The "Truthiness" election-ad fact-check project we’ve been publishing along with Newsdesk.org and Spot.Us is almost done, but suspicion from the public that anyone can remain dispassionate when it comes to politics definitely remains.
That sets a high hurdle for a startup journalism project trying to break into coverage of San Francisco in a significant way.
Though the series has been covered in a positive light in some corners of the blogosphere, notably in a thoughful column in PBS MediaShift by Mark Glaser and a blog post yesterday at SF Weekly’s Web site by Will Harper, the personal reactions I’ve gotten have been varied.
Mostly, questions from several of my liberal friends who’ve gotten caught up in campaign fever swirl around whether the Public Press is taking a "progressive" or otherwise advocacy tone on the San Francisco ballot propositions were scrutinizing. The answer, unequivocally, is no.
We’re not shooting for a liberal or conservative bent in our coverage because the principle we’re upholding is good journalism that has no sacred cows. The reason our vision includes fundraising from the public and public-interest foundations, and not income from corporate or political advertising, is that we want to be as free as possible to scrutinize all sides.
That point of view didn’t entirely sink in for Harper, or the rude anonymous commenter on his blog post, who accused Newsdesk and the Public Press of being shills for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which has vociferously advocated for public power and against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for decades now. As I pointed out in a follow-up comment:
Yes, we have hired reporters with experience working at the Bay Guardian, but also SF Weekly, the Recorder, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. This is not a "progressive" project. It is a good-old-fashioned fact-finding project. As to the "truthiness" of pro-Proposition H materials, there was a relative paucity of them in comparison with the tons of raw material in anti-Proposition H fliers, YouTube videos, etc., paid for through an unprecedented multimillion-dollar investment by PG&E. But drill down a little deeper and look at our annotations of the pro-Proposition H fliers on Flickr, and you’ll see that we take on claims by proponents with a skeptical eye as well. See this annotation from writer L.A. Chung (who has never worked for the Bay Guardian and describes herself as "a total MSM gal"): "CLAIM: ‘Public power cities … have consistently lower energy rates’ … FACT: The American Public Power Association, which serves such cities, says electric bills often — though not always — go down. Sometimes a city’s goal is not only lower rates, but also better reliability."
Whether we’ve been successful in staying above the fray in the stories we’ve posted is up to you, the readers, to decide. Let us know what you think.
