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Pain and Suffering at the SDPD | My Reporter’s Life, Part One

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I worked for the San Diego Evening Tribune for approximately eight years and 11 months.  I was just 13 months short of being vested in the retirement program when I quit. That’s okay.  

If I’d stayed on at the paper I might have gone fully crazy.  

I was 28 when the Trib hired me out of a small-town daily in New Jersey’s rural northwest. I think somewhere I still have a picture of myself at the Sussex County Fair — taken by the staff photographer who’d accompanied me — as I tried to milk a Holstein. Standard stuff for small-town dailies back then.

I asked the wise guy Italian Assistant Managing Editor named Larry Lusitana why he’d hired me, and he said: “We’ve had good luck with people from New Jersey.”  It was only after I’d left the paper that I found out Lusitana was from that state.   [Read more…]

Trump on 60 Minutes: “I’m President and You’re Not”

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

In a lengthy interview broadcast on Sunday evening, Leslie Stahl presented Donald Trump a long series of questions. Though she occasionally got answers—many of them unrelated to what was asked—and many of those answers were deeply laced with equal parts ignorance and arrogance, the most horrifying part of the whole event was how familiar it all seemed. 60 Minutes with Donald Trump seemed much like every other minute with Donald Trump. And that’s a problem.

In all the questions she asked, Stahl discovered … nothing, really. Trump hates the press. We knew that. Trump is ready to claim that he knows more about science than the scientists. We knew that. He says he understands the military better than his generals. We knew that. When pressed on any issue he resorts to attacking the “unfairness” of the press rather than provide a straight answer. We knew that.

Though the interview did serve as a reminder of Trump’s readiness to pretend to knowledge he doesn’t have, his utter inability to admit the truth even when caught in an obvious lie, and his horrifying incoherence in attempting to describe even the simplest facets of policy, there was perhaps just one moment that broke through.   [Read more…]

‘Occupy San Diego’ Facebook Page Occupied by Troll

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If you’re one of the 2,233 people who’ve followed the ‘Occupy San Diego’ Facebook page over the years, you might want to reconsider your relationship.

Based on what I can tell from comments posted at the site over the past 24 hours, the site is now run by somebody who’s out to mock and troll people of the progressive persuasion.

On Monday a post attributed to a follower of the bizarre conspiracy called QAnon disparaging Dr. Christine Blasey Ford appeared. Based on the comments this person or persons posting as OSD, i.e, “Liberal tears, haha,” it is clear the site no longer represents any aspect of the movement against Wall Street that inspired it.   [Read more…]

Victory! California Passes Net Neutrality Bill

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By Katharine Trendacosta / Electronic Frontier Foundation

California’s net neutrality bill, S.B. 822 has received a majority of votes in the Senate and is heading to the governor’s desk. In this fight, ISPs with millions of dollars to spend lost to the voice of the majority of Americans who support net neutrality. This is a victory that can be replicated.

ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast hated this bill. S.B. 822 bans blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, classic ways that companies have violated net neutrality principles. It also incorporates much of what the FCC learned and incorporated into the 2015 Open Internet Order, preventing new assaults on the free and open Internet. This includes making sure companies can’t circumvent net neutrality at the point of interconnection within the state of California. It also prevents companies from using zero rating—the practice of not counting certain apps or services against a data limit—in a discriminatory way. That is to say that, say, there could be a plan where all media streaming services were zero-rated, but not one where just one was. One that had either paid for the privilege or one owned by the service provider. In that respect, it’s a practice much like discriminatory paid prioritization, where ISPs create fast lanes for those who can pay or for other companies they own.   [Read more…]

Verizon Throttling During Wildfire ‘Has Everything to Do With Net Neutrality’- California Firefighters

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As California lawmakers prepared on Wednesday for a key committee vote (it passed) on their state’s net neutrality bill—which, in its current form, would restore the protections repealed by the FCC in December—the Santa Clara County Fire Department accused the telecom giant Verizon of dramatically cutting its data speed as [the department] recently fought the largest recorded wildfire in California’s history.

After Verizon admitted that it slowed the fire department’s data—a despised practice known as throttling—but claimed it was a simple mistake that “has nothing to do with net neutrality,” Santa Clara County Counsel James Williams responded in a statement on behalf of the fire department on Wednesday that “Verizon’s throttling has everything to do with net neutrality.”

“It shows that the [internet service providers] will act in their economic interests, even at the expense of public safety,” Williams added. “That is exactly what the Trump administration’s repeal of net neutrality allows and encourages.”

  [Read more…]

Don’t Get Distracted: 565 Immigrant Children Are Still Held by U.S. Authorities

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Amid a news cycle dominated by the day-to-day chaos, antics, and scandals of the Trump presidency, new government numbers released on Thursday offered a grim reminder that the humanitarian travesty sparked by President Donald Trump’s inhumane family separation policy is still ongoing, despite the fact that it has faded into the background of corporate news coverage.

In court filings on Thursday, lawyers for the Trump Justice Department said that 565 immigrant children remain separated from their parents and held in detention facilities more than three weeks after the court-mandated deadline for reunification.

While immigrant rights activists and advocacy groups have continued calling attention to the crisis and working tirelessly to ensure that every child is ultimately reunited with their families, much of the media “has largely moved on, worn out and dazzled by other outrages,” observed Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur.   [Read more…]

Editorial Statement: Who Is the Enemy of the People?

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Today – August 16 – in over three hundred editorials published in newspapers and on media platforms large and small across the country, the American press is standing up and renouncing president Trump’s declarations of the media as “the enemy of the people.”

The San Diego Free Press and the OB Rag join these denunciations, in the call to confront Trump first put out by The Boston Globe, which began its call with:

A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but rather “the enemy of the people.” This relentless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences. We asked editorial boards from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and small – to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words.   [Read more…]

Freedom of the Press, It’s Not Just for Newspapers Anymore

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More than a hundred publications have responded to The Boston Globe’s call for an editorial response on Thursday to President Donald Trump’s frequent attacks on the news media.

Here is an excerpt from an Associated Press story:

‘‘We are not the enemy of the people,’’ said Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor for the editorial page of The Boston Globe, referring to a characterization of journalists that Trump has used in the past. The president, who contends he has largely been covered unfairly by the press, also employs the term ‘‘fake news’’ often when describing the media.

The Globe has reached out to editorial boards nationwide to write and publish editorials on Aug. 16 denouncing what the newspaper called a ‘‘dirty war against the free press.’’

I really do appreciate the sentiment.

I also have to say “karma, baby.”   [Read more…]

Responding to the Unconscious Bias and Racism at National City Council Meetings

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By Mark Lane and Shane Parmely

We went to the Tuesday, July 24, National City Council meeting to speak out against the police brutality that left Earl McNeil brain dead.

For almost six weeks, we’ve peacefully and loudly protested at the National City Council meetings. For six weeks, we’ve asked the National City Police Department (NCPD) to release the videotapes pertaining to the in-custody death of Earl McNeil. For six weeks, we’ve been ignored by the three men who control the National City Council and the NCPD. For six weeks, we’ve been treated to excessive force and violence by the NCPD.

And last week, after an hour of the police, including Chief Manny Rodriguez, repeatedly and openly pushing us and other people attending the meeting, we sat down on the floor and were subsequently arrested.   [Read more…]

Facebook, Fascism, Trolls, and Press Freedom in 2018

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This is the week when the San Diego Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists holds its annual awards dinner, recognizing the many efforts in the region attempting to communicate about the people, places and things surrounding us.

Many forms of media and the humans seeking to tell stories co-exist for a few hours over a shared meal with the opportunity to gain a perspective outside their silos. Most won’t venture too far outside their personal safety zones even as the breadth of the field is on display around them.

What we media folk have in common greatly outweighs the things dividing us. Alt, non-profit, student, independent, corporate, data-driven, opinionated, virtual, electronic, and print journalists are all up against forces of change in a world where truth means less than fealty.   [Read more…]

Ex-SDPD Chief Zimmerman’s Fake News on Marijuana Takes on a Life of Its Own

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By Jessica Sutherland / Daily Kos

Ever since the term “Fake News” entered the popular lexicon, almost everyone knows to check their news sources closely, and roll their eyes at Trump. But what’s a responsible citizen to do when “Fake News” and “alternative facts” originate with reliable, trusted sources?

Recently retired San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman should, in theory, have been one of those reliable, trusted sources, assuming you trust law enforcement. Unfortunately, a recent investigation by Voice of San Diego’s Jesse Marx reveals that the former chief manufactured crime statistics in an apparent effort to block expansion of the cannabis industry within America’s Finest City. Worse, her fake facts are now being used to justify and shape cannabis attitudes and policy in other municipalities.

This is how it begins.   [Read more…]

Annapolis Newsroom Massacre: “Toxic Masculinity” Mixed With Guns. Again

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By John Queally / Common Dreams

As the nation mourned yet another senseless mass shooting—this time at a local newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland on Thursday in which five people were murdered—details of the alleged gunman expose yet another perpetrator with a history of misogynistic and threatening behavior towards women.

On Friday it was reported that the man arrested by police at the scene of the massacre inside The Capital Gazette’s offices, Jarrod Warren Ramos—who had a “bitter history” with the newspaper going back years—had been charged by local prosecutors with five counts of first-degree murder.   [Read more…]

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