Less than 48 hours after "King of Mean" Garry South was left calling the shots in the Gavin Newsom campaign for Governor, the SF Chronicle had a front-page piece attacking Jerry Brown. Apparently, Brown fundraising for his favorite charities carries all sorts of "conflict-of-interest" allegations that voters should be mindful about in next year's election. But this wasn't the first time reporter Carla Marinucci went on the attack to help Garry South's clients. In the last gubernatorial race, Marinucci used her perch at the Chronicle to repeatedly go after rival Phil Angelides - who was locked in a nasty primary fight against South client Steve Westly. On March 16, 2006, Marinucci wrote a story on Angelides that strangely resembled yesterday's piece on Brown - attacking the state Treasurer for raising corporate donations to a non-profit. South burned bridges in that race with his scorched-earth campaign against Angelides (and bad-mouthing the nominee after the primary was over), and it seems like he's back to his old tricks. But feeding stories to the Chronicle sounds like part of his modus operandi.
(Why does the media hate Palin? That must be what it is! - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
When Steve Schmidt stopped working for Dick Cheney to come back to California and manage Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election, Carla Marinucci had a page B1 story on Schmidt which quoted Garry South as saying, "He's been sitting on Karl Rove's lap for the last five years." And Bob Mulholland offered, "This guy has Cheney tattoos all over him."
Yet by the time Schmidt went on to be the latest to take over John McCain's campaign, he seemed to be walking on water with the press. The story announcing the move, again by Carla Marinucci, appeared on the front page. This time, the first quote was from his business partner saying it was a "good move" followed by quotes from a Republican. Finally, a token Democrat was quoted as saying all Democrats "respect his ability." It was pure puff, no mention of him lying about taxes all through the gubernatorial campaign. No mention this time of his engineering of the Martha Alito crying stagecraft. No mention of the disarray in the McCain campaign. Just puff.
However, that relationship with the press went to hell the past few days.
A poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps, surveying us folks in the 18-29 age group, show that 50-60% of us believe the Democrats are better on any given issue than the Republicans. It's a portrait of a generation that grew up under conservative rule - and by witnessing its effects and costs firsthand, has utterly rejected it.
But in the first traditional media article on this quite significant poll, Carla Marinucci tells a rather odd story about this. To her, the only story here is that young voters dislike the Republican Party. Which we do, no doubt about it. But her article is filled with quotes from Republicans young and old about why we've abandoned them.
Nowhere does she ask the more obvious question: why are we so strongly identifying with Democrats? If it was just alienation from Republicans why don't we become apathetic? Why aren't we identifying as independents?
I've got more to say, but before the flip, I want to cut to the chase: we have a lot of people here age 18-29. In the comments, do what Marinucci refused to do: explain why you don't just reject the Republicans, but also why you so strongly embrace the Democrats. Why are you a proud Democrat?
I have to admit, I look forward to lazy Saturday mornings, a cup of coffee and following a link from Atrios to Jamison Foser's latest "Media Matters" column. Today's column goes after San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci. Goes after her hard.
In San Diego, the questions levied at Edwards during his press availability after what I would argue was the speech of the convention were pathetic. Hedgefunds and haircuts was all they could seem to talk about. And the SF Chronicle's Carla Marinucci wasn't much better. This was her idea of a probing question:
"So you are saying that YOU are the best positioned candidate to compete all over the country!?"
Edwards's rightfully dismissive response:
If I didn't would I be running for president?
Since then the media's obsession with Edwards's wealth (as though it somehow undercuts his credibility on the subject of poverty) has only escalated and now Marinucci is doing her darnedest to cement this intellectually dishonest media narrative with a story titled: Recent headlines threaten Edwards's main campaign theme.
For the Democrats, Clinton unquestionably topped the pack with $24 million raised nationally in the first quarter -- a record that swelled her total bank account to $36 million.
The San Francisco Chronicle has figure it out, why not the paper of record? Why can't newspapers learn to link to what is cited in the online version? There is a bright-line and if you purposefully don't cite it is unethical (unless you despise the site so much that you state your unwillingness to link to it).
However, the unlike the above paragraph, the online version of neither story actually included a link to what they were talking about. This is a blatant violation of accepted ethical guidelines and it is far past time for newspapers to start forcing ethics online.
