told the reporters, referring to a 2000 suit Reilly filed to stop Hearst from shutting down the San Francisco Examiner. “And he does it because the government won’t do it. He does it all at his own cost and risk.”

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Reilly’s first antitrust assault on Hearst produced some sensational revelations – including the fact that the Examiner publisher sought to trade favorable editorial coverage of then-Mayor Willie Brown in exchange for Brown’s support of Hearst’s business deals.

With the settlement in place, Reilly’s second suit won’t produce that sort of high drama. But he has forced the release of records showing that Hearst and MediaNews wanted to develop close business ties – and there are more potentially explosive documents that may become public.

After the Guardian and Media Alliance intervened to have records previously sealed by the newspaper companies opened to public access, we learned for the first time that Hearst had considered selling the San Francisco Chronicle to Singleton in 2005. But the latter’s offer was chump change, coming just a few short years after Hearst had plowed through three quarters-of-a-billion dollars in its bid to take over the Chronicle and dump the San Francisco Examiner, which it had owned for more than a century. The terms were “totally unacceptable,” Hearst executive James Asher would tell the justice department in a September deposition that turned out to be among the most interesting and candid documents to surface from the intervention.

We learned that Hearst had spent more than 10 years gnashing at the bit for an opportunity to invest in the MediaNews business model, best described as a series of “clusters,” in which Singleton consolidates the operations of several regional newspapers, hacks madly at the payroll with a broadsword, and sends ill-fated staffers packing, from veteran editors with Pulitzers on their résumés to longtime press operators.

We learned that Hearst’s inspiration for its major stock investment in MediaNews began after the two became fast friends in Texas, Singleton’s home state. MediaNews in 1995 sold the assets of the Houston Post for $120 million to Hearst, which owned the Houston Chronicle, enabling Hearst to rid itself of a major-market competitor.

We learned that from day one, Hearst wanted its $300 million investment to directly hinge on Bay Area MediaNews properties as well, presumably meaning they believed it would make the investment more valuable, and also meaning Hearst would then have less of an incentive to compete directly with MediaNews. Would you if your competitor was holding $300 million of your money?

We also learned that an anticompetitive agreement to join advertising and distribution networks with MediaNews was required by Hearst “in order to proceed with the transaction,” according to a memo Hearst exec Asher sent to MediaNews president Joseph J. Lodovic IV in early 2006. In other words, a quid pro quo by its very definition.

We learned that contradictory legal strategies are far from off limits. The Hearst Corp. argued first in Reilly’s 2000 suit that the Bay Area is brimming with aggressive newspaper competition, and for that reason, he had no grounds to denounce the closure of the Examiner planned at the time. The papers argued in 2006, however, that newspaper competition in the Bay Area is actually all but non-existent because the markets are subdivided, so Clint Reilly doesn’t have anything to complain about.

Some of the most interesting material is still under court seal, including the depositions of senior publishing executives. But the settlement specifically allows Reilly to go back into court seeking an order to open those records, and he and Alioto vowed to do that very shortly.

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Overall, it’s been a monumental year for newspapers, replete with massive waves of unfortunate irony. Banner headlines at dailies across the country have prophesied the death of newspapers, a trend story that Hearst and MediaNews tried to use in court to convince judge Illston that the industry was wilting under a consolidate-or-die atmosphere. A better analysis, of course, might conclude simply that shareholders aren’t getting the enormous returns they once did, with the exception of the Chronicle, which, we learned from Reilly’s suit, has been losing $1 million a week for Hearst — if not more.

A shareholder revolt broke to pieces one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains, Knight-Ridder, respected by many in the industry for its commitment to investigations, bold enterprise reporting and funding for national and international bureaus. The company was forced to sell after investors grew restless, and Singleton swept in to takeover the chain’s gem, the Merc, as well as the Times in Contra Costa County.

Layoffs ensued and MediaNews immediately began consolidating business-side functions in a single San Ramon office where operations for several papers could be managed at once. And MediaNews recently spiced up the company’s Web site, an emblem of its new dominant position. But like the old site, there’s very little information about the company’s journalism awards, and no bios of its editors, profiles of its reporters or portraits of anyone driving the company’s papers from the bottom up. Like the old site, there’s information for investors and photos of the company’s top executives, including one of Singleton smiling alongside company president Lodovic, who earned a $1 million bonus just as MediaNews consummated its marriage with Hearst last year.

At MediaNews papers in the Bay Area, single stories began appearing in several papers under one byline during Reilly’s suit meaning fewer perspectives for major Bay Area issues. Again with a touch of irony, one of the regular bylines on stories covering Reilly’s suit has been from veteran Merc reporter Pete Carey, who under the paper’s old owners helped win two Pulitzers, first for its joint 1985 coverage of the downfall of Filipino despot Ferdinand Marcos and second for stories explaining how red tape blocked needed retrofits at some California highways leading to greater infrastructure damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

In Minnesota, a Ridder family heir hung on as publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press after Singleton took it over last year with Hearst’s help before he left just recently for a job at the competing Minneapolis Star Tribune. The move has devolved into a bitter court dispute with Singleton, according to the Twin Cities alt weekly, City Pages. The Ridder family’s involvement with the Pi Press lasted more than 70 years.

Even Singleton’s beloved flagship paper, the Denver Post, couldn’t escape “industry changes” – that is, layoffs. The paper reported buyout offers to more than a third of its staff April 24.

But we have received a recent ominous sign of what’s to come just as Reilly inked his settlement with Hearst and MediaNews.

In an election for board directors at the April 24 annual meeting of the New York Times Co., 42 percent of the shareholders withheld their votes to protest the company’s stock structure, which keeps a controlling ownership stake in the hands of the Sulzberger family, the members of which have owned the Times for generations.

The Times – like the Washington Post – has staved off shareholder raids like the one that tanked Knight-Ridder by maintaining their own separate class of stock. The Sulzbergers have reiterated that the strategy enabled them to keep quality reporting at the paper’s forefront and short-term obsessions with profit at bay.

“Mr. Sulzberger dismissed the calls to separate his two titles,” a Times story on the meeting noted, “saying that holding both roles [of publisher and chairman] allows him to ‘balance the financial and journalistic needs of this institution.'”

But Wall Street’s war on newspapers, in the meantime, is likely not over.

“At the beginning of my case, I said that 25 years involvement in politics and government had taught me how important newspapers are to our democratic society,” Reilly said at the press conference. “I hope this lawsuit in 2007 will guarantee competition among newspapers for another generation in our city and the Bay Area.”

THE PAPER TRAIL
Several of the documents stemming from Clint Reilly’s antitrust claim against Hearst, MediaNews and other business collaborators in the California Newspapers Partnership

THE UNFOLDING STORY
Major Guardian stories and editorials published since last spring following the recent major Bay Area newspaper transactions and Clint Reilly’s resulting lawsuit

THE NEW-MEDIA SCOOP
Posts to the Politics Blog about the Clint Reilly suit

THE BRUCE BLOG ON MONOPOLY MEDIA
Keeping tabs on the Galloping Conglomerati via blog reports and impertinent questions

The Bruce Blog on monopoly media

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Still censored: the story and debate on the impacts of media consolidation in the Bay Area
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 16, 2007 05:03 PM

Shocked! Shocked! And shocked again!
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 13, 2007 05:44 PM

Stop the presses! Here come the documents of secrecy, stonewalling, and collaboration from the nation’s biggest chains (Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) Why people get mad at the media (l4)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 11, 2007 03:53 PM

Singleton buys another daily paper and further locks up the Bay Area market .Where’s the U.S. Attorney General and the California Attorney General?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on February 5, 2007 05:11 PM

Why people get mad at the media (part 9). the Chronicle and Associated Press blow the big media story and refuse to make corrections
Posted in Bruce (B3) on January 30, 2007 01:48 PM

Eureka! More on how monopoly papers cover monopoly news
Posted in Bruce (B3) on December 20, 2006 04:35 PM

Clint Reilly wins a big one against Hearst and Singleton. Fighting to keep one newspaper towns from becoming a one newspaper region.
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 28, 2006 03:04 PM

Memo to the city desks of the Chronicle/Hearst and Media News Group/Singleton papers and the Associated Press: the Hearst/Reilly antitrust suit is scheduled for a hearing tomorrow (Wednesday) morning before Federal Judge Susan Illston. Will you cover it?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 21, 2006 05:57 PM

SF Chronicle to Outsource All of Its Printing, reports Editor and Publisher Magazine. Will those “competitive” Hearst and Singleton papers cover the monopoly story and its impact on San Francisco and the Bay Area?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 17, 2006 12:29 PM

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times “censors” the annual Project Censored story. Why? Some impertinent questions for the Press Democrat
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 13, 2006 01:55 PM

More Impertinent Questions on Hearst shenanigans on the drug pricing scandal (part 5) Why did Hearst censor an AP story on McKesson profits?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 2, 2006 02:33 PM

Let us lift a Potrero Hill martini for Thomas Peele of the Contra Costa Times/Singleton papers. He criticized Singleton by name for sealing court records in the Hearst/Singleton antitrust case.
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 30, 2006 03:37 PM

Dear Jerry Brown: more impertinent questions on the Hearst shenanigans (part 4)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 20, 2006 04:55 PM

Impertinent questions on the new Hearst shenanigans (part 2, see previous blog)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 18, 2006 03:52 PM

The Guardian turns 40: some things never change
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 17, 2006 04:01 PM

Judge seals file in MediaNews trial
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 15, 2006 02:51 PM

Eureka! Finally, Hearst covers the censored story and admits it is partnering with Singleton
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 14, 2006 01:48 PM

Finally, the Conglomerati do a bit of reporting (actually only a little bit)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 8, 2006 04:22 PM

Eureka! Here comes even more Eurekaism! (part 3)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 5, 2006 05:35 PM

Eureka! There’s more Eurekaism!
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 25, 2006 04:39 PM

Where are Hearst and the Chronicle? The conglomerate cometh
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 11, 2006 05:00 PM

More on the Case of the Uncovered Bay Area Newspaper Monopoly
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 2, 2006 12:03 PM

The press censors the press
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 1, 2006 04:53 PM

Stop the presses
Posted in Bruce (B3) on July 31, 2006 05:40 PM

Monopolies are forever
Posted in Bruce (B3) on July 28, 2006 04:24 PM

Ponder or ignore? Enjoy

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> johnny@sfbg.com

The oldest film festival in the United States and Canada, the San Francisco International Film Festival reaches its golden anniversary this year. That’s half a century of bringing movies from all over the world to one area of America that doesn’t assume America is the world.

At this moment a solo videomaker has to kill at least a few dozen people to storm the multinational media palace. Yeah, this thought crashes the SFIFF’s party. But it adds context to the fest’s contents. One Guardian contributor recently forwarded me a news story that drew specious links between the Virginia Tech tragedy and Park Chan-wook’s 2003 movie Old Boy. The presence of The Bridge (a documentary that uses images of death in a problematic manner) at last year’s SFIFF proves that film festivals also face ethical dilemmas about what they present. Does increasingly pervasive digital imagery correspond with a decrease, rather than an increase, in imagination? Does it prompt a lazy way of seeing and corrupt the meaning of an image?

The SFIFF offers a chance to enjoy – not just ponder or ignore – such questions. As a major progenitor of the festival model that has come to dominate cinema outside of Hollywood, this event often celebrates and represents the establishment, as Sam Green and Christian Bruno’s 2000 short film Pie Fight ’69 makes clear. But unlike many younger festivals, the SFIFF’s programming favors substance over sensation.

George Lucas, Robin Williams, and Spike Lee will be feted this year, but the Guardian‘s SFIFF 50 coverage has an eye for diamonds in the rough: great, quiet films such as Heddy Honigmann’s Forever; a definitely maddening but possibly classic work of art, Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth; and digital animator Kelly Sears’s hilarious short works – in step with hallucinatory digital mind-blowers and eye-blinders such as Paper Rad – which feature in the type of one-time-only SFIFF collaborative event that can yield a memorable night.

I’d like to draw attention to the SFIFF’s two entries from the New Crowned Hope series recently curated by Peter Sellars (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Daratt and Garin Nugroho’s dazzling Opera Jawa) and to close by freestyling the praises of Veronica Chen’s gorgeous Agua. In its regard of two generations of men, of male physicality and psychology, it is a pleasurable, less-austere improvement on Claire Denis’s highly acclaimed Beau Travail and part of a possible new wave of cinema – led by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane – that trailblazes the cinematic potential of contemporary sports performance and its portraiture. Dive into it and SFIFF 50. *

How to control my body

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> annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION The biological functioning of my body is all over the news right now. Lawmakers and federal regulatory agencies are asking themselves whether I should be allowed to have abortions, and whether I should be allowed to take a drug that prevents me from menstruating. You probably know about the brouhaha over abortion, spurred by the recent Supreme Court decision, but you may not have realized that decision came as the Food and Drug Administration decides the fate of Lybrel, a birth control pill that could liberate millions of women from paying Tampax for "wings" every month. But these two issues are not unrelated. They are both symptoms of how much the government loves to regulate the basic functioning of my body. Still, there are some key differences.

Most arguments over abortion boil down to whether you think a woman’s right to control her future is more or less important than the much-debated rights of a potential human. Because the legal status of a fetus has become part of the abortion debate, it’s hard to cast abortion purely as a female reproductive rights issue (as much as I’d like to do that). These days the abortion debate is also about how we define human life and whether a fetus constitutes a being that deserves legal protection.

However, the issue of controlling menstrual cycles is unequivocally about the female reproductive cycle, untainted by questions of embryo civil rights. Why should there be any controversy over pharmaceutical company Wyeth marketing Lybrel, which is exactly like a birth control pill without the seven-day placebo cycle that creates a fake period? (In case you aren’t a Pill geek, the period women have while taking contraceptive pills is caused only by hormone fluctuation and not a biological need to flush out unused eggs – the Pill works by preventing the ripening of said eggs. So it’s purely a cosmetic menstrual cycle.)

There are good reasons to test Lybrel, since nobody is completely sure what might happen in the long term to women who stop menstruating. But now that Wyeth has demonstrated the safety of this pill, what’s the big deal? The New York Times recently published a much-discussed article about negative reactions to Lybrel and other drugs like it. Canadian psychologist Christine Hitchcock told the paper she didn’t like "the idea that you can turn your body on and off like a tap." Giovanna Chesler, who just made a documentary about "the end of menstruation," objects to the idea that taking a daily pill makes women appear defective. "Women are not sick," she said. "They don’t need to control their periods for 30 or 40 years."

It’s interesting that Chesler uses the word "control" in her comment. Why are women eager to relinquish control over their periods, arguably one of the most annoying parts of being a biological female? After all, we take calcium pills to control bone density; we take showers to control odor; and take ibuprofen to control pain. None of these things are necessary. We don’t do them because we are sick, and not doing them won’t kill us. So why shouldn’t we take control of our bodies and stop having periods if we want to? There are no fetuses being harmed here. Why should we reject Lybrel, if not for the dogma that it’s unnatural for women to control their reproductive functions?

Yes, Wyeth stands to make money on Lybrel, and I’m no fan of pharmaceutical companies, but women already pay to deal with their periods. We pump billions of collars into feminine hygiene products so Kotex can sell us more wings and soft applicators and superabsorbent crap. I say if we can take pills that free us from having to deal with the monthly goo and bother, then let’s do it. Nobody is saying periods are sick or wrong here. It’s just that they’re annoying and uncomfortable – and if women don’t want to deal with them, they shouldn’t have to.

The social rejection of drugs such as Lybrel – which the FDA has already turned down for approval once – is based on the idea that there is something about women’s bodies that women themselves should not be allowed to control. Even in the absence of the fetus debates, we’re still seeing women who are afraid to control their reproductive systems. As long as we are in thrall to this fear, we will never triumph in the struggle for abortion rights and effective birth control. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who gets horrible migraines from birth control pills, so she (alas) will remain trapped in a prehistoric female body.

The unfolding story

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Media trial to proceed — in public
Reilly anti-monopoly case goes forward
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Reilly’s right to sue
The “standing” argument keeps activists out in the cold — and monopolies flush
EDITORIAL

What we know now
New court documents show the big local dailies couldn’t handle competition — but never talked much about improving their papers
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Brown must fight the media monopoly
Now that this is all out in public, will California’s new attorney general, Jerry Brown, put a stop to it?
EDITORIAL

Barons of monopoly
Exclusive: Newspaper barons have history of anticompetitive talks, court records show
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Between the sheets
Are the Bay Area’s two big newspaper barons planning to carve up the region and end competition? We’re about to find out.
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Judge opens secret media merger files
Victory! Federal judge orders newspaper barons to open secret merger documents
BY TIM REDMOND

Off the record
Billion-dollar software company Mercury Interactive wants to keep details of a backdating scandal under seal
BY G.W. SCHULZ


Collusion blocked
EDITORIAL

Opening the secret files
Guardian, Media Alliance file legal motion to open key Hearst-Singleton newspaper-merger records
EDITORIAL

Unseal the court files
The lawsuit that seeks to stop the monopolization of daily newspapers in the Bay Area isn’t just a business dispute.
BY TIM REDMOND

Media moguls get cozier
Hearst and Dean Singleton say there’s no illegal deal — but just look at the evidence
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Judge slams daily-paper monopoly
Those lying newspaper barons — Hearst, Singleton — are nailed trying to wipe out competition.
EDITORIAL

The morning after
While drunk on big newspaper purchases, Dean Singleton promised competitive papers and no layoffs. Now he’s swinging the ax, cutting deals with Hearst, and decimating local news coverage
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Journalists need to fight back
EDITORIAL

The silent scandal
How does media concentration affect the news we read? Just check out the coverage of the latest newspaper merger
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Media blues
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Feds let Singleton off the hook
Justice Department refuses to block media mega-merger
BY TIM REDMOND

The judge misses the point
EDITORIAL

Hidden in the Chron
Story buried on page B9 explains the latest in the Singleton merger case
BY TIM REDMOND

The case against the media grab
EDITORIAL

Sunshine for Berkeley

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EDITORIAL At long last the city of Berkeley is talking seriously about adopting a sunshine ordinance. That’s the good news, and it’s overdue: Councilmember Kris Worthington asked city attorney Manuela Albuquerque to start working on this six years ago.

The bad news is that Albuquerque has drafted a law that’s full of holes.

The biggest problem with the proposed ordinance is its lack of effective enforcement. Although the law sets (some) standards for open records and open meetings, any complaints about secrecy would go to the city manager. That won’t work: if we’ve learned one thing in covering politics for more than 40 years, it’s that city officials can’t police themselves on sunshine issues. What happens if the city manager is the biggest offender? What happens if the city manager doesn’t want to take on the mayor or the council members? What if the city manager winds up protecting city employees (who may be vioutf8g the ordinance with impunity)?

The ordinance needs a few other things – for example, mandatory time for public comment at City Council meetings ought to be written into the law instead of being left as a council rule that can change any time. There ought to be clear language stating that all requests for information are to be treated as public records requests, even if they aren’t in writing and didn’t come through the City Manager’s Office.

But if this ordinance is going to make any difference, it needs real enforcement – and that means having an outside, independent panel or commission that can handle complaints. In San Francisco, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force does that job – and the city still lacks decent enforcement. If Berkeley wants to adopt a real landmark ordinance, it should follow what Connecticut has done and create an open records commission with the authority to order city departments, agencies, and officials to release documents and open up meetings.

Worthington is a strong supporter of an independent enforcement body and has been struggling to get Mayor Tom Bates and Albuquerque to go along.

At this point, Worthington and the sunshine advocates would be better off letting Terry Franke of Californians Aware and Mark Schlosberg of the American Civil Liberties Union – both of whom have offered their time and expertise – simply write another draft. It should include a new sunshine commission, with teeth. Worthington says that might require a charter amendment and thus a vote of the people, and he’s prepared to push the entire package onto the ballot if necessary.

That threat alone ought to get Bates and Albuquerque in line – and if it doesn’t, the voters of Berkeley should have the final say. *

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/24/07)

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/24/07): 9 U.S. soldiers killed. 25 Iraqi civilians killed.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Today the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard testimony from U.S. military personnel and their family members as part of the Democratically-controlled Congress’s effort to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the New York Times. The hearings were intended to determine the “sources and motivations” for the erroneous accounts of the events that lead to the injury and death of specific U.S. soldiers.

Casualties in Iraq

U.S. military:

9 U.S. soldiers were killed in a car bomb attack that an insurgent group that includes al-Qaida claims responsibility for, according to the Associated Press.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/24/international/i042336D17.DTL

3,570: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraqi civilians:

25 Iraqi civilians were killed today when a suicide bomber attacked a makeshift football field and market in the Albufarraj area east of Ramadi, according to the Brisbane Times.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

62,281 – 68,289: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 15 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/41/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/24/07): So far, $419 billion for the U.S., $53 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Death of fun, the sequel

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> news@sfbg.com

Fun – in the form of fairs, festivals, bars, art in the parks, and the freedom to occasionally drink alcohol in public places – is under attack in San Francisco.

The multipronged assault is coming primarily from two sources: city agencies with budget shortfalls and NIMBYs who don’t like to hear people partying. The crackdown has only intensified since the Guardian sounded the alarm last year (see “The Death of Fun,” 5/24/06), but the fun seekers are now organizing, finding some allies, and starting to push back.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city hall leaders have been meeting with the Outdoor Events Coalition, which formed last year in response to the threat, about valuing the city’s beloved social gatherings and staving off steep fee hikes that have been sought by the Recreation and Park, Fire, Public Works, and Police departments.

Those conversations have already yielded at least a temporary reprieve from a substantial increase in use fees for all the city’s parks. It’s also led to a rollback of the How Weird Street Faire’s particularly outrageous police fees (its $7,700 sum last year jumped to $23,833 this year – despite the event being forced by the city to end two hours earlier – before pressure from the Guardian and city hall forced it back down to $4,734).

The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee will also wade into the issue April 25 when it considers a resolution warning that “San Francisco has become noticeably less tolerant of nightlife and outdoor events.” It is sponsored by Scott Wiener, Robert Haaland, Michael Goldstein, and David Campos.

The measure expresses this premier political organization’s “strong disagreement with the City agencies and commissions that have undermined San Francisco’s nightlife and tradition of street festivals and encourages efforts to remove obstacles to the permitting of such venues and events up to and including structural reform of government permitting processes to accomplish that goal.”

The resolution specifically cites the restrictions and fee increases that have hit the How Weird Street Faire, the Haight Ashbury Street Fair (where alcohol is banned this year for the first time), and the North Beach Jazz Festival, but it also notes that a wide variety of events “provide major fundraising opportunities for community-serving nonprofits such as HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, and violence-prevention organizations that are dependent upon the revenue generated at these events.”

Yet the wet blanket crowd still seems ascendant. Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier now wants to ban alcohol in all city parks that contain playgrounds, which is most of them. Hole in the Wall has hit unexpected opposition to its relocation (see “Bar Wars,” 4/18/07), while Club Six is being threatened by its neighbors and the Entertainment Commission about noise issues. And one group is trying to kill a band shell made of recycled car hoods that is proposed for temporary summer placement on the Panhandle.

That project, as well as the proposal for drastically increased fees for using public spaces, is expected to be considered May 3 by the Rec and Park Commission, which is likely to be a prime battleground in the ongoing fight over fun.

 

FEE FIGHT

Rec and Park, like many other city departments, is facing a big budget shortfall and neglected facilities overdue for attention. A budget analyst audit last year also recommended that the department create a more coherent system for its 400 different permits and increase fees by 2 percent.

Yet the department responded by proposing to roughly double its special event fees, even though they make up just $560,000 of the $4.5 million that the department collects from all fees. Making things even worse was the proposal to charge events based on a park’s maximum capacity rather than the actual number of attendees.

The proposal caused an uproar when it was introduced last year, as promoters say it would kill many beloved events, so it was tabled. Then an almost identical proposal was quietly introduced this year, drawing the same concerns.

“These are just preliminary numbers, and they may change,” department spokesperson Rose Dennis told us, although she wouldn’t elaborate on why the same unpopular proposal was revived.

Event organizers, who were told last year that they would be consulted on the new fee schedule, were dumbfounded. They say the new policy forces them to come up with a lot of cash if attendance lags or the weather is bad.

Mitigating such a risk means charging admission, corralling corporate sponsorship, or pushing more commerce on attendees. This may not be a hindrance for some of the well-known and sponsored events such as Bay to Breakers and SF Pride, but consider how the low-budget Movie Night in Dolores Park might come up with $6,000 instead of $250, or how additional permit fees could strangle the potential of nascent groups such as Movement for Unconditional Amnesty.

The group is sponsoring a march in honor of the Great American Boycott of 2006. On May 1 it will walk from Dolores Park to the Civic Center in recognition of immigrants’ rights. The group wanted to offer concessions, because food vendors donate a percentage of their sales to the organization, but the permit fee for propane use from the Fire Department was too high.

“They couldn’t guarantee they’d make more than $1,200 in food to cover the costs of permits,” said Forrest Schmidt, of the ANSWER Coalition, who is assisting the organizers. “So they lost an opportunity to raise funds to support their work. It’s more than $1,000 taken off the top of the movement.”

ANSWER faced a similar problem after the antiwar rally in March, when the rule regarding propane permits was reinterpreted so that a base charge, once applied to an entire event, was now charged of each concessionaire – quadrupling the overall cost. ANSWER pleaded its case against this new reading of the law and was granted a one-time reprieve. But Schmidt says none of the SFFD’s paperwork backs up a need to charge so much money.

“They kept on saying over and over again, ‘You guys are making money on this,’ ” Schmidt said. “But it’s an administrative fee to make sure we’re not setting anything on fire. It’s essentially a tax. It’s a deceitful form of politics and part of what’s changing the demographic of the city.”

The Outdoor Events Coalition, which represents more than 25 events in the city, agrees and has been meeting with city officials to hash out another interim solution for this year, as well as a long-term plan for financial sustainability for all parties.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Robbie Kowal, a coalition leader and organizer of the North Beach Jazz Festival. But he’s still concerned about what he and the coalition see as a continuing trend.

“The city is changing in some way. It’s becoming a culture of complaint. There’s this whole idea you can elect yourself into a neighborhood organization, you can invent your own constituency, and the bureaucracy has to take you seriously. Neighborhood power can be so effective in fighting against a Starbucks, but when it’s turned around and used to kill an indigenous part of that neighborhood, like its local street fair, that’s an abuse of that neighborhood power.”

 

NIMBY POWER

Black Rock Arts Foundation, the San Francisco public art nonprofit that grew out of Burning Man, has enjoyed a successful and symbiotic partnership with the Newsom administration, placing well-received temporary artwork in Hayes Green, Civic Center Plaza, and the Embarcadero.

So when BRAF, the Neighborhood Parks Council, the city’s Department of the Environment, and several community groups decided several months ago to collaborate on a trio of new temporary art pieces, most people involved thought they were headed for another kumbaya moment. Then one of the projects hit a small but vocal pocket of resistance.

A group of artists from the Finch Mob and Rebar collectives are now at work on the Panhandle band shell, a performance space for nonamplified acoustic music and other performances that is made from the hoods of 75 midsize sedans. The idea is to promote the recycling and reuse of materials while creating a community gathering spot for arts appreciation.

Most neighborhood groups in the area like the project, and 147 individuals have written letters of support, versus the 17 letters that have taken issue with the project’s potential to draw crowds and create noise, litter, graffiti, congestion, and a hangout for homeless people.

But the opposition has been amplified by members of the Panhandle Residents Organization Stanyan Fulton (PROSF), which runs one of the most active listservs in the city, championing causes ranging from government sunshine to neighborhood concerns. The group, with support from Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s staff, has delayed the project’s approval and thus placed its future in jeopardy (installation was scheduled to begin next month).

“My main concern would be that this is a very narrow strip of land that is bordered by homes on both sides,” said neighbor Maureen Murphy, who has complained about the project to the city and online through the PROSF. “My fear is that there is going to be amplification and more people and litter.”

The debate was scheduled to be heard by the Rec and Park Commission on April 19 but was postponed to May 3 because of the controversy. Nonetheless, Newsom showed up at the last hearing to offer his support.

“Rare do I come in front of committee, but I wanted to underscore … the partnership we’ve had with Black Rock Arts Foundation. It’s been a very successful one and one I want to encourage this commission to reinforce,” Newsom told the commission. “I think the opportunity exists for us … to take advantage of these partnerships and really bring to the forefront in people’s minds more temporary public art.”

Rachel Weidinger, who is handling the project for BRAF, said the organizers have been very sensitive to public input, neighborhood concerns, environmental issues, and the impacts of the project, at one point changing sites to one with better drainage. And she’s been actively telling opponents that the project won’t allow amplified music or large gatherings (those of 25 or more will require a special permit). But she said that there’s little they can do about those who simply don’t want people to gather in the park.

“We are trying to activate park space with temporary artwork,” she said. “Guilty as charged.”

Yet any activated public space – whether a street closed for a fair or a march, a park turned into a concert space, or a vacant storefront turned into a nightclub – is bound to generate a few critics. The question for San Francisco now is how to balance NIMBY desires and bureaucratic needs with a broader concern for facilitating fun in the big city.

“Some people have the idea that events and nightlife are an evil to be restricted,” Wiener said. But his resolution is intended as “a cultural statement about what kind of city we want to live in.” *

 

Up against the police secrecy lobby

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EDITORIAL On April 17 the full weight of the state’s secrecy lobby and police unions descended on Sacramento to prevent the public from having any access to the records of peace officers who have faced disciplinary charges. The tactics were brutal: Everett Bobbitt, a police lawyer, testified to the Assembly Public Safety Committee that allowing any sunshine whatsoever would instantly threaten the lives of hardworking cops and their families.

His argument was bizarre, reminiscent of some of the tortured claims that the Bush administration made in seeking support for the war in Iraq and the civil liberties fiasco called the USA PATRIOT Act. He suggested that criminal gangs might find out something that would allow them to threaten police officers (despite the fact that until a recent court decision these records had been open for more than 20 years in San Francisco and 30 in Berkeley, and not a single cop had been in any way physically harmed by the information). He claimed that peace officers have an extraordinary right to privacy (despite the fact that as public employees who are given guns and badges and extraordinary powers, they need at least some degree of public accountability).

And the committee, despite being dominated by Democrats, was utterly cowed. It was a disgrace, and public officials and law enforcement leaders in San Francisco and the East Bay need to make a point of joining the fight to ensure that police secrecy doesn’t continue to carry the day.

At issue was a bill by Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) that would overturn an odious 2006 court decision known as Copley. In that ruling, the California Supreme Court concluded that all files and hearings reutf8g to police discipline must be kept entirely secret. The ruling "has effectively shut down virtually every forum in which the public previously had access to the police discipline process," Tom Newton, general counsel to the California Newspaper Publishers Association, wrote in a letter supporting Leno’s bill, AB 1648.

Newton added, "Copley represents nothing less than complete and total victory for the secrecy lobby in this state. In the ultimate perversion of legislative intent, the most powerful forces in government and their exceptionally creative and effective lobbyists have achieved a perfect storm of official secrecy – making it illegal to inform the public about official corruption…. These aren’t just any public employees that have achieved the holy grail of KGB-like official secrecy – they are the only public officials given the right by the public to affect the personal liberty of citizens and even take life, if necessary to protect the public peace."

Leno’s bill – which would simply restore the law to what it was for decades – had the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and a long list of grassroots organizations, including the Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action, La Raza Centro Legal, the NAACP, and the National Black Police Association.

And yet Leno didn’t have the votes in the committee to even move the bill to the floor. Not one of his four Democratic colleagues (Jose Solorio of Anaheim, Hector de la Torre of South Gate, Anthony J. Portantino of Pasadena, and San Francisco’s Fiona Ma) was willing to move the bill forward. Ma, apparently, was among those who bought the police line: she told the Guardian she was "not prepared to vote for Leno’s bill as it was" but would be willing to accept a compromise that "also protects the rights of family members." Remember, nothing in Leno’s bill in any way endangers or provides any information on any member of a police officer’s family.

The only good news is that a similar, slightly weaker bill, SB 1019, by state senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), has cleared the Senate’s Public Safety Committee and will go to the Senate floor – and if it passes, it will come before the Assembly. So there’s still a chance to pass some version of a police accountability and sunshine bill this year.

It’s crucial that public officials and particularly law enforcement leaders speak out in favor of this legislation. The city of Berkeley has formally endorsed the bill, but Mayor Gavin Newsom and Oakland mayor Ron Dellums have been silent and need to speak up. So should San Francisco sheriff Mike Hennessey (who told us he supports the idea in principle but thinks Leno’s proposal goes too far) and District Attorney Kamala Harris.

And Fiona Ma needs to hear, loudly, from her constituents: police accountability is a priority, and she can’t get away with ducking it. *

Take 50

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TAKE 50: SF INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

THURS/26

*Golden Door (Emanuele Crialese, Italy/France, 2006). Epic in scope, playful in its stylistic shifts and tonal splices, and sumptuous in its painterly framing and use of light, Golden Door looks on an age-old American saga – an immigrant family’s crossing from the Old World to the new – with startlingly fresh, impassioned eyes. Director Emanuele Crialese (Respiro) turns his sometimes wry, sometimes tender focus on a band of illiterate Sicilian peasants drawn from their dirt-poor village by pre-Photoshop pictures of giant chickens and trees laden with enormous gold coins. Led by an intrepid yet ignorant patriarch (Respiro‘s Vincenzo Amato) and a comical spiritual fixer of a grandmother (Aurora Quattrocchi), the group is joined in steerage by a cryptic gentlewoman (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Ellis Island and its proto-eugenic experiments await – along with dream sequences that fluidly transmit the otherworldly magic of the villagers’ forthcoming American mystery tour. (Kimberly Chun)

7 p.m., Castro. Opening night film and party at City Hall, $85-$125

FRI/27

Black Sheep (Jonathan King, New Zealand, 2006). Something is going baaaaaad in Lord of the Rings country. The usual science experiment-gone-wrong results in the usual creature rampage, as sheep go George Romero on humans at a rural New Zealand ranch. This jolly, diverting, ultimately too-silly horror comedy from neophyte writer-director Jonathan King is duly funny. Still, it overstays its one-joke welcome by a bleat or three. (Dennis Harvey)

10:45 p.m., Kabuki

*A Few Days Later … (Niki Karimi, Iran, 2006). Already a star from her appearances in Tahmineh Milani’s overwrought – but much beloved – melodramas, Iranian actress Niki Karimi looked to the grand master, Abbas Kiarostami, for directing inspiration. In this, her second feature, she beautifully captures a specific brand of avoidance and understatement. She plays Shahrzad, a mousy graphic designer who becomes distracted at work. At home her answering machine constantly squawks about her family’s health and well-being, and her annoying neighbor (Behzad Dorani, from Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us) keeps parking his giant SUV in her space. To her credit, Karimi never shows the expected hospital scenes, tearful good-byes, or tense confrontations that seem to be looming. Instead, she retreats inside the character’s head and brings the film to a stunningly private conclusion. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

7:15 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/29, 12:15 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/30, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki

Murch (David and Edie Ichioka, England/US, 2006). Codirector Edie Ichioka is a disciple of legendary film and sound editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient), so you know this doc will be nothing less than a glowing portrait. But instead of a simple glorification, it is more an embellished interview (complete with jump cuts during the talking head portions), with Murch using an astounding array of metaphors – besides the obvious "editing is like putting together a puzzle," he also works in painters, sock puppets, kidney transplants, and dream therapy, among others – to explain his approach to his craft. As Murch proves, a talented editor can make a good film great and a great film a masterpiece; it all comes down to an intangible combination of technical skill, sense of rhythm, and artistic instinct. (Cheryl Eddy)

9 p.m., SFMOMA. Also Sun/29, 4:15 p.m., Castro; Tues/1, 1 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 3:30 p.m., PFA

*Slumming (Michael Glawogger, Austria/Switzerland, 2006). Two arrogant yuppie pranksters (August Diehl and Michael Ostrowski) cruise around verbally pigeonholing others, making playthings of them. Meanwhile, a drunken, derelict poet (Paulus Manker) wanders the streets alternately cajoling and ranting at people. When the pranksters find the poet passed out on a bus station bench, they decide to transport him to a similar spot across the border, without a passport. Director Michael Glawogger (Workingman’s Death) and cowriter Barbara Albert achieve a pleasurable quirky quality with their black comedy, carefully guiding it between the precious and the preachy; they sometimes amusingly present a joke’s payoff before the setup. The film passes easily between immaculate cafes and slush-covered highways, but at its center is Manker’s wonderfully cantankerous performance. (Anderson)

9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/28, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 8:30 p.m., SFMOMA; May 7, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

SAT/28

*All in This Tea (Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht, US, 2006). Tea still has an effete connotation in this country, but David Lee Hoffman is an adventurer of the old order. An unabashed partisan of the fair drink, he regularly travels to China to ferret out farmers and distributors, sampling and savoring the Old World leaves. His dedication is total; we’re hardly surprised when Werner Herzog drops by Hoffman’s Marin home for a spot of tea, because the director is a connoisseur of aficionados, explorers, and cranks. Hoffman is capably eccentric but also unassuming, making All in This Tea a friendly primer. Codirectors Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht bring their usual ethnographic grace to this 10-years-in-the-making project. (Goldberg)

1:30 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/29, 4:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 4 p.m., Kabuki

*At the Edge: New Experimental Cinema (various). Experimental showcases are always an Achilles heel for film festivals big on narrative. They’re often shoehorned with tepid concessions to so-called innovation, although sometimes they yield moments of genuine surprise. This showcase has a bit of both. Paul Clipson’s Super 8 trip of blurred urban lightscapes looks through Stan Brakhage’s kaleidoscope but can’t see beyond it. On the other hand, the sleep of reason produces monsters (slavery, social Darwinism) and some beautiful animation in Atlantis Unbound, in which Lori Hiris morphs her black-and-white charcoal sketches – evoking the mystical art of William Blake or Austin Osman Spare – of 19th-century scientists into slaves, merfolk, and other beings from beyond the pale of the Enlightenment. The banality of evil is also evoked in Xavier Lukomski’s static shots of the serene Drina River Bridge, where, as the voice-over informs us, Bosnians dredged up the victims of genocide. When viewed through a long shot, the horrors of history become more pronounced, given their calm surroundings. (Matt Sussman)

8:30 p.m., PFA. Also Tues/1, 6:15 p.m., Kabuki

*Carved Out of Pavement: The Work of Rob Nilsson On the brink of 70, longtime SF filmmaker Rob Nilsson is astonishingly prolific. No less than four work-in-progress features will be excerpted in this tribute program, including some from the nearly completed "9@Night" series of interwoven fictions made with the Tenderloin Action Group. For all his invention and industry in production, Nilsson hasn’t exactly worked overtime getting his movies seen – except at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where you can count on one or two premiering each fall. The MVFF is copresenting this special show, which will have the filmmaker reviewing a career that stretches back to the mid-’70s SF CineAction collective and 1979’s Cannes Camera d’Or-winning Northern Lights, as well as discussing latter-day digital projects with numerous current collaborators, also present. Excerpts from "9@Night" will also be projected on the SFIFF’s Justin Herman Plaza outdoor screen May 1 to 3. (Harvey)

7 p.m., Kabuki

Fabricating Tom Ze (Decio Matos Jr., Brazil, 2006). Though typically grouped with the explosive Brazilian Tropicalismo movement, Tom Ze has always been too much of an eccentric to fall properly into line. It’s a point made abundantly clear in Fabricating Tom Ze (I still haven’t figured out the title), a generally awestruck doc that makes up for its thin content with plenty of Ze’s indefatigable, abundant speech. Between the interruptions, self-mythologizing, and creative suggestions for the film’s director (all of which Decio Matos Jr. takes), Ze spills over with quixotic, brilliant epigrams on creativity and authenticity. "I have to make a small invention every time I have an idea worthy of becoming music," he reports – as if there were any doubting his inventiveness. (Goldberg)

1 p.m., SFMOMA. Also Tues/1, 8;30 p.m., El Rio; May 6, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

*Hana (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2006). Hirokazu Kore-eda’s gentle deconstruction of that venerable institution of Japanese film the samurai movie isn’t too much of a departure from his previous features. Hana also focuses on the small, unexpected sense of community that arises out of idiosyncratic responses to tragedy or, in this case, the public’s hunger for it. It’s 1702, and like other underemployed samurai during peacetime, Sozaemon Aoki (Okada Junichi) is restless, as is the general population, which gorges itself on violent revenge plays and romanticized notions of honor. The pensive Sozaemon is bent on carrying out his duty to avenge his father’s death, even if he seems more at home tutoring the kids in the hardscrabble but lively tenement where he lives. His neighbors, who initially tease him about his lack of guts, eventually rally round his failures – and their own lowly status – and celebrate the humble resolve. To paraphrase resident dimwit Mago (Kimura Yuichi), when life gives you shit, make rice cakes. (Sussman)

4:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 6:45 p.m.; and May 5, 5:45 p.m., PFA

*The Island (Pavel Lounguine, Russia, 2006). Not to be confused with Michael Bay’s jiggly, blow-’em-up, organ-harvesting gesture toward Logan’s Run. If Andrei Tarkovsky’s movies were lit by God, then The Island sets God to work creating an austere black-and-white landscape of unforgiving snow, rocky shores, hills of coal, and blighted driftwood. By all appearances a mad monk but in this reality a truth-talking, faith-healing saint of sorts, Father Anatoly is doing penance on the island for a wartime act that most reasonable deities would excuse. No such luck for this Russian Orthodox overseer – wearisome monastery politics and the teary negotiations of the sick and injured occupy the sooty savant in this elegantly wrought parable, which puts cheesy stateside Biblesploitation big-budgeters such as The Reckoning to shame. (Chun)

4:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 3, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki

Once (John Carney, Ireland, 2006). A genuine sleeper at Sundance, this small Irish indie charmer will be spoiled only if you swallow all advance hype about its purported brilliance. Sometimes nice is quite enough. Real-life singer-songwriters Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova play struggling Dublin musicians, one a native busker still living above Da’s vacuum repair shop, the other a Czech emigre supporting her family by selling flowers on the street. Their slow-burning romance is more musical than carnal, climaxing in a studio recording session. Writer-director John Carney’s film manages to play like a full-blown musical without anyone ever bursting into song. Instead, the appealing original folk rock tunes played and sound-tracked here come off as vivid commentary on a platonic (yet frissony) central relationship. (Harvey)

7:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 6, 9:30 p.m., Clay

Protagonist (Jessica Yu, US, 2006). Jessica Yu, the Oscar-winning director of the 1996 short documentary Breathing Lessons (she also made 2004’s In the Realms of the Unreal, a haunting look at outsider artist Henry Darger), returns with Protagonist, an initially confusing but ultimately fascinating doc about four men who couldn’t be more dissimilar on the surface. How can the themes of classical Greek tragedy link a Mexican bank robber, a German terrorist, a reluctantly gay Christian, and an aggro martial artist? Yu uses puppet interludes, revealing interviews, and a keen eye for detail as she traces their shared stages of provocation, rage, doubt, catharsis, and so on – proving the journey of an antihero has little to do with setting, be it ancient or modern. (Eddy)

6:15 p.m., SFMOMA. Also Mon/30, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/1, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

*Strange Culture (Lynn Hershman Leeson, US, 2006). The duly strange, as yet unresolved case of SUNY Buffalo art professor Steve Kurtz has spurred local filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s best feature to date, a documentary-dramatization hybrid. With the man himself still legally restrained from discussing his circumstances, Thomas Jay Ryan plays Kurtz, who as a founding member of the multimedia Critical Art Ensemble had long made work focusing on social justice issues and the intersection between science and government. To create an exhibition on biotechnology, he acquired for carefully safety-measured display some bacteria samples readily available online. When wife of 27 years Hope (played by Tilda Swinton) unexpectedly died of heart failure in her sleep, emergency medical personnel grew suspicious of these unusual art supplies. Soon FBI personnel evicted the distraught widower from his home, quarantined the entire block, and accused him of possessing bioterrorist weapons of mass destruction during an incredibly cloddish investigation. Kurtz’s real-life colleagues and friends were interviewed in a free-ranging yet pointed feature whose actors also step out of character to articulate their concern about the government’s post-9/11 crackdown on dissent, even the rarefied gallery kind. (Harvey)

6 p.m., Castro. Also May 4, 8: 45 p.m., SFMOMA; May 8, 7 p.m., PFA

SUN/29

The End and the Beginning (Eduardo Coutinho, Brazil, 2006). Picking a small town at random and making a film about its residents can be brave filmmaking. It can also be plain lazy, as is the case with Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho’s directionless profile of rural Aracas, in the state of Paraiba. Unsurprisingly, people being people, he finds great interview subjects, but he doesn’t bother to connect them to one another or to the town. Only their highly region-specific Catholicism provides any unifying thread. And though Coutinho’s not exactly condescending (beyond some slight Kids Say the Darndest Things baiting of his loonier interviewees), there’s an unspoken mandate to keep things simple: his response to one woman’s enticing hint at her failed law practice is to ask about her sewing. (Jason Shamai)

7:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/1, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 3, 4 p.m., Kabuki

*Singapore Dreaming (Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh, Singapore, 2006). With their second feature, Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh have their hearts in the right place while their eyes are on the prize of capturing a postcolonial city-state clutching at the global economy. The gently humorous, humanist realism of Edward Yang comes to mind while watching this husband-and-wife directorial team’s warm, witty depiction of the everyday lives of a working-class Singapore family who live, dream, bicker in pidgin English and Mandarin, and inhale vast quantities of herbal tea in their high-rise project. Pops buys lottery tickets, hoping to move into a slick new condo. Back from his studies in the States, the pampered son is discovering that in go-go Singapore his degree isn’t quite as covetable as it once was, and the beleaguered daughter is in her final trimester, coping with a demanding yuppie boss and a slacker hubby who yearns to be in a carefree rock band and pees in his father-in-law’s elevator. When disaster strikes, no one is thinking about the matriarch, whose only seeming desire is to properly feed and water her brood, but she ends up providing some unexpected feminist substance, rather than sustenance, under the movie’s wise gaze. (Chun)

8:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 4, 1 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 3 p.m., Kabuki

12 Labors (Ricardo Elias, Brazil, 2006). Part Black Orpheus, part 400 Blows, 12 Labors is a Brazilian feature that revisits the myth of Hercules through the story of a motorcycle messenger’s rehabilitation. A kid from a rough part of Sao Paulo, Heracles gets out of juvie and tries to start a new life. To land a job as a motorcycle messenger, he has a trial day with (you guessed it) a dozen jobs to complete. An artist who never knew his father, he also writes origin stories in comic book form, which mystify his coworkers. Though Heracles’s experiences seem tinted with divinity, he inspires worry on the part of the viewer. Since all good myths have moral purpose, this one finally addresses the very current social issue of juvenile delinquency and rehabilitation in urban Brazil. (Sara Schieron)

9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/30, 7 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 7, 9:15 p.m., Aquarius

MON/30

*Broken English (Zoe Cassavetes, USA, 2006). "I don’t think Hollywood knows what to do with me," Parker Posey recently opined, despite having a prominent role in Superman Returns. Fortunately for us, Amerindie cinema does still know what to do with her. The SFIFF is hosting a double bill of the pushing-40 actor’s latest, reprising the title figure in Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool sequel Fay Grim and starring in Zoe Cassavetes’s feature debut. Posey is perfect as director-scenarist Cassavetes’s superficially cheery but highly insecure NYC hotelier. Some may think this low-key seriocomedy paces pat single-gal-searching paths – from Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl to Sex and the City – but in its thoughtful nature and serious treatment of a clinical-depression interlude it roams well outside stock terrain. Even if the fade-out waxes a tad improbably happily-ever-after, Posey’s nuanced performance will make you root for it. (Harvey)

6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 2 p.m., Kabuki

Fay Grim (Hal Hartley, USA/Germany, 2006). A decade ago Hal Hartley made his best movie, the practically epic – by this miniaturist’s standards – Henry Fool. By most estimates it’s been downhill ever since. They love him in France – but perhaps he should never have left Long Island. So it was heartening news to hear he was returning to the world of Henry Fool, better still to know the sequel would revolve around the title character’s scrappy, vulnerable abandoned wife, Fay, who provided one of Parker Posey’s finest hours. She’s still good here, natch, but Fay Grim is all over the map – literally. The convoluted story line journeys from a mild farcical take on espionage thrillers to a murkily serious commentary on world politics. It’s watchable, but once again one gets the sense that with Hartley, the wider his focus, the blurrier it gets. (Harvey)

9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 3, 9:10 p.m., PFA

TUES/1

Congorama (Philippe Falardeau, Canada/Belgium/France, 2006). Quebec writer-director Philippe Falardeau’s story of a revolutionary electric car and a sticky-fingered inventor is part of that ever-widening army of films that plant fairly obvious and poorly integrated details into the first act so that later, when the story is retold from another perspective, they reappear with more context to click Aha!-ingly into place. Though some of the big, unwieldy reveals are a lot of fun in a Lost sort of way, they distract from the more prosaic but more satisfying concerns of the film’s smartly drawn characters. The inventor, for instance, is a not particularly likable person who still has a believably loving, humor-filled relationship with his family. Now talk about a novel concept! (Shamai)

6 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 9:15 p.m., PFA; May 6, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

Private Fears in Public Places (Alain Resnais, France/Italy, 2006). Alain Resnais’s 17th feature is dreamy and sometimes enchanting, though it doesn’t warrant comparison to the knife-sharp moral plays made during his prime, such as Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad. Adapted from a play by Alain Ayckbourn (the two previously collaborated on Smoking and No Smoking), Private Fears in Public Places weaves the love(less) stories of a half dozen Parisians; plotlines intersect, but in light brushes rather than the solemn collisions of Babel and Crash). The artifice Resnais imposes on his film is poetic in miniature – the camera, for example, periodically floats above the set, filming actors as if they were in a dollhouse – but the sum total is stultifying, unhinging an already-adrift narration and making Private Fears in Public Places seem needlessly opaque. (Goldberg)

7 p.m., PFA. Also May 3, 6:15 p.m., Kabuki; May 7, 4 p.m., Kabuki

*Rocket Science (Jeffrey Blitz, USA, 2006). Promising to be the next best coming-of-age cultie with its sure-handed, sharp performances and Freaks and Geeks-like sobriety, Rocket Science finds new agony and indie rock-laced ecstasy in one miserable adolescent’s progress. Or to be specific, one stuttering, 98-pound weakling’s marked, often laugh-out-loud funny lack of progress. The high school years for Hal Hefner (compulsively watchable frail cutie-pie Reece Thompson) seem to be going from bad to sexy once he gets recruited for the school debate team by scarily driven, Tracy Flick-esque champ Ginny (Anna Kendrick). But his travails never quite end even as he attempts to extract nerd revenge and literally find his voice, accompanied by vintage Violent Femmes and hand-clapping quirk pop by Eef Barzelay of Clem Snide. Tapping memories connected to a speech impediment, Spellbound codirector Jeffrey Blitz turns tongue-tied prince Hal’s articulation struggles into the perfect metaphor for every awkward teen’s gropes toward individuation. (Chun)

4 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 4, 6:15 p.m., Clay

CLINT REILLY AND JOSEPH ALIOTO ANNOUNCE A PRESS CONFERENCE ON THEIR ANTITRUST SUIT AT 10:30 WEDNESDAY MORNING

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Stop the presses or rev up the presses: as the case may be. Check the Guardian website and the Bruce blog for full coverage, commentary, and viewing of all unsealed documents. B3

Media Contact: Brooke Halpin – Halpin House West 310-702-6300

MEDIA ALERT

CLINTON REILLY AND JOSEPH ALIOTO WILL BE HOLDING A PRESS CONFERENCE TO ANNOUNCE A MAJOR NEWS DEVELOPMENT REGARDING THE LAWSUIT AGAINST MEDIA NEWS GROUP, INC., THE HEARST CORPORATION; STEPHENS GROUP INC.; GANNETT CO., INC.; and CALIFORNIA NEWSPAPERS PARTNERSHIP

ATTN: BUSINESS, LEGAL and CONSUMER REPORTERS

WHAT: DETAILED NEWS REGARDING THE LAWSUIT WILL BE
DISCLOSED AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE. TIME SENSITIVE MATERIALS TO BE DISTRIBUTED.

WHEN: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2007 AT 10:30AM PACIFIC

WHERE: CLINTON REILLY HOLDINGS
MERCHANTS EXCHANGE BUILDING
465 CALIFORNIA STREET
MAIN LOBBY
SAN FRANCISCO, CA

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/23/07)

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/23/07): 46 Iraqi civilians killed.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 46 Iraqi civilians were killed today in suicide bombings across the country, according to the Associated Press.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

62,281 – 68,289: Killed since 1/03

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 15 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/41/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

3,570: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/23/07): So far, $419 billion for the U.S., $53 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

A real Earth Week question: What would happen if a Hearst staffer sent up a question to Hearst corporate: Why are we forced to lie for PG&E?

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Well, there it was, in the same bottom right hand corner of the Chronicle front page where the PG&E ad had been two days before, a story headlined “Green guardians go extra mile to save planet.”

The April 20 story, by Chronicle/Hearst environmental writer Jane Kay, reported that Maya Butterfield, the mother of fourchildren, “drives as little as possible while she waits for a car company to sell a hybrid minivan.”

The story reported that The Rev. Sally Bingham “tells her Grace Cathedral congregants that it’s an insult to the Creator if they don’t take care of the earth.”

The story reported that UC Berkeley student Sam Aarons “lobbied to move the campus toward energy efficiency.”

The story reported that lawyer turned-teacher Will Parish “installed solar panels on his roof and double panes on his windows. He takes short showers, takes his own bags to the store, and eschews bottled water in favor of good old Hetch Hetchy brew.”

Hetch Hetchy brew? What about Hetch Hetchy public power? Imagine, Jane Kay, who has been around the park a time or two, got the term Hetch Hetchy on the Chronicle front page in a story extolling the folks going an extra mile and taking lesser showers to help save the planet. Incredible.

She, and all the others on the Chronicle/Hearst green team, slaving away on green this and green that for Earth Day and the paper’s green coverage, did not mention the real green story: that there is such a thing as Hetch Hetchy public power and that PG&E has an illegal private utility in San Francisco that has been polluting the city, corrupting City Hall, corrupting the Hearst papers for decades, and keeping green public power out of the city. More: that PG&E muscled City Hall and stopped the city from sending its own cheap Hetch Hetchy public power to the city’s own residents and businesses as federal law required. (The federal Raker Act and a U.S. Supreme Court decision mandated that San Francisco must be a public power city, the only city so mandated in the U.S., because it got an unprecedented concession to dam a beautiful valley (Hetch Hetchy) inside a national park (Yosemite) for the city’s water and power supply.

We got the water, but PG@E kept us from getting our own cheap public power and instead PG&E forced the city to buy its expensive private power and decades of anti-green, pro-nuclear and fossil-burning private power. See many Guardian stories since l969).

Get the picture? The Chronicle/Hearst sprinkled friendly references to PG&E throughout their coverage while never mentioning the city’s public power mandates or movements nor any mention of the major Ammiano/Mirkarimi press conference and legislation for a real greening movement, which is community choice aggregation, the first step toward public power.

David R. Baker, who wrote so glowingly about PG@E’s $l0 million victory over public power in Sacramento, noted in his April 20 green piece that “PG&E, for example, offers free energy audits, which look at a shop or office’s total energy use and suggest steps to cut it.”

There were references to the variety of PG&E’s “energy saving resources, including a home energy analyzer,” with a helpful online reference, and the “many programs to help lower electricity use,” again with a helpful online reference. There was even, God save us all, a special top of the page shaded box on page 22 of the April 20 Green special supplement, titled “PG&E’s emissions reduction program.” The end paragraph: “Several other utilities also offer customers ways to help the environment. For more information on programs offered, contact your local utility.” Nobody wanted a byline on this blast of nonsense, so the tag just read “Chronicle staff.”

Get the picture? Repeating for clarity and emphasis: Hearst, as it has for decades, once again polluted its news columns on behalf of PG@E and blacked out any reference to public power, the city’s public power mandates, community choice aggregation, or any of the greening and financial benefits that would flow from a public power city.

Note: this is Hearst corporate policy and I do not blame reporters or editors who are forced to carry on this charade. I just wonder if sometime, somewhere, on some story like this, what would happen if a reporter or editor would send the question upstairs, why are we forced to lie for PG@E?

In any event, I am going to email the questions to Hearst corporate in New York, directly, and via their local executives Publisher Frank Vega and Editor Phil Bronstein. Why can’t Hearst tell the truth about PG@E? Why is Hearst damaging its credility and embarrassing its staff by continuing to coddle PG&E and censor public power?

Bruce B. Brugmann, looking out today from my office window at the bottom of Potrero Hill and seeing the poisonous fumes wafting up and toward the city from the Mirant private power plant, courtesy of PG&E, Hearst, and PG&E-friendly stories purporting to be Earth Day coverage

“The Cripple of Inishmaan”: Irish charm and magic

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What a wonderful mix of Irish charm and magic the Wild Irish Productions spun in the drizzle and fog of Fort Mason last Saturday night April 2l. It was the opening night for Martin McDonagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan” at the Magic Theater.

This is a difficult play to produce and do well, with the nuances and dark humor of Irish story telling based on the historical fact that a Hollywood producer came to a nearby island in l934 to make a documentary film. Cripple Billy, mysteriously crippled at birth and mocked for spending his time looking at cows, wants to try out for the movie to escape the poverty and hopelessness of his island home on Inishmaan.

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The cast of “The Cripple of Inishmaan”
Picture courtesy of Wilde Irish Productions

Eddie Fitzgerald gives a splendid performance as Cripple Billy, and the other actors and actresses deal with his declaration of audacity in ways that are comical, sad, and island Irish. Each character is well-crafted and believable — Breda Courtney and Esther Mulligan as Cripple Billy’s widowed aunts, Howard Dillon as the town crier who always reports on three items of gossip and news, Bryn Elizan Harris as Slippy Helen the bumptious lady of the island, and Arthur Scappaticci as Babbybobby who comes off just as his name suggests. The result is a cohesive ensemble that comes together to produce a first rate performance.

The play is another tour de force for Breda Courtney, who hails from County Dublin. She is a 20-year veteran of little theater who performs miracles in producing these blooming events and keeping the troupe going. This time around, she got excellent assistance from her daughter, Stephanie Courtney-Foss, who made her first appearance as artistic director of Wilde Irish. And her son Christopher Courtney provided the set photos. What a good show: see it.

Shows: Tuesday April 24 through Saturday April 28, all starting at 8 p.m.

Sunday April 29, 7 p.m. Building D, Fort Mason Center. For tickets go to www.wildeirish.org.

The power of press pressure

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By Steven T. Jones

The power of the press can be overstated. Over two decades in this business, I’ve written many good words about too many bad situations and watched nothing change. So it’s nice to know that a couple drums that I’ve beaten recently have been heard and heeded by the powers-that-be.

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We were the only media outlet actively shaming Mayor Gavin Newsom for not trying to broker a Healthy Saturdays compromise and calling out police Capt. Denis O’Leary for his punitive approach to setting fees for the How Weird Street Faire (issues I also hammered on my TV gig, City Desk NewsHour). And lo and behold, while I was off on vacation for almost a week, both men did the right thing. I’ll discuss the complicated Healthy Saturday’s compromise after the jump, but the latest news on How Weird is that O’Leary capitulated and brought the event fees back to last year’s levels. Event organizers say he got a call from City Hall and that during their last meeting, O’Leary was calling me out by name as a troublemaker and thorn in his side (he still hasn’t returned my call seeking comment). I’m so proud. Whoda thunk this Fourth Estate stuff actually works?

Extra! Extra! PG&E buys the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. The shame of Hearst. Why people get mad at the media (l9)

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so Hearst, after decades of shamefully operating as a PG&E shill and shamefully censoring the PG&E/Raker
Act scandal out of its papers (both in its old Examiner and its new Chronicle), ran a large cheery PG&E ad in the right hand corner of the front page of yesterday’s April l8 Chronicle.

The ad ran without the usual identification “advertisement,” even though it was a pure political ad and part of PG&E’s phony “let’s green the city” campaign. The ad, spiffy and lime-colored,
was classic PG&E greenwashing: “Green is giving your roof a day job. To sign up for PG&E’s solar classes, visit Let’sgreenthiscity.com.”

In a classic of self-immolation, publisher Frank Vega sought to justify the front page ad with a short publishers’ statement on page two. He wrote, “Today, the Chronicle begins publishing front page ads. Our advertisers recognize the value of the Chronicle brand, our audience and the priority of delivering key messages to you, our reader. In the recent past, newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and USA Today have all announced their willingness to accept advertising in prominent positions.

“The Chronicle is committed to delivering you important news, information and advertising in a variety of new and engaging ways.”

Vega hasn’t been around long, and he may not know the history of Hearst’s obeisance to PG&E and so he may not realize that he was selling the front page to the utility that has created the biggest scandal in American history involving a city. But couldn’t someone over at 5th and Mission fill him in?

Meanwhile, over at City Hall, Hearst’s greenwashing for PG&E barreled along as usual. While Hearst allowed PG&E to take over the front page, the Chronicle was pitching in for PG&E on the news side by blowing off a major press conference and story by Sups. Tom Ammiano and Ross Mirkarimi on their introduction of their community choice aggregation plan. This is a major step toward public power that involves the city buying environmentally sound energy in bulk and selling it to the public at lower prices than what PG&E charges, which PG&E hates. Wyatt Buchanan, obviously new to the issue, buried the news in three dopey lines at the bottom of a supervisors’ roundup story. And he didn’t get the public power point, didn’t explain the plan properly, and didn’t even use the correct name the plan is known by “community choice aggregation.” And then Buchanan reports without blushing, “The plan faces a series of major hurdles before it came be implemented,” not mentioning that the major hurdle is that good ole greenwasher perched on the front page of his paper and spending millions on its greenwashing campaign. Doesn’t anybody over there fill in the virgin reporters about the PG&E crocodiles in the back bays of City Hall?

Let me start with but one point: The Guardian and I have for years documented how Hearst reversed its policy of supporting the building of the Hetch Hetchy dam and public power and has censored its news and editorials on behalf of PG&E since the late l920s. The reason has perhaps been best explained in the book “The Chief:The Life and Times of William Randolph Hearst” by David Nasaw, who is the chair of the doctoral history program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Nasaw writes in his book, published in 2000, that Hearst and his old Examiner, the Hearst flagship paper, were for 40 years promoting “full municipal ownership and control of Hetch Hetchy water and power.” Hearst was opposed by the “business and banking communities, led by (Herbert) Fleishhacker, a board member of several of the bank and power trusts, who hoped to be able to privatize at least some of the Hetch Hetchy resources.” Fleishhacker was also the president of the London and Paris National Bank of San Francisco and Hearst’s chief source of funds on the West Coast.

Thus, Nasaw writes, “the basis for a Hearst-Fleishhacker alliance was obvious. Hearst needed Fleishhacker to sell his bonds, while the banker needed the Hearst newspaper to promote his (privatization) plans for Hetch Hetchy.”
Nasaw outlines the secret deal: Hearst got desperately needed cash. Fleshhacker and PG&E got a Hearst reversal of policy to support PG&E and oppose Hetch Hetchy public power–a policy that has lasted up to yesterday when Hearst sold its front page to PG&E (much too cheaply) and then stomped down an anti-PG&E, public power news story inside.

“No longer would the Hearst papers take an unequivocal stand for municipal ownership,” Nasaw writes, based on Hearst correspondence with John Francis Neylan, his West Coast lieutenant and publisher of the Examiner. “No longer would they employ the language and images that had been their stock in trade.”

And so PG&E bought Hearst in the mid-l920s and Hearst has stayed bought up to this very day. Through the years, as we have developed this theme story, I have asked every local Hearst publisher and many reporters and editors why their pro-PG&E/anti-public power campaign continues on, much to the damage of the paper’s credibility and much to the embarrassment of its staff. Nobody can explain. If anybody can, let me know.
Believe me, there will be much more to come on this issue, in the Guardian and in the Bruce blog.

Postscript: Awhile back, during the latest public power initiative in 2002, Susan Sward and Chuck Finnie did a splendid story on the scandal. But it was a quickie affair and the two reporters and their story were snuffed out, not to be heard from again.

Bruce B. Brugmann, who sees the poisonous fumes of the Mirant Power plant from my office window at the bottom of Potrero Hill, courtesy of PG&E, Hearst, and the San Francisco Chronicle and its greenwashing for PG@E campaigns B3

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/18/07): 171 Iraqi civilians killed today in the deadliest day since the latest American-led security plan took effect.

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/18/07): 171 Iraqi civilians killed today in the deadliest day since the latest American-led security plan took effect.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

171 Iraqi civilians were killed today in Baghdad in a series of attacks targeting Shiites. This was the deadliest day in Iraq since the most recent American-led security plan was implemented, according to the New York Times.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

61,728 – 67,703: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 15 April 2007.

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

3,546: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/18/07): So far, $418 billion for the U.S., $52 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Now the Chron front page really IS a PG&E ad

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By Tim Redmond

We’ve often accused the San Francisco Chronicle of acting like a public-relations mouthpiece for Pacific Gas and Electric Company. But it’s not even funny anymore: The Chron today has a big front-page ad from PG&E — and, perhaps not coincidentally, the paper almost totally ignored the news about a key step toward public power.

The front-page ad, accompanied by a note from the publisher, has turned some heads among local journalists. Publisher Frank Vega says in his note that the Chron is just following everyone else in the industry.

But PG&E’s greenwashing ads? Right on the front page? And where was the story about Community Choice Aggregation?

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