Eureka! More on how monopoly papers cover monopoly news

By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so there it was, buried today in the business pages of the Chronicle/Hearst, the Contra Costa Times/Singleton, and the San Jose Mercury News/Singleton, the latest major development in one of the great buried stories of our time in the local daily press.

Editor and Publisher, the trade magazine for newspapers, got this major story right: Its online head read, "S.F. Judge Blocks Hearst/MediaNews Collaboration," and its strong lead made the key point: "In a victory for a local businessman seeking to overturn a complex San Francisco Bay Area newspaper deal between Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group Inc., a federal judge Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the chains from collaborating on joint distribution or advertising sales of their papers."

This was an important ruling in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust case, which stands as the only real impediment to the Hearst/Singleton deal that would destroy daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area.
(See Guardian stories and previous blogs.)

But the ruling and the coverage by burial by the Hearst/Singleton press illustrates a major problem with the case: the publishers, who are normally hollering about the government suppression of documents and government manipulation of the news, this time got the documents sealed and so only their side of the story is getting out. Hearst/Singleton got a stringent protective order that gives them essentially unreviewable discretion to control the documents in the case. (Alioto presumably agreed to the order to get an early trial date).

Here's how this works: Hearst/Singleton designate any document they are producing in discovery as "secret."Alioto cannot contest that under the order, nor is there any dispute mechanism by which he can challenge it. If Alioto wants the document, he has to accept it under the protective order. Then, if he wants to file it with the court, he has to do so under seal. And, under the protective order, the judge has no discretion and must appeal the seal order. Alioto's brief is also sealed, if it references the sealed document. This was the case with the critical April 26, 2006 letter from Hearst to Singleton that outlined an agreement to explore joint national and internet adversiting sales as well as joint distribution.

The judge has referenced and quoted the letter and stated in her preliminary injunction order that the letter "is in the form of a potentially binding agremeent" and indicates the two companies have "expressed the desire, if not the intent," to collaborate in the Bay Area. Yet the letter is under seal, as is another letter the judge has quoted and a whole batch of obviously explosive discovery documents which Alioto got under discovery.

The letter is a publisher document and is not under seal and they can talk about it if they want to. After all, if they want to disclose their own secrets, it is up to them. Thus: the publishers have crafted a protective order that gives them control of the documents, gives the court no power to control its own filings, and no way for anyone to challenge any secret designations. The effect is that the Riley/Alioto filings are secret, the publishers filings are public, the public gets only one side of the story. And then the Hearst/Singleton papers put its side out in wimpy little stories buried in their business sections with wimpy little heads. (Example: today's Chronicle head, "Hearst-MediaNews ruling extended." Now there's a rouser.) And there is no explanation of how the publishers rigged the protective order to promote their side of the story and muzzle Alioto.

All of this amounts to a terrible precedent for Hearst and Singleton and their chain allies (McClatchy, Gannett, Stephens) to be setting in federal court against the free press, the First Amendment, and open government.

Repeating: Thank the Lord for Reilly and Alioto. And where the hell are the federal antitrust attorneys (they are still mucking about, pledging folks to secrecy and then asking softball questions)? And where the hell are outgoing Attorney General Bill Lockyer (who seems cowed by the case and is busy chasing those dread pre-texters in the Hewlett-Packard board room)? And where the hell is incoming Attorney General Jerry Brown (who has announced he is going to continue to live in Oakland under the heavy thumb of Singleton's Oakland Tribune and his galaxy of East Bay papers, without making a peep to date)? B3

P.S. l: I am not blaming the reporters nor their editors for their patriotic Hearst First and Singleton First coverage. They have the unenviable assignment of covering the monopoly moves of their publishers in New York and Denver that are aimed at savaging their own papers and their own staffs and their own communities. It is not, let us stipulate, a fun job. I hope they are keeping detailed diaries. B3

Comments (3)

taurusink

I wish to convince the Guardian to challenge the Main stream Media to a Truth-Out, a debate focused upon the MSM blackout of Project Censored materials; [the Examiner's ongoing op-eds favoring AIPAC and the War Yah-HOO drupelets; Faux Noose's Bill O'Really, who I learned is actually a life-support system for that pair of spasmodically flapping lying lips; Anne Ghoulter, gees where to start...

I wrote an article and sent it to youse folks but my previous email was flawed and all attempts resulted in Failure Delivery. I had called and was given the e-mail of a gal whose name I fail to recall, so here I will ask for the email of Mr. Sherba, whose number I lost in the Great Brisbane Flood of '06.

Okay, it wasn't Great, just my ridgetop campsite. But it was certainly a Flood in '06.

You'll like my article, and you will probably at one point mutter 'Is this guy thinking I can be so easily inveigled?"

To which I respond, Whaaaa? ME, inveigle YE??? naaaaaaaaa...

Okay. Maybe just once, when your inner editor is asleep. Or preoccupied, if your i.e. works 24/7, which is likely.

In closing, I read your account of the Guardian's coming into our whirled.

You did good, Bruce Brugman, you and your Gal. The mobile Scotch, meeting the Parents, oh how the Puritan right must wail in self-righteous but sadly impotent condemnnation!

Yeah, red line the 'sadly'.

Thank you, and thank your Gal for me please.

Article 'The Alternative Press Vs. The Mainstream Media Blackout' is next up. I am powerless to stop it.

Posted by taurusink | December 22, 2006 10:57 AM

{NeverGiveUp.Currents.1247.2}: Glenn Allenson {taurusink} Wed, 01 Dec 2004 16:35:44 EST (HTML)

Another pre-exercise for ideas

Alternative Media vs. The American Mainstream Media Blackout

A few months back, as the so-called election was gearing up toward the Big Finagle, I learned about On-Line Alternative Media websites.

I have been meeting hundreds of people from around the globe who discuss issues and exchange ideas, compare strategies regarding activism, supply the Discussion Forums with world-wide Internet links to facilitate greater levels of cross-communication, and basicly get involved in numerous high-spirited Meetings of the Minds.

These Forums have something I couldn't get from reading local community-oriented Alternative newspapers or even nationally distributed progressive-oriented publications, which to me are the sources of REAL information.

These On-line forums have a collective soul-infused Heart that beats with incredible power.

Not that words on a page do not evince heart, soul and spirit.

On the contrary, the writers, support teams and editors who enable Alternative publications to bring readers behind-the-scenes information are the only other hope we have, besides the Internet and good ol' word of mouth, to get ourselves out from beneath the growing shadow that is the Mainstream Media News Blackout.

I have been an avid reader and supporter of this particular San Francisco Treat - no, not that plastic Rice a Roni, you joker you - The REAL San Francisco Treat!

The San Francisco Bay Guardian. Yep, the one you're reading.

Being an ameteur writer and an apprentice Internet detective seeking the Truth behind the Big Lies, I have some idea how much work goes into even a quarter-page column. Alternative publications don't get their news piped in and served up on a teleprompter, that's a corp- news exclusive.

These folks actually do things the same way my comrades and I work. [I'm a construction worker].

They work. They sweat. They insist and probably they get that flushed-forehead bulging-vein thing occasionally.

Lucky those beads of sweat are there to cool things down.

Which differs greatly from the New World of Corporation News. In the spirit of Hollywood and the Corporation News chain of command, beneath Rupert Murdoch we have the Board, the Bankers, the Talking Faces, the make-up crews and hairstylists, the Teleprompter Engineers, the once again, the Bored. The viewers.

How fortunate these sedated couch-potatoes are, and how considerate are their news providers / drug suppliers. While the world-shaking Season Finale of the Scott Peterson Show leaves Sally Shophappy and Sam Sportsection in the emotional vacuum zone, the latest Happy Pill is offered up with scenes of bright-eyed cheerleaders dancing through fields of lillies with laughing puppies.

And as the children run screaming through the halls doing Pepsi cartwheels and high-fructose backflips, there's New Prescription Kiddie Kool! Slip a pill into their jello, and Stop That Problem!

But I digress.

The limitations regarding weekly presentation of global news through local Alternative newspapers, such as the Guardian, is just that - this is a local news publisher. And in San Francisco local does not come in small or medium. Local here comes in two sizes:

'Large' and 'Busting at the Seams'.

The Guardian offices are always the scene of high-energy activity. I have popped in to submit items, enter writing contests, obtain information, examine back-issues and enter more writing contests, and I always enjoy feeling the air-borne electricity that charges even the reception area. My favorite ambiance-flavor, that controlled-frenzy wavelength that one feels in the presence of high- amperage generating equipment.

In more than thirty years of trusting the Bay Guardian, I have become entirely comfortable that my trust and my support have been earned and returned.

One-third of a century is not just a few handfuls of years, it represents a generation of human endeavor. That's a considerable time-span for journalistic integrity and business longevity to remain teamed up, considering the way network news reporting in America has been completely distorted, re-packaged, tossed around, bought and re-sold and - today - entirely censored.

Conversely [sp?], honest news presentations that are predicated upon that ol' stalwart dust-covered American ideal - the Truth, rather than being relegated to some less-than-honorable point between ratings, government-sponsored 'grants' and corporation agenda- benders, have become a mainstay of my hope that our damaged Democracy can still be saved. r/o[shorten]

Journalists who dig deep into local issues and come up with the truth behind the lies, the hidden agendas behind the Corp-puppet newspaper headlines and generic prattle of those robotic talking faces on corp-state television 'news' programs, are now, along with the Internet, our last line of defense against the shadow that grows, our thermal-blanket to fend off the cold chill of repression, that has already spread across our troubled land. [r/o]

Never in our country's history has the news been filtered and censored as is happening right here, and right now.

The Media Blackout is no longer something to be prevented.

That chapter is behind us now; we were pre-emtively occupied, almost like the Iraqis only by sneakier soldiers of King George the Saferist.

We got sidetracked playing 'Elect-TRON', and so we missed our chance.

The Blackout is here, it is thickening; it is very, very real.

It is now a cancer growing upon our collective spirit; a malignant tumor that feeds on our inaction, growing ever stronger.

It is Tyranny, an oncoming enemy to be fought, rallied against, vanquished and forever banished from our lives.

Posted by taurusink | December 22, 2006 11:13 AM

Oh yeah, the article needs updating as I wrote it in 2004 after the Elect-tron finagle that Bushco pulled.

My first post doesn't show when I re-click B3 and come back here. ???

Posted by taurusink | December 22, 2006 11:16 AM

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