One would think with such importance that reporters and news organizations would have in place an incredibly large presence to cover the comings and goings of lawmakers and agencies in Sacramento. Yet, disconcertingly, the opposite is true.

In fact, the number of reporters covering state government is at a startling low. And a recent Pew study shows that number will likely continue to decline.

According to the study, national numbers of reporters covering state legislatures has dropped more than 35 percent since 2003, outpacing the overall drop in journalists from all fields. The Sacramento Bee, the newspaper of the capitol, has cut its state government reporting staff by almost half.  The same thing happened at the L.A. Times. Last December, Southern California Public Radio announced it would close its Sacramento news bureau and similarly, last August, ABC News announced the closing of its broadcast presence in the capitol.

The Pew study also exposed huge gaps in newspapers covering state capitols — only 30 percent of newspapers polled cover their state government at all.  Which means entire cities or regions read the news every day and see no significant legislative coverage. News stations are reducing the time the assigned reporters even spend on covering government. Only half of reporters assigned to cover state government do so full-time, and 15 percent of those assigned are student interns. If news organizations are not adequately reporting on how our state leaders are spending tax dollars and making decisions on our behalf, who will? 

What makes our situation in California worse is how we compare based on the length of our legislative sessions.  California is one of just five states with a 12-month legislative session.  Texas, the state with the most reporters, and full-time reporters, assigned to the state government, has an average legislative session length of under 5 months.  Among states with a year-long legislative calendar, California has a significantly higher percentage of part-time reporters.

It’s not as if the Legislature isn’t giving reporters plenty to keep an eye on.  In 2013, the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to opening government, gave our state Legislature a “D” grade.  Important details about legislation, committee assignments and votes weren’t available anywhere on the state’s website.  The report showed it was nearly impossible to tell what was going on in our own government based on what they report themselves.

Despite ongoing scandals and ethics violations, a significant number of legislators in Sacramento have backed away from passing comprehensive ethics reform.  And the Legislature adjourned for recess earlier this year without touching the most pressing issue on its agenda: A reformed water bond agreement that has been awaiting approval since former Governor Schwarzenegger helped draft the legislation five years ago.  If there were more coverage of Sacramento, would legislators move faster on legislation like this? I’d like to think so.

Heading into the November election, we’re about to send a lot of new leaders to make decisions for us. And there are decisions of great consequence, from education funding, to insurance premiums, to drought preparedness, to business and regulatory policies, at stake. Citizens need to know what politicians and influencers are doing and saying in Sacramento to make informed decisions.  And a vibrant press corps is essential to providing such information.

“Thirty years ago, energy companies began drilling for natural gas in the Barnett Shale, a huge underground formation in Central Texas. Their high hopes were not shared by the U.S. Geological Survey, which estimated only 1 trillion to 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas were ‘technically recoverable’ in Barnett. For more than a decade, this skepticism seemed dead-on.

“But then increasing refinements to an old drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing demolished assumptions about what was ‘technically recoverable.’ By 2003, nearly 1,800 wells had successfully tapped the Barnett Shale, triggering an economic boom that continues to enrich Texas to this day.

“So far, the Barnett Shale has yielded 13 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. An estimated 31 trillion more cubic feet is now seen as ‘technically recoverable.’”

Fracking keeps improving — and proving estimates wrong

That’s from my U-T San Diego editorial. Here’s some more:

“[Energy firms] remember what was said about the Barnett Shale — and they know that because of technological gains, hydraulic fracturing just keeps getting more and more effective. In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, giant underground water cannons are used to pulverize rock formations that block access to oil and natural gas reserves. With every passing year, energy companies are able to more precisely map underground drilling areas — and aim their water cannons — using the equivalent of immense MRIs.”

I know California’s underground geology is so fractured because of seismic activity that experts say it will be much more difficult to access oil and natural gas reserves than in North Dakota or Texas. But it seems a decent bet that the biggest obstacle to fracking in California remains not our geology but the intense opposition by enviros — which is greatly aided by the bizarre refusal of the California media to acknowledge that the greenest president in history considers it safe.

If the CA fracking debate built off the understanding that the Obama administration has repeatedly attested to its safety, the tone of the debate would be much different. Green true believers wouldn’t change their minds. But lots of moderates — and lots of poor people tired of living in the state with the nation’s highest poverty rate — might take a fresh look at fracking.

]]> https://calwatchdog.com/2014/05/25/64010/feed/ 22 64010 https://calwatchdog.com/2014/01/13/sacramento-area-russians-sochi-olympics-and-how-homophobia-is-covered/ https://calwatchdog.com/2014/01/13/sacramento-area-russians-sochi-olympics-and-how-homophobia-is-covered/#comments Mon, 13 Jan 2014 14:15:13 +0000 http://calwatchdog.com/?p=57391 One of the biggest storylines leading up to next month’s Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, is the Western world’s stern disapproval of Russia’s homophobia and the fear that it could cast a pall over the event and lead to problems for gay Olympians and gay tourists coming to Sochi for the games.

This, in turn, is likely to lead to stories about the Russian community in the Sacramento area and its troubling history. This is from a 2006 Los Angeles Times story:

“SACRAMENTO — Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble.

“The Q Crew, a local ‘queer/straight alliance,’ distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground’s cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.

“Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization.

“‘So far, so good,’ he said. ‘No Russians.

“The festival, held last month amid the gay bars, restaurants and shops of midtown’s ‘Lavender Heights’ neighborhood, went off without conflict. But the elaborate security preparations reflected growing tensions between Sacramento gays and the city’s large and vociferous community of fundamentalist Christians from the former Soviet Union.”

Things appear much better now than in 2006 and 2007, when there was a fatal hate crime, but it is still an issue and will probably be part of how the California media covers Sochi.

Thoughtcrime: How dare you cite homophobic non-Westerners!

But there’s another angle that always amazes me. It’s the gigantic double standard the Western mainstream media have about homophobia. When they point out its existence in Russia — or anywhere in the U.S. or Europe — there is a judgmental tone. As someone who opposed Proposition 22 in 2000, this doesn’t bother me. I’m a libertarian, not a social conservative.

However, when people point out homophobia in non-Western nations, it’s often depicted as a sign of their intolerance, incredibly enough. As a Buzzfeed map illustrated last summer, there are 76 nations in the world where it is illegal to be homosexual — Arab and Muslim nations in the Middle East and Asia and nations with a variety of religions in Africa and the Caribbean. Russia is not on the list. In these 76 nations, gay loathing is an accepted and encouraged cultural norm, and being gay opens one up to criminal sanctions.

Yet while homophobic Russians in Russia and the Sacramento Valley are fair game for critics of homophobia, the Western media’s cultural/racial/ethno-protectionism insulates residents of 76 other nations from such criticism by implying that those who offer the criticism are the problem — not the homophobes they criticize.

“1984” never came to pass, but Orwell’s conception of thoughtcrime is one of the most powerful forces in modern culture. How strong is it? Even liberal gays won’t swim against the tide.

Now Baroness DiFi wants to define as a “journalist” only those in MainStream Media. New media would be considered peons with no First Amendment protections. Matt Drudge, the most famous and influential of the New Media Journalists, tweeted that she was a “Fascist.”

What’s so great about the MainStream Media anyway? In 2003, Judith Miller of the august New York Times, the most prestigious newspaper ever, stovepiped lies about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” from the Republican Bush administration into the pages of her newspaper.

Then there was the infamous Pulitzer Prize that went to the MSM’s second most influential paper, the Washington Post, for a manufactured story by Janet Cooke, “Jimmy’s World,” about a supposed 8-year-old heroin addict.

Baroness DiFi’s position is especially embarrassing for Silicon Valley, whose billionaire investors mostly backed her. They’ve built the infrastructure of alternative media that, finally, take us outside the government-MainStream Media axis, and their own senator stabs them in the back! Baroness DiFi still wants to live in the Dark Ages of 1993, the year before the Web Awakening of 1994.

Journalists join government

But it is understandable why Baroness DiFi takes that view. As Breitbart reported, 15 journalists (using the Baroness DiFi definition) have joined the Obama administration.

And just last week Katy Grimes reported here on CalWatchDog.com on how more than a dozen state journalists now work for the California state government’s multitudinous departments and bureaus. Just a snippet from that article:

“Nancy Vogel, covered state government as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She also worked at The Sacramento Bee, ‘covering various issues, including water policy, from 1990 to 2000.’ Then Vogel took a job with the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes as a principal consultant. Her colleagues at the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes were John Hill, formerly a reporter with The Sacramento Bee, and Mark Arax, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

“Vogel now works for the Department of Water Resources as the Director of Public Affairs.”

If Baroness DiFi had her way, the government-MSM axis would be all you heard from. The truth never would get out.

But thanks tot he New Media, the truth shall set you free.

July 8, 2013

By Chris Reed

In writing about how California journalists simply refuse to acknowledge that the Obama administration considers fracking to be safe — a huge endorsement, given that Barack Obama is the greenest president in history — I suggested that eventually Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters might play his occasional role of contrarian and point out the truth.

By Chris Reed

One of the worst failings of journalists who cover California government is their failure when writing about budgets to always mention the automatic “step” raises that many public employees get each year, including most teachers, just for accumulating time on the job. These auto raises explain why government agencies depict any reduction in proposed spending increases as “cuts.” But they don’t explain why reporters do so.

In failing to offer this context, journalists let down their readers in many other ways as well. “Step” increases explain why pensions get so high and why so few public employees leave their jobs compared to those in the private sector. They also help explain why the productivity revolution never arrived in the public sector. The government status quo may be inefficient, but if it means there are lots of jobs where few people get fired and many/most people get automatic raises, then there is a huge constituency to keep it inefficient.

A reporter who provides context: It can be done

Which brings us to two very different recent stories in the California media.

Here’s what a sharp journalist sounds like when talking about how public employee pay works in California. It’s Will Carless of the Voice of San Diego in an Q&A with Bernie Rhinerson, a top San Diego Unified official:

“… three years ago, the board decided to hand out a whole slew of raises.

“Collective bargaining is give-and-take, and concessions.

“At that point in time, teachers gave up five days of paid work; they gave up almost 3 percent of their salary to get a promise of raises in the future. They got the kids through another year without big layoffs.

“And our teachers hadn’t had a raise in years.

“They had a raise in 2008, two years earlier.

“Well, that was before I came.

“They had had a raise, though.

“Well, that was five years ago now. Have you had a raise in five years?

“Sure, but now you’re repeating another canard. Most teachers in the district get raises every single year, just for staying alive. My wife does. Yes, I’ve had a raise, maybe one a year, but so have most teachers. As a communications person, don’t you think that we should start to be a bit more frank about terms like that? Why is an across-the-board raise any different (from) a step-and-column raise? They’re both raises.

“I’m not going to argue about the system in California.”

A reporter who is clueless: California’s sad norm

This sort of context should be required. Unfortunately, even in 2013, this sort of coverage of from the Los Angeles Daily News’ Christina Villacorte is still the norm:

“Los Angeles County employees, who are demanding pay raises after five years of going without, could see as much as $285 million in additional salaries and benefits in the coming fiscal year.

“The county is still negotiating with its various labor unions, but it provided that estimate to Moody’s Investors Service during an evaluation of its creditworthiness.

“County’s spokesman David Sommers emphasized that pay raises are a possibility — not a given.

“‘There are a number of proposals floating around about different scenarios of what salary and cost-of-living increases could look like,’ Sommers said. ‘That’s just one possible computation.’

“Sommers said the county provided that estimate because ‘the potential of salary increases — whether they happen or not — are things which rating agencies take into account when thinking about what’s next for us financially.'”

Don’t blame journalistic lapses on newspaper downsizing. It’s incompetence.

Note that Sommers apparently didn’t bother to tell Villacorte that, yes, lots of L.A. County employees got annual step raises, whether or not supervisors increased the broad pay scale of county employees in general after collective bargaining.

But why should he? Shouldn’t the Daily News reporter know this?

Of course.

But don’t blame this on the loss of “institutional knowledge” that resulted from the gutting of newspaper staffs over the past decade. I’ve lived in California since 1990. Even the Los Angeles Times at its bloated biggest — from, say, 1995 to 2003 — never routinely mentioned “step” pay hikes in writing about the state budget.

Why? Who knows? But it’s a black eye for California journalism whatever the reason.

By Chris Reed

There’s been quite a bit of good reporting done on the bullet-train fiasco. Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury-News and Lance Williams of California Watch jump to mind. But Ralph Vartabedian of the Los Angeles Times probably deserves top honors.

Vartabedian’s smart, nuanced beat reporting points discerning readers toward the truth — namely, that California’s project makes Boston’s Big Dig look like a work of efficient genius. The latest example was his piece this week on why and how some of the bullet train’s most ardent and longtime defenders have turned on the project. It’s full of interesting specifics that set up his future reporting on court fights over the project’s legality.

But it’s more than just this sort of sharp professionalism. Bullet train followers know all about Quentin Kopp’s misgivings and the lies and deceptions that have marked the project since well before it won $9.95 billion in bond seed money from state voters in 2008. Here’s what Vartabedian has done that is exceptional: His reporting has shown the bullet train fiasco is even worse than we imagined!

This is from his Jan. 27, 2013, piece, headlined “State has yet to buy any land for train”:

“Construction of California’s high-speed rail network is supposed to start in just six months, but the state hasn’t acquired a single acre along the route and faces what officials are calling a challenging schedule to assemble hundreds of parcels needed in the Central Valley.

“The complexity of getting federal, state and local regulatory approvals for the massive $68-billion project has already pushed back the start of construction to July from late last year. Even with that additional time, however, the state is facing a risk of not having the property to start major construction work near Fresno as now planned. …

“It hopes to begin making purchase offers for land in the next several weeks. But that’s only the first step in a convoluted legal process that will give farmers, businesses and homeowners leverage to delay the project by weeks, if not months, and drive up sales prices, legal experts say.

“One major stumbling block could be valuing agricultural land in a region where prices have been soaring, raising property owners’ expectations far above what the state expects to pay. …

“Delays in starting construction could set in motion a chain reaction of problems that would jeopardize the politically and financially sensitive timetable for building the $6-billion first leg of the system. …

“If the construction schedule slips, costs could grow and leave the state without enough money to complete the entire first segment. ..

“In addition to property, the rail authority still needs permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and approval by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, two more potential choke points that Morales says can be navigated.

Here’s an excerpt from “Rail line’s big dig,” the Nov. 13, 2012, piece by Vartabedian that outlines the project’s insane complexity:

“The sheer scale and scope of the bullet train’s push into Southern California, including traversing complex seismic hazards, would rival construction of the state’s massive freeway system, water transport networks and its port complexes. It is likely to be viewed in future decades as an engineering marvel — or a costly folly. ..

“The plan calls for bullet trains to shoot east from Bakersfield at 220 mph, climbing one of the steepest sustained high-speed rail inclines in the world. It would soar over canyons on viaducts as high as a 33-story skyscraper. The line would duck in and out of tunnels up to 500 feet below the rugged surface. It would cross more than half a dozen earthquake faults heading toward L.A.

“Tunneling machines as long as a football field will have to be jockeyed into mountain canyons to do the heavy, back-breaking work once left to Chinese laborers. New access roads and a corridor for high-voltage power lines will have to be carved through the Tehachapis to feed power-hungry trains. When completed and fully operational, the bullet train will need an estimated 2.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity each day — about a quarter of Hoover Dam’s average daily output. …

“One measure of the topographic challenge: Over that 141 miles from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, up to 59% of the track would run in tunnels or on viaducts, according to preliminary planning documents. …

“At this point, the rail authority estimates it will cost about $7.7 billion to build the 83 miles of rail from Bakersfield to Palmdale and about $12.5 billion to build the 58 miles of rail from Palmdale to Union Station. …

“Depending on the slope of the track, the tallest viaduct could be 200 to 330 feet off the ground.

“The same holds true for the segment through the San Gabriel Mountains, roughly following California 14.  …

“California’s bullet train will have to operate over some of the nation’s most seismically active terrain … . There are half a dozen faults between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, including the White Wolf and San Andreas, both capable of producing a 7.5 magnitude quake. Where high viaducts are near faults, engineers are considering reinforced concrete structures that would resist ground motion and have containment features to prevent a derailed bullet train from plunging to the ground … . At full speed, however, a bullet train would need four to five miles to make an emergency stop on level ground, and longer going downhill.”

I don’t know how anyone could read this without thinking about every other sentence, “The state of California is competent to pull this off?” Nor do I think anyone could read this and think the bullet train will only cost $68 billion. Triple that — at least.

Which brings us to the Los Angeles Times editorial page. According to Nexis, the last time it weighed in on the bullet train, in November 2011, here was the literally juvenile result:

 “It’s a gamble, and not one to be taken lightly. But gasoline isn’t going to get any cheaper in the future and the freeways aren’t going to get less clogged. We think California can find a way to get the train built. We think it can. We think it can….”

Yes, the L.A. Times editorial page editor actually invoked “The Little Engine That Could” in sickeningly cutesy fashion to stick up for this folly.

I bet, to invoke a Trent Dilferism, Ralph Vartabedian threw up in his mouth a little when he read that painfully childish and uninformed editorial.

By Chris Reed

The Federal Aviation Administration’s announcement that 11 air control towers in California will shut down on Sunday, April 7, because of sequestration cuts to the federal budget is offered up by the administration as unfortunate but inevitable. But a Los Angeles Times account was refreshingly tart about what’s really going on:

“Critics have questioned whether the closures were necessary or part of a tactical gambit to gain leverage in Washington’s ongoing budget battles. The contract tower association’s executive director, Spencer Dickerson, said in a statement that ‘aviation safety shouldn’t be politicized.’

“Many smaller airports operate without control towers, with pilots using radio communications to coordinate movements in the air and on the ground.

“Still, local officials responsible for airport operations in Southern California’s busy airspace said the FAA’s decision is worrisome. Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich chided the government for a ‘politically motivated decision.’ Shutting down towers would have little impact on spending levels, he said, but a big impact on public safety.”

The Times’ insinuations are welcome. Does anyone truly believe that the Obama administration is dealing with $85 billion in cuts in a  $3.6 trillion budget in a way that reflects best management practices and a desire to maximize safety?

Nah. In the White House’s never-ending attempts to demonize anyone who doesn’t want spending to go up now and forever, we’re seeing scary decisions by the Federal Aviation Administration — decisions that could lead to fatal crashes and accidents.

Wouldn’t a federal wage and hiring freeze make a lot more sense than shutting down air control towers? Of course.

The California-style twist to the federal sequester

Here’s the context to the FAA’s decision that doesn’t get the focus it should. Federal employees aren’t losing their jobs — just contractors:

“The U.S. will close 149 air-traffic control towers run by contractors at small- and mid-sized airports beginning on April 7 as a result of automatic budget cuts at government agencies.”

That’s Bloomberg’s lead to its March 22 story. So public employees are insulated from the consequences of government budget chaos.

How very California of Washington.

By Katy Grimes

Is it any surprise that sports, weather and traffic now account for 40 percent of the content on television newscasts? “In 2012, a continued erosion of news reporting resources converged with growing opportunities for those in politics, government agencies, companies and others to take their messages directly to the public,” reports a new study from the Pew Research Center’s project for excellence in journalism.

Most interesting however, is who is leaving news outlets: “People who said they had forsaken a news outlet were more likely to be men than women, older than younger, richer than poorer and Republican or independent rather than Democratic. While about one-third of Republicans and independents stopped turning to a news outlet, just one-quarter of Democrats did,” the report found.

“The primary concern for people who gave up on an outlet seems to be quality,” the report found.

Surprise, surprise.

“When asked which they noticed more, fewer stories or less complete stories, far more people said the latter (24 percent to 61 percent). While reduced thoroughness in stories was the more prevalent response among adults overall who were aware of the struggles, the split was not nearly as wide – 48 percent versus 31 percent.”

The report found that thoroughness in the stories was the biggest problem. People want complete stories and are fed up with media not asking questions.” 61 percent of them said stories were less complete than they had been versus just 24 percent who complained there were too few stories,” the study found.

This is what I rail on constantly. Too many members of the dwindling media are skilled stenographers, and don’t bother to ask “who, what, when, where, why, and how?” The questions not asked are apparently what has so many Americans leaving news broadcasts in search of thorough content.

Take a look at the report – share your thoughts.

The State of the News Media 2013

By Chris Reed

It’s bad enough that the media consistently depict hydraulic fracturing as new when it’s been around for 60-plus years. But what’s also amazing is that the California media covering the state government’s ongoing attempts to develop “fracking” regulations — including occasional contrarian Dan Walters — never mention the fact that the Obama administration has basically said full speed ahead. The U.S. Energy Department accepts the consensus of regulators over the past 40 years that fracking to access oil and natural gas reserves is just another heavy industry — one that’s fairly dirty but manageable.

I made this point in a U-T San Diego editorial which noted fracking’s immense potential to create an economic boom in the Golden State:

“What few seem to understand, and what the media have rarely emphasized, is that the Obama administration dismisses [environmentalists’] alarmism about fracking … .

“This is why the president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: ‘We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.’

“This is why the MIT physicist the White House recently nominated to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as ‘challenging but manageable.’

“This is why the president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was ‘not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.’”

Have you seen this context in any MSM story about California’s regulation of fracking?

Nah.

The same pathetic bunch that ignored the downside of AB 32 until this year has ignored the fact that fracking has Obama’s blessing.

Pretty amazing.