September 25 2002

By A.C. Thompson

With the Fang clan at the helm, the San Francisco Examiner has established itself as the mouthpiece of the San Francisco Police Department, devoting many stories to the heroic deeds of the city's cops.

The typical Examiner story consists of a weird or horrific crime countered by a valiant response from local law enforcement. Instances of police misconduct (which are discussed every Wednesday night before the police commission) and bungling (which are pervasive enough to have inspired a scathing three-part series in the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year) only rarely find their way into the paper's pages.

On Sept. 19, for example, the paper lauded Police Chief Earl Sanders for "personally arresting bad guys and hauling them off to jail." A few days later, on Sept. 23, we were treated to a story about an armed robber who apparently attacked a 72-year-old lady with a power drill. According to Examiner police beat reporter Richard Byrne Reilly, "The heinous nature of the attack, coupled with the use of a power drill, left veteran robbery inspector's [sic] shaking their heads." This spring, when the police department faced budget cuts, Examiner reporters rushed to the its defense.

While the paper's bias is obvious, few readers are aware that the Fang-owned Examiner has had a very direct relationship with the SFPD.

When the paper moved into its current Fox Warfield Building headquarters in 2000, police narcotics officers were allowed to use the building to spy on possible drug deals occurring near the intersection of Market, Sixth, and Taylor Streets. In an interview, Examiner co-owner James Fang admitted that the SFPD had run operations from the paper's property for approximately three months.

"When we were remodeling the building, the police were using some of the floors to look out on the street," Fang said. "They were just here very briefly, and they were not on the floors that had editorial people on them."

Marty Steffens, who worked for the Examiner from May to December 2000, remembers things somewhat differently. Steffens, who served as executive editor, recalls walking into her sixth floor office one day to find a narcotics cop looking out the window, surveilling the streets below. "After that, I heard from time to time that the cops were on the roof," said Steffens, now chair of business journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

According to Fang, the Examiner didn't invite the police in – apparently they were welcomed in by the building's previous owners – and the narc squad hasn't worked out of the space in some time. "I think that stopped about two years ago," he told us.

Rachel Cohen of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a New York-based media analysis group, doesn't view the Examiner's collaboration with the SFPD as a great moment in journalism. "This is disturbing. One of the most important missions of the press is to watchdog the powers that be," Cohen griped. "And they can't do that if they're working hand-in-hand with the powers that be."

Steffens, who was abruptly fired by the Fangs, isn't so critical. "That's where the ugly seam of the Tenderloin oozes out onto Market Street," she said. "Clearly more enforcement was needed. How do you separate this from what any other business owner would do?"