The Chronicle's David Lazarus: the consumer reporter who wasn't allowed to cover the biggest consumer story in San Francisco history
By Bruce B. Brugmann
David Lazarus wrote his farewell consumer column for the July 27th Chronicle under the headline, "Where is the media watchdog?"
Indeed. Lazarus answers his question by quoting Ralph Nader as saying that there will never be another Nader because "the media have lost interest in consumer advocacy as both a story and a calling."
Lazarus says that the "Chron's editors have stood behind this column" and says that "a tip of the hat is due here to Editor Phil Bronstein, Deputy Managing Editor Steve Proctor and, most of all, Business Editor Ken Howe. They took enough heat on my behalf to boil soup."
And yet, despite the fact that Lazarus is a damn good reporter and a strong consumer advocate and claims support from his paper, he was still unable to cover the biggest consumer story in San Francisco history.
Which is, as attentive Guardian readers know, the PG&E/City Hall/Raker Act scandal and how PG&E has cheated the city's businesses and residents for decades out of the city's own cheap, clean, and green Hetch Hetchy electrical power. (See past Bruce blogs and Guardian stories and editorials going back to 1969).
Why couldn't Lazarus, with his entrepreneurial consumer column gracing the business page each day, cover this big story? I once asked him directly at an awards banquet of the Society of Professional Journalists, where he was given a well-deserved award for his consumer reporting. He said he couldn't get "any interest" from his editors. Why was that? He said nothing further and turned away, obviously not wanting to discuss the issue.
And so, through the years, I have often popped a Guardian story or editorial on the scandal over to Lazarus, or other reporters doing a PG&E-friendly story, and their editors, with various versions of this key question: Why don't you cover this big local story that has cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars over the years? Do you censor it yourself, or do your editors, or does Hearst corporate in New York? I have yet to get an answer.
Lazarus writes that he's making a jump "to another well-known newspaper that's beefing up its consumer coverage" and that "it's an opportunity that couldn't be ignored." (He didn't name the paper, in widely known daily tradition, but it's known to be the Los Angeles Times.)
Will he and his tough style of consumer reporting (except for PG&E) be replaced? Or will the Chronicle continue to run PG&E greenwashing ads on the front page and enlarge its ban on PG&E to all forms of serious consumer reporting? (I am sending this piece over to Bronstein, Proctor, and Howe, and to Hearst corporate, for comment.)
Meanwhile, Lazarus will now be changing bosses: from Hearst corporate in New York to Sam Zell corporate in Chicago. Will he now be free at last to report on the biggest consumer scandal in San Francisco and California history? Let us stay alert. B3
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