Excerpt from "OFF THE RECORD"

Hatchet Job, Times Style

by Mark Scaramella

HELEN JONES WRITES: "What do we find in the New York Times on November 30th, but the same exact type of coverage we got in the Sacramento Bee of two weeks ago, right down to the stupid 'riding out on his own rail' nonsense. The same tired old slanders — Bruce was crazy, or an FBI agent — that we always get from this milieu, whether it was Bari, KZYX, or KPFA. Where have we heard that before? It would take two issues of the paper to list all the places, but they are all from the same milieu."

AS USUAL, the abbreviated New York Times feature about AVA Oregon and Bruce Anderson was devoid of substance and obsessed with cute. The seemingly statesmanlike remarks from former Congressman Doug Bosco and Deputy County Counsel Frank Zotter about how amused they were at the well-written critical references to themselves in these pages over the years totally avoided the reasons they were criticized. Bosco's nefarious role in off-shore oil has been hashed over plenty of times already. But Zotter was the chief engineer of the County's completely unnecessary and wasteful legal obstructionism which will eventually cost the County well over $30,000, not to mention a bunch of wasted County Counsel time.

WHEN BRUCE ANDERSON first notified Social Services that it is illegal to use public money to punish their critics, he would have accepted $140 in lost ad revenue and a promise to put the AVA on the media list. Zotter, and former Supervisor Shoemaker, led the county's effort to stonewall this modest and perfectly reasonable request out of sheer pique. Anderson eventually sued and won a unanimous jury verdict (two years later) because Social Services had obviously intentionally singled out the AVA to withhold foster home recruitment ads. Zotter and the County fought the case, wasting who knows how much of their own time and forcing Anderson to mortgage his house to pay $22,000 in legal fees while Zotter & Associates forced the costs up by filing (and losing) frivolous legal objections requiring costly legal replies. Then, after the County lost, Zotter filed an appeal so that the County doesn't have to pay the $28K they lost yet, forcing the bill up to at least $28k (and counting) in legal fees which Anderson is still out and which he was depending on to start his paper in Eugene.

SO WHAT DOES the New York Times do about this outrage? They make Zotter sound like a reasonable guy, affably amused by Anderson's complaints. The Times' Patricia Brown writes: "Frank Zotter, chief deputy for the Mendocino county counsel, keeps Mr. Anderson's insults pinned to his office bulletin board along with favorite cartoons and family photographs. 'He said I bring "a bland, irritatingly good-German obtuseness" to my work,' Mr. Zotter said. 'He called me "a willing conscript of the forces of reaction and oppression." It's kind of nice to be insulted by someone with such a good command of the English language.'"

NOT ONCE DOES MS. BROWN mention what Zotter has done over the years — there are many other examples, such as his gratuitous courtroom insults of Joan Curry of Mendocino, for example — to deserve criticism. The Times thus gives the impression that the insults were unjustified when they were right on target.

ONE MORE EXAMPLE, please. Ms. Brown quotes KZYX's Annie Esposito's stupid assertion: "'There were all sorts of theories about Bruce,' said Ms. Esposito, 62, whose offices include an old caboose. 'That he was crazy. That he worked for the F.B.I. But the real reason he flamed us horrible wimpy liberals was, it sells newspapers.'" How credulous does a reporter have to be to print this without comment or checking? Only an FBI agent masquerading as a witty newspaper editor would criticize KZYX in a small weekly newspaper — KZYX's "Truth To Power" being such a threat to the dominant powers that pointing out their rigged elections and low-grade corruption is something only an FBI agent would do. Get it? Our circulation figures run in the paper every year. It would be easy to prove or disprove this claim.

IN FACT, Anderson's constant repetitions of his Bari-Sweeney opinions and the role of KZYX to bury Sweeney's likely involvement in her bombing had the exact opposite effect. Most AVA readers reached the point where they didn't want to hear Anderson's Sweeney-Did-It updates any more and would take one look at front pages with Sweeney's name and consciously not buy the paper. And Anderson knew it and continued his crusade anyway, hoping that justice would be done somehow, someday. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of corruption and censorship at KZYX over the years which the Times could have at least mentioned, and argued. But no — poor "flamed" Esposito gets to claim, without fear of contradiction, that it was all that cruel, mean Anderson who only criticized KZYX because he worked for the FBI or for crass commercial reasons.

"ALL THE NEWS that's fit to print" means none of the news that matters is printed, no context, no depth — only the Times' skimming of the surface of the news will be deemed fit to print.