"Season of the Witch" is a Reason to Bitch

    David Talbot, son of movie actor Lyle Talbot and founder of Salon.com, has written a book entitled "Season of the Witch" that chronicles the horrific history of San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s. Sounds a lot like "Philips Code" so naturally some people wondered if  I knew Talbot. The two books deal with the same time frame, but that's about all they have in common. My book makes no claim to being a history. It's a critique of the news media, one I hope was done in an entertaining way.  I tried to contact David Talbot  several times, but to no avail. Even his underlings did not return my messages, which led me to conclude that while the post office is "snail mail" contemporary communications methods are often "fail mail." I met David Talbot only once. That was more than a decade ago when I interviewed his father who lived in San Francisco, resulting in one of those "you-know-his-face-but-not-his-name" stories. Later, I wrote Lyle Talbot's obituary. His son's book is subtitled "Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love," which I think should be changed to "San Francisco History for Dummies." If you are not a native of San Francisco - and Talbot isn't -  "Season" is a good place to start your education.

   The book recounts a terrible time that saw the Zebra killings, the Symbionese Liberartion Army  (SLA), the mass suicide by the Peoples Temple followers of Jim Jones, the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. etc., etc., etc.  If the sources listed in the back are any indication, the author did gumshoe work during his research. However, he seldom cites a source in the text, which can be jarring when he writes about something or someone the reader knows. For instance, he said Tom Cahill, San Francisco's police chief at the time, "urged fathers to use the rod on their children - and their wives." Talbot fails to note where that information came from. I knew Tom Cahill. A friend of my wife's family, he was at my wedding at Star of the Sea in 1962, and, of course, we connected during my work at UPI. I can't think of anyone less likely to beat his wife. I concede Cahill may have made a remark in jest, but if so the information should have been clarified. The book also mentions - barely -  "sociologist Todd Gitlin" for observing that the SLA was the graveyard of the 1960s New Left. It fails, however, to note that Gitlin, one time president of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, but known to many as Shit Disturbing Students), wrote the powerful book, "The Whole World is Watching," which postulates that mass media is the incubator for radical movements, a theory proven almost every day. For example, any protest that drew four "occupiers" was good for some coverage while 35,000 anti-abortion protesters marching on the San Francisco waterfront were virtually ignored.

    I wish Talbot had gone more deeply into how the news media shaped San Francisco's reputation and clout during this time, which is what I  tried to do.  He quoted Herb Caen and some local reporters, but did not go in to how AP and UPI, which both had well-staffed bureaus in San Francisco, carried the city's story to the rest of the nation. After all, this was a time when newspapers were just about the only game in town. They were powerful enough to support two major wire services, unlike the moribund empress dowagers newspapers are today, a description that could apply to San Francisco itself.
    The author describes San Francisco Examiner Guy Wright as a "conservative," an adjective that's a kiss of death from Talbot. Wright, he said, "sounded" like killer Dan White "himself" when, after the assassinations of Moscone and Milk, Wright told his readers San Francisco had become "aberration city ... a city without a norm." If Wright left a journalistic legacy it was not this. It was his lone wolf crusade to show that fire department recruitment standards were lowered to the point "that skin color and gender will count for everything and ability for next to nothing."  A few years later the fire department would be devastated by the so-called "swastika incident," which was a pure fabrication aided and abetted by the Chronicle and the wire services. Then there's the Zebra killings, which saw whites killed for no other reason than their skin color. Talbot writes that the killings that went into double figures "faded" from the city's collective memory. How does something that terrible "fade" unless it is allowed to do so?
      Also unnoticed is the role Ramparts, the muckraking San Francisco-based magazine, had in shaping San Francisco into an outpost of radical change. (See earlier posting) Warren Hinckle, the power behind Ramparts, is noted but once. The book reports that Diane Feinstein tried to dump a drink on Hinckle, an amusing incident that was news to me. I find the omission of Hinckle strange because Catholics seem to be favorite targets of both men.

      Talbot blasts the "old boy" network of Irish and Italian Catholics he said ran the city (strange that one never sees terms like "new boy" or "old girl"), forgetting that the likes of Mayors George Christopher or Elmer Robinson hardly fell into either of those camps. The police department was a bastion of a "rosary and billy club culture," he said. Talbot concedes that the Irish values were "family oriented" but says it's a good thing they were replaced by today's San Francisco values of "live and let live." He postulates that San Francisco was healed from its time of terror by "learning how to take care of its sick and dying," a reference to AIDs. He should have talked to someone old enough to recall a time when "Catholic values" helped bring about a string of emergency hospitals throughout the city, emergency hospitals that did not charge. Even the ambulance service was free.

     For all the ranting against Catholics, there is only one person in the book who strikes me as someone I wish I had known and  he was Catholic: John Barbagelata, Moscone's main political rival. Barbagelata knew of Moscone's sexual escapades but refused to use the information. "Barbagelata was old school, and he believed you don't do certain things to another man's family, no matter how passionate the feud," Talbot writes. Sounds like good values to me - even if they might be Catholic or conservative.


      


 

     

The Chen Story: A lesson in Oz reporting

                

   Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng finally got out of China. Looks as though he will be attending New York University Law School. I hope he finds time to lecture at the Columbia School of Journalism.

   I read today's New York Times report about  Chen's arrival in New York. Quite long. I had to read all the way to the last paragraph to find out his protests were about forced abortions and forced sterilizations. I already knew this, but only because I had searched the Internet for background when I read earlier stories or heard news reports about him on television.

   The Chen story is a fine example of  the journalism courses taught at the University of Oz where the first rule is "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

    The Times report described Chen as a "blind legal advocate." Does that mean he wants the law to be blind? I read earlier news accounts that labeled him a "blind dissident." For a long time I thought he was protesting for more guide dogs or a Chinese version of the ADA.

    The major league media weren't the only opinion makers to dance around abortion and sterilization when writing about Chen. Susan Ariel Aasronson, a prof at George Washington University, was given a column in the San Francisco Chronicle. She was described as "the author of books and articles on trade, corruption, Internet freedom and human rights." She never once mentioned forced abortion in her piece headlined "China's corruption plight." She did say Chen "worked to expose government human rights abuses, including mistreatment of the disabled." That was all.
 
     Some will probably blame this oversight on "media's liberal bias," but we all know that is a myth - like global warming, Sure, there's a liberal bias, but that doesn't mean a reporter with backbone can't do the right thing. Besides, a "pro-choice" backer can see that this is a matter of  choice, thus making government force the issue. No. I think the problem results from quickened technology. It is just too easy to go along with whatever the omnipresent media banter dictates.

      Remember Steven Mosher? A student at Stanford University a few decades ago, Mosher exposed forced abortions in China, but the issue quickly became the quality of his scholarship.
   
     "Chen Guangcheng and I have been fighting the same battle for years," Mosher said in a news release in which he said he had witnessed "forced abortions, coercive sterilizations and infanticide in China." Yet, even he described Chen as a "blind, self-taught attorney" and saved the abortion reference to near the end of the news release.

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The story NOT on page 1

In just one week, three San Francisco Bay area teachers were arrested on sex abuse charges. I'm not surprised if this is news to you. I saw very little in my local papers. The latest case involved a Union City high school teacher who is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student. The earlier cases involved a teacher and a 14-year-old. The other was a case of sexual assault by a teacher whose students include second and third graders. All in one week!!

My first reaction was "what if these people had been priests?" I bet the story would be on page one. Today the San Francisco Chronicle ran a six graf story about the latest case. Pretty short, but enough to gain 175 comment postings under the story in around six hours. Few of the comments noted the difference in coverage. That is to be expected. Please see this blog's 2007 entry on the AP teacher sex abuse series that few newspapers ran, even though it was too little and much too late.

All this is more evidence that news is what newspapers say it is. Think not? I wonder where the Occupy movement would be if the MLM (Major League Media) covered it the same way it covered anti-abortion marches. There's an anti-abortion demonstration coming up this month in San Francisco, an event that in the past drew 35,000 people. You didn't know? Again, I'm not surprised.

A "1 percenter" and proud of it

The Occupy Wall Street movement could help the sale of "Philip's Code," enough, I hope, to lift me into the "1 percent" category. One point the book attempts to make is that language is no longer dictated through usage but is imposed by an increasingly powerful mass media. The use of "1 percent" is a perfect example.

A few months ago the term "1 percent" was used by the media to refer to the percentage of people who served in the military or had relatives in the armed forces. Even before that, the Hells Angels thought of themselves as representing "1 percent" of motorcycle riders. That's because in the 1960s the American Motorcycle Association, worried about the "Wild One" image, issued a report saying that 99 percent of bikers were law-abiding citizens. Today the Hells Angels patch proclaims 1 percent. Now, suddenly, the term defines the richest Americans.

I used to think of myself as being in the old one percent, which became even more important when my Marine grandson came home recently from Afghanistan, joining a long list of relatives who served, including two grandfathers and four uncles.

I gave this a good deal of thought today, Pearl Harbor Day, when I realized that World War II veterans will soon all join the final muster. When they are gone, who will be around to fact check the history of a war whose impact can be felt today?

The book also tries to show that the past is alive, or, as Faulkner wrote, it isn't even "past." It makes mention of how the veterans spoke up during the controversy over the Smithsonian Museum's exhibit on Hiroshima. I learned later that they challenged the basic facts of the PBS show, "The Liberators," which the veterans claimed gave credit for liberating Germany's death camps to the wrong Army outfits.

Today the Internet allows even the lower 99 percent of the population to air its opinions. Still, it is the media with the money that counts. Think not? Don't you find it strange that 35,000 people can march in San Francisco and get little notice from the media - which is what happened to anti-abortion protesters.
Internet or no Internet, when the last WWII veteran dies, look for a rewriting of history from a university near you.

Royal Girls Rule: The Rest of the Story

The coverage of the change in the line of succession to the British throne was a lesson in reporting right out of "Philip's Code," although I grant that few Americans care much about the subject matter.

Most stories I saw or heard zeroed in on the fact that the 16 nations that recognize the British monarch struck "a historic blow for women's rights" when they abolished primogeniture, the male precedence in the order of succession to the throne. Every headline was along the lines of "Girls Rule" or "Girls Get Equal Shot at Crown." That crown won't, however, sit on a Catholic, whether male or female. The Commonwealth countries did allow that the king or queen could marry a Catholic, which was formerly a no-no. Other religions were OK - just not Catholic.

The New York Times' story by John Burns was right on target: the move was a "blow for women's rights," but, seasoned reporter he is, Burns also stressed the religious angle, noting in the opening paragraph that "the possibility of a Catholic monarch will have to wait." The San Francisco Chronicle used Burns' story under a headline that read "Girls rule: Boys lose first dibs on ascending the throne."

My local papers, the Daily Journal and Daily News, made no mention of religion. Both used Associated Press stories by Cassandra Vinograd. What an appropriate first name for a reporter, particularly for this story - a Cassandra is one who can see in to the future but is not believed. My first impression was that this Cassandra could guide the future by simply ignoring one fact and stressing another. Remember what Phil Davis said about the truth being the sum of the facts. True, the AP story emphasized the gender angle, but it also noted the change regarding Catholics, albeit buried. What I can't understand is why my local dailies used the AP story but dropped the Catholic part. I will ask the editors. Stay tuned.

The Economist and the future of news

The prestigious British magazine The Economist, which traces its lineage to 1843, predicts advances in technology will eventually take news consumers "back to the coffee house" era when men in whigs and three-cornered hats debated public policy ad nauseam. Has the author been in a coffee house lately? I've never heard anyone in my local Starbucks debate anything. Most flee with their hands tightly clutching cups. Those who stay stare down at laptops that resemble tombstones, making me visualize the line in Eleanor Rigby about "all the lonely people." I think a better analogy for the future would be a beer hall - that's beer hall as in putsch.

I can not understand why the 14-page special report in the July 9th edition failed to mention wire services, the main gatherers and distributors of news. Perhaps bringing up the subject might undermine the article's premise that "news is becoming a social medium again, as it was until the early 19th century - only more so." Just who was the author? I was just about ready to conclude that "it beats the hell out of me" when I spotted very small print at the bottom of the first page that informed me of the availability of "an interview" with the author. I checked it out and got an earful from Tom Standage, the magazine's "digital" editor. Digital is apt, since he gave the finger to some honored journalistic traditions - such as a byline. The first graf of the report states: "The Internet has turned the news industry upside down, making it more participatory, social, diverse and partisan - as it used to be before the arrival of the mass media, says Tom Standage." The graf is set off in type much darker than the rest of the piece, making it seem more like a headline than part of the story. Standage's name is given, but not his job title or qualifications. All I could think of was those phony names people use in postings under "comment" lines.

Looking to the future is an easy assignment since no one knows for sure what tomorrow brings. We can take a pretty good shot at the past, however, and on that score the article came up short. In seeing that "in the Internet age, transparency may count for more than objectivity," The Economist goes on to report that "during the 19th century newspapers gradually adopted a more objective stance" in order to appeal to a wider audience. Really? Anyone heard of Mr. Hearst? Newspapers then were outrageous in their partisanship. Everyone connected with the Economist report should be forced to watch "The Front Page." The wire services were the real pioneers in objectivity. Truly, they could not afford to offend. That, perhaps, is one reason many people criticize news agency writing as bland.

The section on objectivity delves in to what it refers to as "the Foxification of news." Why the surprise at the power and success of Fox News, or any outlet that gives conservatives a voice? Several of my earlier postings concern the birth of talk radio, which wouldn't have seen the light of day if print media had been more balanced.

The Economist report is better, I think, when it concerns the business end of news. I am the first to admit that I know little about that subject, although I am sure bad business decisions are responsible for more newspaper deaths than bad reporting. I know that first hand, having worked at UPI for 25 years and saw the stake put through its heart. Under bold type reading "Fun while it lasted," a chart shows the decline in newspaper ad revenue from 1980 to today. I was there when newspapers were pretty much the only game in town. My book reports on what I saw which was what happens when no one stands up to the neighborhood bully. The important part of newspaper is news, not paper.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell - And then some

The news media has a strict "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in covering gays (AKA homosexuals) in the military. Reporters don't ask important questions so they don't tell us very much. A recent PBS News Hour featured two members of a commission studying what would happen if DADT ended. One said the military treated everyone as "equals" and gays merely wanted the same treatment, nothing special. Everyone is treated as equals? So that's why female service members have different standards and living facilities, not to mention the contrasting worlds rank creates. Is there a reporter with the guts to ask if allowing openly gay soldiers in barracks will lead to the end of separate female and male quarters? I recall a movie about the army of the future that shows male and female space troopers showering together.

I sense that few reporters actually served in the military. I shouldn't be surprised. Veterans were slim in the ranks of reporters when I worked at AP. I remember a news conference by former soldiers who sued CNN over its "Tailwind Story." The 40 or so assembled journalists were asked to raise their hands if they served in the armed forces. About five or so hands, including mine, went up. This incident is covered in my book, so I won't go in to details.
I think the problem is that there are no really good military writers. I don't mean war correspondence, of which there are many outstanding ones. I mean the "peace correspondence," the reporter, possibly a veteran, whose full time job is covering the armed forces, who reads the Marine Gazette and All Hands and has contacts in all services.

If there had been a few of these around during the WMD controversy a key question might have been asked: What was the mission statement given to the troops just before the invasion? Was it "Find Those Damned Weapons of Mass Destruction!!!" No, the Eve of Battle statement by Major General James Mattis to the soldiers and marines who would risk their lives was a simple one: Get rid of Saddam Hussein who "for decades .. has tortured, imprisoned, raped, and murdered the Iraqi people." Weapons of Mass Destruction were only mentioned in passing, and then in the past tense.

I suppose the failure to highlight the statement should be expected from a news corps that struck deals with Saddam to pay little attention to his crimes in exchange for access to news elsewhere (See John Burns' comments in "Embedded."
Today Bing West is an exception when it comes to military writers. He's very good, but I consider him a military writers' writer. Reporters read him to be informed. When the reading public mentions a military writer it's usually Thomas Ricks, author of "Making the Corps" and "Fiasco." I wasn't impressed by either book. How can one take seriously a writer who, on page 398, dismisses lack of coverage of the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004 by saying that by then "journalists were fatigued and probably numbed somewhat to the violence." And this after conceding that "if a battle of this intensity had occurred during the spring of 2003 invasion, reporters would have treated it like another D-Day." Someone didn't do their job - and I don't mean the marines.