By Tim Redmond
Just got the word that the Democrats are being hammered all over the state, which is terrible news. Prop 90 is ahead by two points, but L.A. hasn’t been counted yet, so maybe there’s hope.
Here in SF, we just got new numbers on D8: Dufty’s a 65.3, which means he’s a clear winner. Alix Rosenthal is at 29.9. That seems to be the only race in which the progressives aren’t winning.
By Tim Redmond
The results are starting to roll in, and it’s a night for local progressives to remember. Chris Daly is well ahead in District 6, with 46 percent of the vote (to 41 percent for Rob Black). The School Board race is shaping up as a progressive victory, too, with Jane Kim in first followed by Hydra Mendoza and Kim-Shree Maufas. Dan Kelly has dropped to fifth place, and it appears his career on the School Board is over.
With the exception of the Parking Tax, all the progressive measures are passing, even Prop. H, the tenant-relocation bill that had a serious campaign against it.
The only downer is that Bevan Dufty is well ahead in District 8.
Live report from Tim Redmond
I just spoke by cell phone to a Daly campaign staffer. The campaign has been monitoring the returns at the precinct level, checking the tags as they’re printed out of the machines before they go to City Hall. According to those reports, Daly is 950 votes ahead in the 27 precincts they’ve counted. That’s very good news.
The big news on the School Board is that Jane Kim is now in first place, followed by Hydra Mendoza and Dan Kelly. Kim is almost guaranteed victory. It’s possible that Kelly won’t make the final cut, and three new members will join the board.
By Tim Redmond
Still very early, but it looks like this:
The leaders in the race for school board are Hydra Mendoza, Jane Kim and Dan Kelly. Interesting that Kelly, an incumbent, is in third for three slots, and that’s just the early votes. This bears watching. For now, though, good news for Jane Kim.
All the incumbents are way ahead in the Community College Board race. That will change, I think.
Big surprises in district four: So far, Ed Jew, who wasn’t even on my radar for this race, is ahead, but it’s very close: Ron Dudum is right behind him. Jaynry Mak and Doug Chan are well behind.
The only proposition that is behind (an d not far behind) is the tenant protection measure, H. It’s trailing 51-48. That’s not bad for early absentees.
By Tim Redmond
Not a whole lot going on here yet, no results yet and it will be a while. But nationally, the Democrats have picked up nine in the house. Good news so far.
The race that I find the most interesting is the Rhose Island Senate contest, where Lincoln Chaffee, a popular liberal Republican who opposed the war, lost anyway. People were so mad at Bush and the GOP that they voted against a Republican who had soaring popularity ratings.
Says something.
By G.W. Schulz
Two former executives at the San Francisco-based McKesson Corp. escaped prison sentences by the skin of their teeth late last week in this ongoing era of blind fury over corporate corruption. And McKesson’s former blue suits have the indecisiveness of just one juror out of 12 to thank.
The two were acquitted on one count of securities fraud stemming from a $9 billion accounting scandal, but a mistrial was declared after the jury deadlocked 11-1 on three of the remaining counts. Four other executives were previously convicted in a scheme by which the company allegedly overstated revenue to the tune of $300 million during its merger with an Atlanta-based outfit called HBO & Co.
McKesson is one of the nation’s largest prescription-drug wholesalers with revenue of $88 billion annually. It’s current CEO, John Hammergren, makes more each year than even the head of Bay Area-based ChevronTexaco.
One juror told the Associated Press that the rebel holdout “got to the point where he didn’t want to be talked to anymore.” U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan’s office is determining whether to retry, which could still land the two men, Charles McCall and Jay Lapine, in jail for 10 years each.
The Guardian reported in late October that McKesson is in no small amount of trouble these days. The company, along with the New York-based Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, was charged by a group of unions in a civil suit filed in a Boston federal court last year of conspiring to inflate drug prices. Hearst owns a drug info publishing company based in San Bruno called First DataBank. The suit alleges that the effort caused consumers to overpay $7 billion for prescription drugs between 2001 and 2005. First DataBank has since settled, as we reported, but McKesson is still a major target of the lawsuit.
Big Pharma is nearly as profitable as Big Oil these days. The state of California pays out over $3 billion each year for prescription drugs through programs that benefit children and the indigent, while Santa Clara County alone — as a smaller-scale example — pays out nearly $35 million. (Santa Clara County sued a bunch of manufacturers and wholesalers a couple of years ago for allegedly rigging prices, but the case was recently tossed out of federal court in San Francisco.)
Defense attorneys for the former McKesson execs are calling last week’s ruling a victory, but Wall Street didn’t appear to see it that way. Value of the company’s shares dropped by nearly a half following announcement of the news to $35. The company quickly informed the business press just a few days later of its $1.1 billion purchase of Georgia-based Per-Se Technologies and just as soon recovered $15 per share of the drop. Guess corporate ethics don’t have to be much of a pain in the monetary ass after all.
By Tim Redmond
It’s a beautiful day, no rain in sight. I was driving my kids to school this morning through the Castro, and Alix Rosenthal was winning the battle of the people with street signs, if that matters. Polling places in Bernal Heights, where there is no supervisorial race, were pretty busy, which means turnout in D6, D4 and D8 should be high, too.
Robert Haaland is predicting Daly 51, Black 39, which would be nice. The reality is that there are more Daly voters than Black voters in the district, and if the Daly campaign can get them to the polls, he’ll win handily.
I posed a question to my grandson Nicholas Perez, age l2, a math whiz and computer games afficionado,
to figure out for the Bruce blog how long the Iraq War has lasted in comparison to the U.S. involvement in World War II.
He just sent me an email answer, on deadline, for my pre-election blog.
He says that WWII lasted l,328 days from Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, l94l, to VJ day (Victory in Japan) on Aug. l5, l945.
Which means, he says, that Nov. 7, the day of the election, the Bush War in Iraq has lasted as long as did the U.S. involvement in WW II.
Imagine: That ought to be front page news on election day across the land: REPEATING AND UNDERSCORING: THE WAR IN IRAQ HAS LASTED AS LONG AS THE U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN WW II. Vote against Bush and for peace on as many fronts as possible. Vote early and often.
Personal note to Tara and Murali in Chennai, India: Thanks for your call just now on my blog deadline and your encouragment to Sock It To Bush. My prediction is that the U.S. voters will put the Democrats back in power in the House, will win or come very close in the Senate, and will all in all deliver a resounding rebuke to Bush on Iraq.
Postscript: On the non issue of Kerry’s “botched joke”: I found most annoying the people who criticized Kerry, and who ought ought to have known better and were purely grandstanding (starting with Hillary Clinton among the Democrats and John McCain among the Republicans) and the media that took it seriously and helped the Republicans pump up yet another phony campaign issue. They gave the cheap shot a new dimension. b3
By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)
As the rest of the press (mainstream and alternative) was publishing endorsements and election coverage for Tuesday’s referendum on Bush and Iraq, Mike Lacey, editor in chief of the Village Voice/New Times papers, was down in Los Angeles at the LA Weekly stoking yet another of his signature bloodbaths (see my previous blog below).
Lacey killed the Weekly’s influential and widely read political endorsements, making this election the first time in memory that the Weekly did not run endorsements. He oversaw the firing of News Editor Alan Mittelstaedt and the hiring of Jill Stewart, described by Kevin Roderick in LA Observed as a “Lacey favorite columnist at the old New Times Los Angeles.” Lacey also oversaw the sacking of Harold Meyerson, the highly respected veteran political columnist who was regarded as a Lacey target because he was liberal and activist. (Lacey wouldn’t renew his contract.) And, when Meyerson complained in an email to the staff about a front page story in the current edition in the New Times template, Mike savaged him publicly with a classic New Times rant and rave.
Michael Sigman, former president and publisher of the LA Weekly, made the appropriate comment to LA Observed: “I worked with hundreds of smart writers and editors during nearly 20 years at LA Weekly. Harold Meyerson is one of maybe two or three whom I would describe as a genius. His loss is unfortunate for the paper, and more unfortunate still for LA.”
Sigman was being diplomatic. In my five decades or so in journalism, I do not know of a more vicious public attack by an editor on a staffer. Moreoever, this was not just an attack on Meyerson as a columnist and major Weekly presence for years but it was an attack on the paper, on principled journalism, on the Weekly constituency, and on Los Angeles by the editor of a predatory chain headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Here is the lineup that shows the Voice/New Times priorities in the runup to the election:
+Meyerson’s farewell column.
+Meyerson’s email to the LA Weekly staff in which he said, among other things, that “Anyone who spends a nano-second looking at the paper understands that New Times template is already in place, and I know from countless conversations that editorial staffers live in fear of geting the ax if they deviate from it. That’s sad for the city, sad for the paper, and sad for those of you who work there and are in no financial position to leave (a position I understand very well).”
+Lacey’s “Hey Hack” response.
+And my previous blog on Voice/New Times policy of not allowing their papers to endorse–and my critical question arising therefrom: Does Dan Savage or Mike Lacey have the real balls? My vote is for Savage. He got endorsements in every one of his pre-election sex columns run by New Times papers. A bravura performance on pre-election deadline. And Lacey of course was being Lacey. And, thanks to Lacey and his regime, the LA Weekly of Jay Levin, Ron Curran, Harold Meyerson, Mike Sigman, and scores of fine journalists and staffers on a special journalistic mission is gone. Alas. Alas.
Our Town, Our Paper
L.A. and the Weekly, in hindsight and foresight
By HAROLD MEYERSON
Lacey on Meyerson and LA Observed
Dear kids: Meyerson sad about Contreras piece
By Tim Redmond
Late on a Friday, at the slowest possible time in the news cycle, when politicians make moves that they hope will get very little media attention, Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed a plan to require police foot patrols in high-crime areas. That marks a dramatic shift in his position. Just a few days ago, he was prepared to sign the bill.
The veto sets up a fascinating showdown: Are there eight votes on the board to override the mayor? The measure passed 7-3 on its first round, with only Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Michela Alioto-Pier and Sean Elsbernd in opposition and Jake McGoldrick absent. Willl eight votes hold?
I put out a call to the alternative press across the country to see if anybody could spot an endorsement or strong political story in pre-election issues of Village Voice/New Times papers. (Scroll to the bottom for some vintage Mike Laceyism and some answers to the pressing question of the day: who has the real balls: Dan Savage or Mike Lacey?
The OC Weekly in Orange County did endorsements this year, but that appeared to be the only one of the l7 Voice/New Times papers that did. I also asked Voice/New Times CEO Jim Larkin and Editor in chief Mike Lacey, as well as the new Voice editor David Blum for their comments and for their rationale for not running endorsements in one of the most important mid-year elections in U.S. history. No reply. Here are a few of the replies that came to me by private email:
From: Ron Kretsch, Art Director, Cleveland Free Times, which competes with the Voice/New Times-owned Cleveland Scene
Sending the entire altweekly industry on a snipe-hunt, Bruce? Niiiiiiice.
(B3 comment: Back where I come from, at Camp Foster on Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa, we called it whippenpoof hunting. But we never found any.)
Actually, I found something – Derf has this in the obScene this week: Cleveland Scene Election 2006. Then again, you did specify “serious coverage” – yeah, go ahead, post my comment. I doubt I’ll have much crow to eat.
And yeah, we had pretty substantive election coverage – I think in terms of quantity of coverage we actually outdid our election ’04 issue, which by my reckoning has never happened before for a midterm or an off-year. Even some obscure-seeming judicial races got the flashlight shined on ’em. It worked out to be a pretty damn fine issue.
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From: an East Coast blogger
Okay, I’ll play. Here’s a story broken by Bob Norman in Broward-Palm Beach that could have a big impact on the gubernatorial race there.
Broward Palm Beach
You won’t find endorsements, of course, because they don’t do any. But you will find coverage of the elections. Bob Norman down in south Florida (who wrote the piece I just sent you) is one of their good reporters on the politics beat.
(B3 comment: Thanks, glad to see an election story in a New Times paper in Florida. But they still didn’t do endorsements. And I’m still looking for someone who can tell me the reason for this policy.)
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From: Jonny Diamond , editor in chief of The L Magazine in New York City
Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it’s the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story: Village Voice Cover Story – remarkable stuff from the country’s formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm election in a long, long time.
I’d say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we’re working on something for Friday… best Jonny Diamond
It is as silly as it seems. The movie stuff is atrocious. The cover stories laughable. And people are noticing. Here’s our endorsement, btw. The L Magazine Endorsements. I’d really appreciate if you could link to this, it deals explicitly with the The Voice’s failure to step up. Thanks, jd
(B3 comment: Perhaps this is a snapshot of the situation in New York. The Voice, a liberal bastion in New York for its entire history, endorser in all elections, didn’t endorse or even run a strong election story in its pre-election issue or an explanation of its knuckling under to the New Times template. However, the L Magazine, a a relatively new arts and entertainment fortnightly, did, happily and with gusto and with every intention of beating the Voice/New Times in every election hereafter. Note its coverage in the link above.)
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From: a Manhattan media watcher
Bruce, they don’t have anyone on staff at the Voice any more who is either competent or even interested in covering local politics. It’s just way too cerebral for any of them now. Sad to say, but it’s all fluffernutter stuff. Anything above 34th Street doesn’t exist.
++++++++++++++
From: Anthony Pignataro (former OC Weekly staffer)
Editor, Maui Time Weekly
This week’s OC Weekly has tons of political coverage, including this list of actual endorsements: OC Weekly
(B3: at last, a Voice/NewTimes paper that made endorsements, the OC Weekly in Orange County. So Will Swaim, a strong liberal editor, joins Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist, as the only two who got endorsements into New Times papers. How did Will do it? I sent him an email but didn’t hear by blogtime.)
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From: The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
Speculation About VVM’s L.A. Moves ‘Simply Silly,’ Lacey Says
From: LA Observed
Dear kids: Meyerson sad about Contreras piece
Lacey on Meyerson and LA Observed
Scene at the Weekly
Stewart gives notice
On Jill Stewart at the Weekly
Big turmoil at the Weekly
(B3: There was so much turmoil at the LA Weekly that it was hard to tell what happened this year. Harold Meyerson “quit” writing his excellent political column and no endorsements appeared in the paper, though the paper has for years been a traditional endorser and many ex-staffers and ex-managers were pushing for endorsements this year.)
Meanwhile, the LA Observed media site summed up the Weekly’s sudden knuckling under to Voice/New Times non endorsement policy: “Since the Weekly has dropped its well-read pre-elecition endorsements, City Beat (B3: the competitive alternative in LA) has jumped in to fill the void. The paper backs Democrats for all the state offices except Governor (no endorsement) and insurance commissioner (Steve Poizner over Cruz Bustamente.) Locally, they recommend yes on H and no on R.” And they give a link to the full list.
Meyerson addressed the issue in a farewell email to the staff (see link above) in which he addresses the New Times template: “The paper’s decision, for the first time since forever, not to run endorsements makes that even clearer (that Lacey/New Times have have forced a reverse in editorial policy). Tha’s unfortunate, but it’s no disgrace. But becoming a tabloid in the New Times model is absolutely a disgrace. The New Times model churns out ‘gotcha’ news stories, it snipes at an undifferentiated establishment, it makes little effort to understand larger social issues at work in a city (that would require deviations from the model), it has a weakness for rants. It produces columns like ‘LA Sniper,’ in the Jill Stewart mode of reducing commentary to drive-by shootings…” (B3: Stewart is the new deputy editor in charge of news and wrote in her last independently syndicated column that
she was “thrilled to be joining the Village Voice Media chain under Mike Lacey.”
More on Lacey’s management style: In a letter responding to Meyerson’s criticism of the LA Weekly (see above link), he sums up: “But the reasons why Meyerson’s contract with LA Weekly was not renewed transcend finance and are on display in his embarrassing note to the staff. His ethical lapses, motivated by decades of cronyism, are aggravated by his insufferable pomposity.
“‘Hey, Kids,’ is his salutation.
” ‘Hey, Hack,’ is my response.”
(B3: Lacey, for all his lathering and steaming, still does not address the fundamental issue of why the New Times and now, sadly, the Voice papers, refuse to endorse. So once again: Is there someone somewhere, inside or outside the Voice/New Times, who can say why their papers do not endorse in any election and in particular in a extraordinarily critical election that amounts to a referendum on Bush, the war, the occupation, and his domestic policies?
What’s Lacey and the New Times afraid of? Of annoying their advertisers? Of giving up control to local chain editors who may (gasp!) be more liberal than the gang in Phoenix? Are they worried their endorsments would disclose just how cynical Lacey and the New Times are in their politics and in their view of the cities in which they have papers? MIke? Mike? You sound real big and tough, writing from a safe haven in corporate headquarters in Phoenix, and attacking as a hack a highly respected liberal LA Weekly veteran.
(Could you explain why Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist, has the only real endorsements in all the Voice/New Times papers in his sex column (excepting the OC Weekly, bless their hearts)? Why do you and the Voice/New Times contiinue to duck the tough issues and endorsements in election after election as a matter of institutional policy? As you will recall, Dan went into Pennsylvania at a critical moment in the campaign and gave Sen. Rick Santorum some much justified trouble on the gay family issue. if Santorum goes down, Dan can take some credit. What can you and the Voice/New Times say about the way you wimped through another election? Why does Dan have the balls and you do not? Mike?
B3, working hard in San Francisco to create and perpetuate San Francisco Values (note: SF Chronicle head yesterday: THREE DIRTY WORDS: SAN FRANCISCO VALUES, front page, lead story, big type, no blushing)
By Laura Beth McCaul and Steven T. Jones
Justin Barker saw an opportunity on Halloween to denounce Fox News, but ended up in jail overnight for his effort. He was in the Castro just after 10:30 p.m. when he saw local Fox affiliate KTVU-Channel 2 reporter Amber Lee doing a live shot. He stepped behind her and yelled “Fox News is bullshit, Fox News sucks” on live television before the broadcast cut away to some B-roll footage. Suddenly, Barker found himself in trouble. “I go to walk away and three policeman come up and knock me to my knees and I get handcuffed,” said Barker, who’s been charged with battery and resisting arrest. As KTVU news director Ed Chapuis told us, “At 10:30 during a live shot, he jumped in front of our camera and practically pushed our reporter to the ground.” But Barker said he didn’t touch the Lee, is non-violent, and was simply trying to exercise his free speech rights. In fact, he says he heard the police ask Lee if he touched her and she answered “I don’t know.” The footage that aired was inconclusive, but Lee appeared composed and unmolested when the shot returned to her about 30 seconds later. Chapuis said the station will push for prosecution, telling us, “How do you know the intent of someone who step up to disrupt your live shot?” In this case, the intent seemed clear: to denounce Fox News, a network that does, indeed, in all its Orwellian “fair and balanced” glory, suck.
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Let me cite yet another example of the dangers of the Hearst/Singleton move to destroy daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area.
As attentive Bruce blog readers know, I always turn to the second page of the Chroncie/Hearst business section called “Daily Digest” to pick up the news that Hearst is censoring. Yesterday, I spotted yet another nugget
that demonstrated how Hearst was censoring a major scandal story involving its own subsidiary in San Bruno and McKesson Corp., one of the nation’s largest drug wholesalers.
The story looked harmless enough, a six paragraph Associated Press story headlined “McKesson soars above expectations,” with a lead that said that the company’s “quarterly profit climbed 37 per cent to soar past analyst expectations, prompting the nation’s largest prescription-drug distributor to brighten its financial outlook.” Another five paragraphs provided the details of this seemingly rosy McKesson story.
So, knowing there was much more to this story and getting my blogging genes at the ready, I checked the online version of the story. Imagine my surprise when I found that the guts of the Chronicle story had been cut out of the paper and the juicy stuff was tucked away in the online version. A full seven paragraphs had been chopped from the print version of a l6 paragraph story by Michael Liedtke from the San Francisco AP bureau.
Let me quote the key chopped out paragraphs to make my point: “McKesson released its results and bullish outlook after the stock market closed Tuesday. The company’s shares fell 60 cents to finish at $50.09 on the New York Stock Exchange. After an early rebound in after-hours trading, the shares shed 5 cents.
“The downturn extended a recent slump triggered nearly four weeks ago by news of a tentative legal settlement that could depress prescription drug prices. (b3: a dreadful thing.)
“The settlement covers a class-action complaint alleging that drug price publisher First DataBank Inc. (B3: a Hearst subsidiary in San Bruno) had conspired with McKesson between 2002 and 2005 to boost the wholesale cost of most prescription medicines by 5 per cent. (B3: a tidy newsworthy sum).
“Although McKesson has denied any wrongdoing and isn’t joining the settlement, investors are worried the agreement will force the company to lower its prices (b3: another dreadful thing). Consumer advocates have estimated the settlement will save health insurance plans about $4 billion (b3: a nice newsworthy figure). The settlement still needs approval by a Massachusets federal court, something unlikely to happen before April…”
Note my previous blogs to get the scope of the Hearst shenanigans at work here. AP doesn’t put Hearst into the story where it belongs and doesn’t even identify FirstDateBank as a local subsidiary owned by Hearst, the biggest daily in Northern California and a big bankroller and participant in the Singleton move to monopolize the Bay Area. Hearst doesn’t properly edit the AP story and put Hearst high up where it belongs. And Hearst actually cut the print version of the story and put the guts of it up online at SF Gate so it will be hard to spot. And of course Hearst never ran the original story of the scandal (reported first in a lead story in the Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal, with versions by the AP, the Guardian, and even the Hearst-owned Houston Chronicle, see my previous blogs.)
The hinge point: Hearst went to these embarrassing lengths to censor a major scandal story involving Hearst, and three local companies, to protect its corporate interests and refuses to explain this professionally glaring omission in the stories, or to its readers. It also refuses to answer my questions directed to Hearst corporate in New York City via Hearst San Francisco and publisher Frank Vega, Executive Editor Phil Bronstein, Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal, and Business Editor Ken Howe. And the “competitive” Singleton papers haven’t done the story either to my knowledge and won’t explain why.
Impertinent Questions: If Hearst and Singleton won’t compete on a major scandal story like this, where will they compete and when do they start? How can they censor and cover up a major story like this in the midst of investigations by Justice and the AG?
This sorry episode illustrates a key issue for the current Justice and AG investigations into whether the Hearst/Singleton deal violates U.S.and state antitrust laws. It also illustrates a key issue for the highly important Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit seeking to blast apart the Hearst/Singleton financial relationship. I refer again to Brugmann’s Law: Where there is no economic competition, there is no news and editorial competition. So the thrust of any real antitrust investigation ought to be to stop monopoly moves like this and insure real newspaper and media competition.
We hear that Justice is at least doing lots of interviewing. God knows what Lockyer and his antitrust crew are doing as he heads into the sunset to be state treasurer. His probable successor, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, operating under the thumb of the Oakland Tribune/Singleton, has refused to comment or answer questions as to whether he will continue Lockyer’s purported investigation. Reilly and Alioto are hard into discovery, working with the media documents they obtained from Justice and the AG as a result of their suit. The documents were filed by the principals in the original merger (McClatchy, Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) to get preliminary Justice and AG approval. They are certain to be illuminating. Impertinent Question: Why is it that, once again, Relly and Alioto must do the heavy lifting in a private suit because Justice and the AG have so far knuckled under to the chains and refused to do their job.
Repeating the Impertinent Questions to Hearst and Singleton editors and publishers: Why haven’t you done this major scandal story? When will you do it? If you won’t do the stories, please explain. Until then, let’s have no more macho talk about competition between Hearst and Singleton papers. B3
P.S. Let me quote the third paragraph from the WSJ to dramatize the heft of this story: “A 2002 email by a manager of (McKesson) describes how pharmacies would be able to more than doiuble their profit for dispensing the cholestrol drug Lipitor and adds, ‘that is awesome.'” The article quoted an economist hired by the plaintiffs who estimated that savings in 2007 alone at $4 billion. There is much, much more. The Hearst and Singleton papers would cover this national scandal in a flash if it involved any other big company in their territory. Hopefully.
A tough pill to swallow by G.W. Schulz
McKesson’s fiscal 2Q profit rises 37 percent to top analyst views by MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
San Francisco Bay Guardian : Home Page
… BY AMANDA WITHERELL Rob Strange Project Censored
Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times “censors” the annual Project Censored story.
Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times: still no answers on why…
U.S. MEDIA CENSORSHIP / CONTROL
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‘SF Chronicle’ to Outsource All of Its Printing By E&P Staff
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ChainLINKS. Scroll to the bottom of the website to join the e-mail list
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PRESS RELEASE: The Hearst Corporation
TRANSCONTINENTAL SIGNS 15-YEAR DEAL TO PRINT HEARST CORPORATION’S SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
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The New Media Offensive for the Iraq War by Norman Solomon
B3,
You`ll be pleased to hear we run our endorsements in a sidebar on the cover monday in addition to longer editorials in the weeks leading up to the election.
Bruce Mitchell
Publisher
The Athens NEWS
(740) 594-8219
The Wall Street Journal
Justice Department Press Release
A tough pill to swallow by G.W. Schulz
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Nov. 7
Culture war at LA Weekly: A former sales staffer speaks out…
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Hurray for Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist for the l7 Village Voice/New Times papers in major markets with major battleground races for the election.
Savage performed heroically under fire and managed to get some key election endorsements into the second to last paragraph of his syndicated sex column in the crucial issue before one of the most important elections in modern history, a plebescite on Bush, the war, and the occupation. (New Times papers historically don’t do endorsments and don’t allow their writers to endorse.) He ran a letter in his column from a Wisconsin male who wrote, “Wisconsin needs your help!. On Tuesday, Nov. 7 we’re voting on an amendment banning gay marriage. As a married heterosexual male I’m supposed to feel threatened by gays getting married, but I’m smart enough to realize it doesn’t affect me at all. I also realize that I got to marry whomever I wanted, and everyone should have that right. Urge your readers in Wisconsin to vote NO on the marriage amendment. Thanks!”
Savage gave the writer the ultimate Savage compliment: “You put it better than I could, JIW. I would add: The amendment in Wisconsin bans gay marriage and civil unions. Vote no.”
Then Savage continued his endorsement: “And to my readers in Colorado, Idaho,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virignia, Arizona, and South Dakota: Please vote against the gay marriage bans in your states, too. And in South Dakota, please vote to overturn your state’s idiotic abortion ban. And to my readers in Canada: Be glad you don’t have to put up with any of this shit.”
In the presidential race two years ago, Savage snuck his Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his pre-election column. This time, he slipped his endorsements into the second to last paragraphs, with a neatly disguised ending to his column with a diverting letter from a woman who claimed she couldn’t have an orgasm until age l8. She then took some pot with a “cooperative boy friend and–bam! –six orgasms in five minutes.” And he signed off, “Thanks for sharing.” And sent his readers off to a Savage website to learn more about pot and sex. Well done, Dan. A masterful job.
Meanwhile, Savage’s endorsements were the only real endorsements to be run in the pre-election issue of the Voice, probably one of the first times in Voice history, if not the first, that this bastion of New York liberalism has been Voiceless and neutered and has not endorsed candidates or run serious political coverage in an election. (Why? I put the questions by email to Voice/New Times CEO and chief executive officer Jim Larkin, Executive Editor Michael Lacey, and David Blum, the new Voice editor in chief, but got no reply by blogtime.)
Instead, the Voice this week ran a gripping “report from the trenches of ‘Saturday Night Live’–dress rehearsals, wrap parties, last-minute sketch changes, a l a.m. phone call from Lorne Michaels (and yes, Andy Samberg!”) with a front page illustration of a smiling comedian doing the Bronx shrug. I kid you not. Check the link below and the Voice website and see what has happened to the mighty Voice in the short nine months since Larkin, Lacey,and the Arizona Gang got ahold of it. Meanwhile a quick check showed that none of the other l6 Voice/New Times papers ran any endorsements in their pre-election issues, with the possible exception of the OC Weekly in Orange County. An editor sent me an email saying they were doing endorsements but I could not find them at blogtime.
Well, Nathan Blumberg, my first journalism professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in l953, used to say that a paper that didn’t run endorsements didn’t have any balls. He used the word testicles, because this was Nebraska in l953, but the class all got the point. So: does this mean that Dan Savage has balls, and Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey don’t have balls? Let us let the readers decide.
P.S.1 It’s hard for the staff members of a Village Voice/New Times paper to say much inhouse or publicly about the management style and editorial policies of Larkin and Lacey. For example, note what happened to poor David Schneiderman, the former Village Voice top guy since l978, who they sacked unceremoniously last week. VOICE BOSS GAGGED,” chided the New York Post head. The Post noted Larkin’s subtle style when it quoted an insider as saying about Schneiderman: “The new guys held him in complete disregard. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.” Schneiderman will go down in journalism history as the guy who sold the Voice to New Times, and pocketed $500,000 for his work on the deal, but even he probably didn’t deserve the Larkin/Lacey treatment.
P.S 2: Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the SF Weekly/
Village Voice/New Times ran a front page page illustration of two gay comic figures I can’t quite characterize, but sported the head, “DRAWN TOGETHER, Graphic Homosexual comics and the young women who love them.”
Smith came the closest to a political endorsement when he meandered around with the two major candidates in District 6, Sup. Chris Daly and challenger Rob Black, and wrote a self-immolating piece titled, “Vulgar posing, How our columnist was seduced into watching the World’s Largest Female Bodybuilder beat up on Rob Black.” After missing, mangling, mushing, and making fun of the issues, Smith came up with two summary questions but no clear endorsement: “Isn’t Daly the vulgar jerk who threatened the democratic process? What about the gentility-in-public-life rap Black’s been giving SOMA condo dwellers? Black is gone. I don’t feel like chasing after him with my facile questions.” Well, Smith concludes, “Alone, in SF Weekly’s offices, beer on my breath, an awful sort-porn video on the VCR, I realize I’ve beens seduced by the poses of two political hacks.”
News flash to Smith: There are real major issues in this district. For example, Calvin Welsh lays out a big one in a Guardian op ed this week, “Don’t for a minute believe that he (Daly) is in the fight of his political life because he’s rude, because he doesn’t care about lw and order, or because he prefers dirty streets upon which to raise his son. These petty and silly charges mask a far more serious objection: the way his opponents see it, Daly has been too slow in adopting the massive wave of market rate housing slated for this district and is far too protective of lower income residents in District 6.” He concludes: “There’s a working majority of the Board of Supervisors willing to fight for current neighborhoods and residents and a future that includes them. The battle in District 6 shows that the fight is not without risk. Do the rest of us realize it? Smith, Larkin, Lacey, Voice/New Times folks, do you realize it?
P.S.3: At blogtime, Jonny Diamond, the editor in chief of L magazine in New York, replied to my query about Voice endorsements with this quote: “Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it’s the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story (and he gave me the link). Remarkable stuff from the country’s formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm elections in a long, long time. I’d say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we’re working on something for Friday.”
So, to get election endorsements and coverage in New York, forget the Voice and
go to the website of the L magazine, a zippy New York arts and entertainment biweekly under the direction of the Steadman brothers.
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we may have heard the final word on the eve of the election from the Larkin/Lacey/VillageVoice/NewTimes/SF Weekly crew in San Francisco and New York. Maybe Larkin will stop reading the paper long enough to send me comments or explain to the readers of his l7 papers why they don’;t endorse or do serious election coverage. I’ll let you know. If anybody spots a political endorsement in a Voice/New Times paper, flash me the word. B3, hoping good news is on the way on the way Nov. 7th
VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS:
By KEITH J. KELLY
October 27, 2006 — DAVID Schneiderman is out as president of Village Voice Media nine months after Phoenix-based New Times took over the alternative weekly newspaper chain.
Following the takeover of the Voice by New Times CEO James Larkin and Editorial Director Michael Lacey, Schneiderman stayed on as president of the combined company, which took on the Village Voice Media name. He split his time between the company’s headquarters and Seattle, where his wife Dana Faust, a New York Times ad executive handling the Pacific northwest, is based.
However, few expected him to stay for long as he was clearly a man without a power base. He was given the job of exploring Web opportunities for the company, an area in which he had scant expertise. Even after he immersed himself in the new role, it didn’t impress the new cowboys from Phoenix.
“The new guys held him in complete disregard,” said one insider. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s Web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.
Reached yesterday, Larkin said of Schneiderman, “He resigned.”
Asked if there would be a replacement, Larkin said, “We are going to restructure.” He declined further comment, saying, “We don’t comment on personnel matters,” he said.
When reached by Media Ink, Schneiderman, said, “I’ve been approached by people in the venture capital and private equity world. I just felt the time to move on was now.”
He insisted that his deal as Voice president was “open ended” and that he could have stayed longer.
But making frequent trips between New York, Phoenix and Seattle “was wearing on me.”
“Waking up in my own bed for awhile is important to me,” he said.
The Boston Phoenix was reporting yesterday that its editor Bill Jensen had resigned to accept a job running Web operations for Village Voice Media, its parent company.
Mon/6
Author
Listen to the messenger
Hear OC Weekly writer Nick Schou read from his book, Kill the Messenger. The book covers the story of Gary Webb, a journalist who wrote the Dark Alliance series for the San Jose Mercury News in the mid-’80s investigating connections between the CIA and Southern California crack cocaine rings and later committed suicide. Schou’s book includes interviews with editors involved with Webb who have never before spoken about the scandal. (Deborah Giattina)
7 p.m.
Cody’s Bookstore
1730 Fourth St., Berk.
Free
(510) 559-9500
Music
Lindsey Buckingham
When I was in college, we were talking about the scene in School of Rock where Joan Cusack gets drunk and dances on a table like Stevie Nicks, and this hipper-than-thou chick in my class asked smugly, “Does anyone even like Fleetwood Mac anymore?” She was nearly killed by the rain of backpacks, cell phones, and unadulterated scorn. So the moral of the story is that everyone fucking loves Fleetwood Mac and everyone fucking loves Lindsey Buckingham. (Aaron Sankin)
8 p.m.
Palace of Fine Arts
3301 Lyon, SF
$55
(415) 563-6504
www.palaceoffinearts.org
www.lindseybuckingham.com
Sun/5
Event
Solidarity with Africa
Create greater support for black-led African groups like the Uhuru movement and African Socialist International on African People’s Solidarity Day at a teach-in and fundraiser featuring discussions and video presentation on the conditions and history of the African diaspora in Congo, Southern Africa, Haiti, Europe, and the United States. (Deborah Giattina)
10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Women’s Bldg.
3583 18th St., SF
Sliding-scale donation
(510) 625-1106, www.apscuhuru.org
Event
Women prisoner news
Celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Fire Inside, a newsletter for female prisoners, with former inmate Theresa Cruz, her daughter Adriana, the Drum Sistah Warriors, Maisha Quint of Poetry for the People, performing arts group Loco Bloco, and special guest Alice Walker at a party sponsored by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. (Giattina)
2-5 p.m.
African American Art and Culture Complex
762 Fulton, SF
$10-$100, sliding scale
(415) 255-7036, ext. 304, www.womenprisoners.org http://www.womenprisoners.org/
It only takes a few minutes of watching Iraq in Fragments to recognize that the film stands apart from the Iraqumentary pack: dazzling cinematography in place of the dull visuals of the evening news, slice-of-life narration instead of talking heads. Divided into three sections, director James Longley’s reportage shows us the everyday chaos in Baghdad and beyond with dramatic vividness — a vividness that, if nothing else, makes us realize how degraded most of the imagery we receive from Iraq is at the moment. Longley’s style owes as much to neorealism as it does to vérité documentary, with an emphasis on rhythm, ritual (school, shaving, washing feet), and — somewhat tiresomely — child perspectives. The director doesn’t explicate politics and often drops us into complex situations without explanation — he expects a lot from his audience but at the same time knows that the tangled human emotions cast before us will give the film meaning. It’s the kind of ambitious work one imagines a director like Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers) would have made if he’d had access to digital technology.
Though the film nabbed a couple of major awards at Sundance, it’s taken months for Iraq in Fragments to get a proper theatrical release here. Fortunately for Longley, the film’s material is evergreen, not tied to specific events, and still wholly relevant to the unfolding devastation. I spoke with the director during last spring’s San Francisco International Film Festival.
SFBG: How did you decide to make a documentary about Iraq?
JAMES LONGLEY: In 2002 I premiered Gaza Strip [his first feature-length documentary] up in Seattle, and someone asked me what I was going to do next. By then it was already clear that we were going to invade Iraq … and I just said I was going to make a film about Iraq. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, I didn’t know what to expect, but I just decided [to] dive in no matter what.
SFBG: After getting kicked out of the country in the immediate buildup to the US invasion, when and how did you return to Baghdad?
JL: I waited for [the war] to end in Cairo. The last two weeks in April, the war was running down, the statue fell, and I flew immediately from Cairo to Amman, Jordan, and then drove across the border, which was totally open. I just kind of settled in. I had my camera and found an apartment. I found people to work with as translators and started filming.
SFBG: It’s striking how comfortable the film’s subjects seem around your camera, especially since you’re an American. How do you go about getting embedded in this way?
JL: Mostly it’s just a matter of making friends with people and hanging out…. It was a conscious choice to have that feeling of being a fly on the wall. When you make that choice, you do whatever it takes … and really, what it takes is a lot of patience. I went through 12 different translators. The difficult thing for them was when I would go out to a farm or wherever I was filming and just stay there from morning until night, just hanging out. Most people demand some kind of action, but in this case the work was really in action, punctuated by really fast decision making. You’re going to be a fixture in this place. Everyone’s going to know who you are, and you’re going to have to say hi to everyone and drink tea with everyone day after day…. If you’re willing to do that, after a while people won’t think it’s such a big deal when you’re filming.
SFBG: Given the on-the-fly nature of the scenes, Iraq in Fragments is also a powerfully cinematic documentary. How does this level of film style factor into your direction?
JL: When I was shooting the film, I was definitely thinking of cinema, not of television. I grew up hating TV and never actually had one…. Conceptualizing the movie while shooting it, I was always thinking, “What’s this shot going to look like on the big screen?” Having that in your mind the whole time changes the way you imagine it, changes the way you shoot; it changes everything. I want to shoot the next film in high-def 3-D [laughs]. (Max Goldberg)
IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS
Opens Nov. 10 in Bay Area theaters
www.iraqinfragments.com
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION The most interesting social experiments are often the least flashy. A researcher at UC Berkeley’s School of Information Management, Jeff Ubois, proved that last week with the release of his meticulous study on an odd topic: why researchers can’t research TV.
Ubois found that studying one simple event in recent TV history was impossible. Copyright rules and poor archive access meant that even after months of work, he was unable to gain copies of a single primary source related to former Vice President Dan Quayle’s 1992 speech blaming TV character Murphy Brown for the nation’s decline in family values.
In a 1992 speech at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, Quayle claimed the Rodney King riots were spurred on by TV characters like Murphy Brown, who made single motherhood into “just another lifestyle choice.”
At the time the speech was intensely controversial. Many suggested that the first Bush administration was blaming television, not the brutal police beating of a black man, for the LA riots. As Ubois points out, it seems reasonable that future TV scholars will want access to original speeches and media reports of the incident, as well as footage from Murphy Brown in which the character responds to Quayle.
But when Ubois tried to get access to Quayle’s speech in storage at the Hoover Institute, librarians told him that copyright and contractual obligations to the Commonwealth Club prevented them from making a digital copy of the speech for educational use. Warner Bros., which owns the rights to Murphy Brown, refused to give Ubois copies of the show. Absurdly, Warner did tell Ubois he would be permitted to show lawfully obtained episodes to students, even though they wouldn’t give him any. How generous!
Of the TV networks that aired news of the speech, only ABC would allow Ubois to digitize and show segments of its newscasts in the classroom. None would give him those digital copies, though. He would have to purchase them from third-party sources like the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. The cost for getting roughly two hours of news clips ranged from $800 to $5,000, depending on the source.
Ubois concludes that a typical historian, who has little access to money, would be unable to complete a simple study of primary sources in the Dan Quayle versus Murphy Brown incident. Some of this is a result of copyright madness. In 1982 a New York judge found that archiving news clips for educational purposes was unlawful because those clips are “readily available” from rights holders. What Ubois discovered is that they aren’t available in any form for educational use. The basis of this oft-cited decision is simply wrong.
Because copyright laws gum up the process of archiving TV footage, nobody is tracking and indexing TV the way librarians do books and movies. This means scholars can’t access materials simply because they aren’t findable. As Ubois points out, “No single comprehensive catalog of television broadcasts now exists in the United States.”
In an age when digitization technologies would allow us to store all of TV history in a server room and make it fully searchable and accessible to the public, this is simply ridiculous.
Ubois cites a recent European video-archiving study that found TV tape storage begins to degrade after 20 years. That means 70 percent of existing TV footage will be gone by 2025. Imagine if 70 percent of existing books were going to be burned by 2025.
This is quite simply an atrocious situation — not just for scholars but for all US citizens whose freedom of thought requires access to their own history.
For inspiration, networks and rights holders should look to the BBC’s media archives, which aim to make most of the broadcasting company’s footage available to the public in digital form online.
Misguided greed and poorly interpreted copyright law are the only things standing in the way of a people’s history of television. I look forward to a day when the people will write it.
Scratch that — I look forward to a day when the people can research it. SFBG
Read Jeff Ubois’s paper here: www.archival.tv/
MurphyBrown-final.pdf.
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who misses Murphy Brown.
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION I love a good alternate history yarn for the same reason I love science fiction. Both genres analyze present-day trends by projecting them into another reality. That other reality might be the future or simply a transformed version of the present.
In the United States, there are two incredibly popular alternate history scenarios: 1. What if the South had won the Civil War? and 2. What if Germany had won World War II? C.S.A: The Confederate States of America, a fake British documentary made by Kansas filmmaker Kevin Willmott, answers both questions.
After its limited release in the theaters two years ago, the movie achieved cult status in DVD form, which is really its natural medium. It’s fascinating to watch CSA on a television set because the movie is meant to resemble a snippet from a TV station, complete with freaky commercials and news breaks, that is airing a “controversial” British documentary about the history of the CSA.
Blending dark humor with painstakingly researched historical revisionism, Willmott begins the movie with a fake commercial for insurance. The clip looks exactly like something you might see on ABC, including the fact that everyone in it is white. Then the announcer says, “Our insurance protects you and your property,” and the camera pans over to a smiling black boy who is clipping a hedge. This is a present day in which slavery still exists.
The British documentary reveals how this came to pass. After the South wins the Civil War with the help of France and England, the president heals the rift between North and South by offering Northerners slaves to help reconstruct the bombed-out cities of New York and Boston. Deposed president Lincoln flees to Canada, followed by 20,000 abolitionists including Fredrick Douglass and Henry David Thoreau.
Shortly thereafter, Chinese laborers in California are also declared slaves. The CSA annexes South America and becomes entrenched in a Cold War with what politicians call Red Canada. Several African nations collude with the CSA to maintain the slave trade, and we see historical footage of an African leader reassuring his people that only the “inferior tribes” are sold as slaves.
Hitler retains control over Germany when the CSA refuses to intervene in World War II, although the president does say it’s too bad the Germans are killing Jews instead of enslaving them.
What’s sheer genius about this alternate history is how much of it is drawn from actual US history. We hear about Native Americans being rounded up and put into orphanages, which actually happened; and the fake commercials advertising things like “Darkie Toothpaste,” “Niggerhair Cigarettes,” and “Coon Chicken” are all based on real products sold long after the abolition of slavery.
More chilling are ads for anti-depressants aimed at controlling slaves, and for a TV show based on Cops called Runaway. The message may be heavy-handed, but it nevertheless rings true enough to be thought-provoking: US popular culture is only one degree removed from being that of a slave-owning nation.
The same goes for US political culture. Historical figures and events in CSA also remain virtually unchanged. Kennedy is elected president and calls for abolition right before being assassinated, and the Watts Riots are portrayed as a “slave uprising.” Reagan’s presidency heralds a new spike in the slave trade. Experts explain how the Internet has helped rejuvenate interest in the science of slave control, and we see clips from the Slave Shopping Network, where bidders can choose to break up a family or “buy the complete set.”
Willmott has said in several interviews that CSA is not about what could be, but what is. He points out that African Americans and other people of color may not view the film as an alternate history so much as a reflection of a true history that many whites still can’t quite see. Maybe that accounts for why the film, which received an enthusiastic reception at Sundance in 2004 and critical raves, didn’t make it onto DVD until quite recently. Freed from the confines of traditional movie theater distribution, I think this flick will at last find the audience it deserves in online communities, where people can simultaneously watch, discuss, and recommend it.
In fact, I can’t think of a better movie to share in small pieces on
YouTube or MySpace, enticing people to rent or buy it and get the whole story. Its message should be out there, spreading like the world’s most virulent antiracist media virus, infecting the nation one computer screen at a time. SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose other favorite alternate history is about what would have happened if Martin Scorsese had directed ET.
By Steven T. Jones
Kudos for the Chron’s Cecelia Vega for debunking Mayor Gavin Newsom’s pity-party television interview, in which he said he may not run for reelection. Vega punches her story home with some great phrases like “20-year-old Republican girlfriend” and “Washington-size dose of political posturing,” but the real gems come from Bruce Cain and Gerardo Sandoval. Check ’em out. But I once again have to find fault with Vega and other Chron writers continuing to prop up Wade Randlett as if he’s some kind of party insider or astute political observer, rather than the discredited right wing bagman that he is. But for the Chron, this is still mighty fine work.
As for Newsom, suck it out or get out! Geez, talk about letting your sense of overentitlement show. If you want a carefree life of chasing tail in the Marina or playing the rich socialite, go to it. Your job is way too important for you to be as checked out and self-indulgent as you have been lately anyway. Sure, it’s a tough job, but there are lots of competent progressives in this city who would love to trade places with you, even with all the abuse that entails. Call Ross Mirkarimi, I’m sure he’d welcome the news that you’re stepping down and supporting him. Actually, come to think of it, maybe that is the way to go. It is a very tough job that’s only bound to get tougher, and you’re a young man who should be out there enjoying life. Get out while you can, my friend. You don’t need this shit.
Followups on Hearst: No word back from the Chronicle on my questions on why they are blacking out the big local story involving three big local players (Hearst, McKesson Corporation, and First DataBank). Let me give you the lead front headline on the Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal story to make the point about what a big big story they are stonewalling on:
“How Quiet Moves by a Publisher Sway Billions in Drug Spending, Lawsuit Forces Hearst Unit To Lower Prices on List Widely Used as Benchmark, A ‘Survey’ of One Company”
Anybody out there annoyed at the ever escalating price of prescription drugs? That is the point. Below are my questions emailed Thursday to the campaign headquarters of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who is the candidate most likely to be the next attorney general (no word back at blogtime).
Fair warning: next week I will start asking similar impertinent questions to the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News, San Mateo Times, and other Media News Group/Dean Singleton papers that claim, along with Hearst, that they are really aggressively competing away out there even though they have formed what amounts to a regional news monopoply. Have they done the story and if not, when will they? And will they pursue the story as real competitive newspapers once did and as they ought to do again if they want to retain credility and financial viability? Repeating: Where are Justice and Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and their antitrust departments.
Take note, Clint Reilly and Joe Alioto, a key part of your antitrust case is being made right here and now. B3
Dear Jerry Brown,
I am requesting some information and answers to questions from you, as a candidate for attorney general, for stories we are doing at the Bay Guardian and for my Bruce blog at sfbg.com.
The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 6, and the Bay Guardian in its current edition, have done stories on a major settlement in which a Hearst subsidiary (First Data Bank in San Bruno) has ” agreed to stop publishing its list of wholesale medicine prices, which numerous critics have blamed for driving up drug costs,” as an AP story in the Houston Chronicle/Hearst puts it. (See story on the link below). Would you as attorney general investigate this issue and determine if it would save health plans $4 billion and if there should be any further action in this case?
Hearst and Singleton interests have, as charged in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit, effectively destroyed newspaper competition in the Bay Area and imposed regional monopoly. Would you continue the Lockyer investigation into this case? And/or would you join the suit as a co-plaintiff or an amicus? Thanks very much.
Sincerely, Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)
