By Robert Haugh
Santa Clara News Online has documented on numerous occasions how differently the San Francisco Chronicle and Mercury News cover the 49ers’ battle with Santa Clara over the years.
This month’s legal settlement story is just another example.
First the Chronicle’s reporters Ron Kroichick and Lance Williams wrote a story last weekend about the 49ers’ “best and final” offer.
They actually did some analysis of the parts of the proposal that the team put out publicly. Here’s what they wrote:
The San Francisco 49ers are pushing the city of Santa Clara to settle two multimillion-dollar disputes over the team’s operation of Levi’s Stadium, but a Chronicle review of city documents shows much of the $18 million in promised benefits would not actually come from the 49ers.
Instead, the team proposed tapping the publicly owned stadium’s demolition fund, money set aside for the expensive task of demolishing the structure at the end of its useful life, and transferring that money to the city.
The story also included a fact check of a 49ers claim:
The deal the 49ers offered would “deliver $18 million to the City’s general fund in the next 24 months,” MacNeil wrote. The city also would get “a steady stream of revenue in the future,” he wrote.
But the city’s Stadium Authority still would be on the hook for about $200,000 per game to pay for police, documents show.
The 49ers’ proposal also would require the Stadium Authority to pay as much as $95,000 per game for the gourmet buffets, according to the documents. The team gave the city an April 19 deadline to accept the offer, according to MacNeil’s letter, which was posted recently on San Jose Spotlight, a 49ers-friendly website.
And the Chronicle story included an opposing opinion from Santa Clara’s mayor:
Mayor Lisa Gillmor said she couldn’t address specifics of the proposed deal, but she responded to the 49ers making public the $18 million figure.
“That’s already our own money,” Gillmor told the Chronicle on Friday. “Just like the last settlement agreement, they’re talking about settling it with our own money. The narrative they’re putting out there is really misleading and deceptive.”
In contrast, the Mercury News story written by Grace Hase didn’t really include any analysis, fact checking, or opinions that weren’t expressed by the 49ers.
The Mercury story is available on MSN and not behind a paywall.
Hase reported the 49ers’ side of the story without analysis or fact checking:
On March 20, stadium Compliance Manager Larry MacNeil sent a letter to the Santa Clara Stadium Authority Board — a governing body made up of members of the Santa Clara City Council — with a settlement proposal that he said would “deliver $18 million to the city’s general fund in the next 24 months.”
Hase did report a new fact that came out after the Chronicle story: the City Council rejected the 49ers’ offer in an executive closed session Monday.
But her story did not include any comments from anyone with a different perspective than the team.
And she gave the team the last word on the issue without any fact checking:
In response, a 49ers spokesperson said that their “offer remains the only way to fast track $18 million to the city’s general fund, which is facing a $9 million deficit. Beyond that, we cannot comment on ongoing confidential settlement discussions.”
A lot of Santa Clarans consider the Chronicle’s coverage of the 49er story to be fairer and more accurate.
That may be why they’ve won an award for covering a story that’s not actually in their backyard.
That’s good news for the Mission City.
To Denise.
Good for you being a Swiftie.
While Becker is using your tax money to pay for his lawyers, he is going to concerts and skiing.
There are men and women who are poor and deserve public defenders.
But why should you pay for a lawyer for a liar who can go to concerts and ski trips?
Thanks for this interesting information, Matt. There’s a lot of head scratching going on here! Becker is skiing, going to concert and got a public defender on taxpayer dime and now has an expensive attorney? Hello DA?
It isn’t a mystery why so many of us refer to the paper as the San Jose Murky News.
As a Swiftie, I got a notification today about a Murky article regarding Taylor Swift and Santa Clara being the nation’s Swiftie capital. Excited to read it only to see the indicted councilmember interviewed for it just because he went to the concert. How did Grace remember that? Yeah, the Mayor was interviewed too but was it necessary to throw Becker in the article?
We quit subscribing to the Mercury News ages ago, and a major reason is the hack writing, consisting largely of: 1) quote some people from “both sides,” and then 2) give the last or longest quote to the side favored by the Merc or by the reporter. So of “who, what, where, when, why,” sometimes there is only “who, ” which is favored above all else as though we were still in middle school. Sometimes there’s a brief mention of the other elements. But even when the “why” is tossed in, it’s usually presented in the simplest way possible — with minimal or no analysis.
The coverage that the SF Newspapers are giving our City is “Top Shelf” type coverage.
Conversely, the slanted, very one sided myopic coverage that our local rags give us on a daily basis is best used to cover the bottom of birdcages.
So why do I only subscribe to the SF Newspapers? Well it does not get any simpler. Currently they are not being supported by the 49ers and are open to looking at our specific situations with a lens that is not filtered by any outside financial support.
“No ticky no washy”, is a slang statement that fits very well here.
Without the 49ers huge financial support on a weekly, monthly, annual basis many of these local leaflets would just stop being in business.
The 49ers spend so much money with them, they had in the past changed our view of the world. We were being fed exactly what the 49ers want us to eat.
We now know to look elsewhere to get our information.
It’s a shame that many local, or even Nationwide News sources are having to cater to funding sources that have their own agenda’s at heart.
Why do they do it? It works. It’s cost effective. It beats having to actually do it the right way and sit down with the local residents and try to hammer out the differences.
Bottomline at this point it’s just pure ego.
No business person who is able to sit back and look at not just our situation, but many of the Cities that have NFL teams can understand why the NFL Francises have decided that this was a good course of action to take.
Did I mention Ego?
Well I don’t know about any other Cities, but this is not working for me at all, and apparently the word is getting out!!!
Grab a seat we just have 30 more years of this.
Go Niners…. and I mean really just Go away.
Or, wait… wait, read the room, It’s time to sit down and make amends. It now makes better business sense to make our City happy. We are all good, smart, intelligent people who just wanted to help your company based on some pretty simple promises made to us.
None of us signed up for this.
We just crushed Measure A and B…. (Measure A had $0.00 dollars spent to defend it) that is the tip of the iceberg. Spend what you want, but you can’t make “Chicken Soup” out of “Chicken P**p”, any longer. It appears many of us now that is what you are trying to sell us and we are no longer buying.
Burt Field
burt.field@gmail.com