In This Issue

I'M USED TO seeing the SF Weekly bash the left; it's almost a parlor game over there. But last week's issue was one for the record books: a cover story (so to speak) trashing the Alternative Press Expo; a piece saying supporters of Dennis Kucinich are starry-eyed fools (that's me); and a long, detailed character assassination of Ro Khanna, the antiwar candidate who dared take on incumbent Rep. Tom Lantos in the Democratic primary.

Khanna challenged Lantos on the war in Iraq and the USA PATRIOT Act, both of which the incumbent supported. Sups. Matt Gonzalez, Chris Daly, and Tom Ammiano have all endorsed Khanna. The Weekly's Peter Byrne, though, attacked Khanna viciously, stating that he's a dupe of Indian high-tech entrepreneurs and that he "favors exporting well-paying Silicon Valley jobs to India and other emerging Third World techno-markets."

I must admit it startled me to read that, since I'd interviewed Khanna twice, and both times we talked at some length about U.S. companies moving jobs to India. His response was well thought out and didn't even remotely reflect what Byrne suggested. What Khanna says on his Web site – plain for all the world, including Byrne, to see – is this: "We need economic policies that encourage businesses to create jobs locally, not send them overseas." He wants to end the tax credits that encourage outsourcing and require companies that export jobs to pay for health insurance, unemployment benefits, and retraining for displaced workers.

I talked with Khanna the day after the Weekly piece appeared, and he was also stupefied. But what really boggled me was this: according to Khanna, Byrne never even asked him about his position on outsourcing, never challenged him on it, never suggested he'd be writing about it – and never gave him a chance to respond. Which is about as unethical as you can get.

Byrne won't call me back or answer my e-mails, so I can't get his side of it. The Weekly did run a correction on its Web site, retracting the "favors outsourcing" statement. But the paper didn't retract beyond the recorded remarks and hasn't acknowledged that Byrne's entire thesis – that Khanna was a "neo-con artist" and his liberal supporters were dupes – has no basis in fact and is utterly wrong. Khanna's advice: anyone talking to the Weekly needs to "record every word."

PS: Peter Byrne emailed a response to me that was too late to include in the print version of this piece. It read: "In an interview, I asked Rohit Khanna about his position on off-shore job outsourcing. His answer was accurately reported in my article."

Check out Khanna's full statement at votero.com/weekly_response.htm. Looks bad, Peter.