JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE: The Desert Sun’s Hit Piece against Councilmember Greg Pettis

Summary: The Desert Sun’s hit piece against Councilmember Greg Pettis represents the latest salvo in incumbent Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s attempt to secure what amounts to a mayoralty for life in Cathedral City.  Reporter Tamara Sone left herself get played by the mayor and her willing henchman Bud England, who spoonfed her every bit of negative information they could find on Greg Pettis.  By relying heavily on Pettis’ political rivals, and glossing over or ignoring any information that might have put matters in a more truth-friendly context, Sone and the Desert Sun have effectively let themselves get drafted as foot soldiers in a nasty political battle that has gone on for years.  By dwelling on the party affiliations of the dramatis personae, Sone has impliedly accused Democrats in the Coachella Valley of being dishonest spongers of taxpayer dollars; she has thus carried water for the Republican Party.  All in all, a piss poor performance by a reporter and a newspaper whose sycophancy and toadying toward DeRosa have damaged what little reputation it had for being a reliable or trustworthy news source.
By: Paul S. Marchand


The Desert Sun ran a hit piece today headlined “Cathedral City Councilman Greg Pettis spent $92,000 using a city-backed credit card.”

The article is bylined Tamara Sone, but it bears all the hallmarks of having been conceived and put together by the incumbent mayor of Cathedral City, Kathleen Joan DeRosa, whose entitled conceit of herself as “Mayor-for-life” has earned her reputation for vindictiveness, untruth, and divisiveness.

Certainly, the baleful effects of the Desert Sun’s policy of assigning beat reporters who do not know the beat they are covering have played themselves out in Cathedral City many times over the years, as reporters effectively allow themselves to be spoonfed by whatever politico is willing to give them a sound bite or by whatever politico TDS has decided it likes.  This enables crafty and deceitful people like Kathleen DeRosa and her faithful henchman Bud England to play the Desert Sun and its reporters like a Stradivarius.

A number of features from this morning’s monstrosity merit being called out and held up for critical examination (an examination the Desert Sun should have done in-house before even allowing the piece to go to print --- Greg Burton, master of the art of self-congratulation, are you listening?)

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this morning’s monstrosity was its open failure of due diligence.  The only council or quasi-council sources quoted extensively were DeRosa and England, whose detached sense of “Christian entitlement” --- to say nothing of his intellectual dishonesty in taking credit for my legislative initiatives as a councilmember--- cost him his council seat last November.  See: “Somebody Thinks We’re Stupid: an Incumbent Councilman’s Effort to Take Credit for the Work of Another,” www.http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2012/11/somebody-thinks-were-stupid-incumbent.html   (Full disclosure: I ran unsuccessfully to reclaim the seat on the council on which I served between 2002 and 2010.  I know whereof I speak in these matters, and I take some pleasure in having drawn off some of the votes Bud England might otherwise have relied upon to hold on to his seat.) 

While Councilmember Sam Toles was apparently briefly consulted, his remarks received short shrift in the article, though Sone was at pains to identify his partisan affiliation. 

With the exception of a single brief reference to city manager Andy Hall, the only other city employee quoted was administrative services director Tami Scott, whose federal felony record is a matter of public knowledge, and who was pled guilty to making a false statement to a federal investigator, which in the law of evidence, is considered non-recommending for a witness’s credibility.  At least city clerk Pat Hammers, whose indiscreet e-mails to the incumbent mayor exposed her unneutral betrayal of the public trust during the 2012 election, had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.  And, of course, Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet also gets in a sound bite; God forbid the Desert Sun should not slip in its own Palm Springs-centric bias.

Of course, it is common knowledge in Cathedral City that there is no love lost between Greg Pettis on one side and DeRosa/England on the other.  That there is a political rivalry among them is as unsurprising as the fact that water is wet.  Thus, for Sone to have relied heavily upon known rivals of the target, and to make no effort to have consulted with others, myself included, with some degree of institutional memory, constitutes journalistic malpractice.

It was equal journalistic malpractice to have accepted, without any apparent effort to corroborate it, England’s representation that Pettis’ travel on the city’s behalf was an ongoing, contentious issue, that “we’ve been fighting that fight for years.”  I find myself searching for polite equivalent of the word “lie.”  Yet there is none.  What Bud England said to Tamara Sone was a flat-out lie.  I served eight years on the city Council alongside both Greg Pettis and Bud England, and during that time, there was almost no substantive or substantial discussion of Mr. Pettis’ travel.

Indeed, the only discussion of council member travel came when I expressed reservations about the propriety of DeRosa’s having accompanied the high school band on a junket to New York City that brought no value added back to our community, and which no other California mayor would have undertaken.  As is her style, DeRosa attacked me personally for questioning her waste of taxpayer dollars, and rounded up a few cronies from the community to show up at the next council meeting to gush enthusiastically about how “wonderful it was” that she had gone junketing to the Big Apple on the taxpayers’ dime, and while there guzzled down $11 glasses of wine at tony restaurants.

Indeed, Tamara Sone’s journalistic malpractice continued when she went out of her way to ignore Sam Toles’s observation that travel is an integral part of what we elect our public officials to do.  Because DeRosa is both lazy and has an offputting personality, the default policy of the city during the nine bitter winters of her mayoralty has been to foist off on Greg Pettis many of the responsibilities that a less lazy and incompetent mayor would have taken upon herself.  As either Clare Booth Luce or Oscar Wilde once observed: no good deed goes unpunished.  Pettis busts his butt because the Dear Leader, the Mayor for Life, is too bloody lazy and disengaged to do her job, and she shivs him to an eager and uncritical reporter for having done so.  Shameful, shameful.

Lazy narcissists like DeRosa and eager, willing dupes like England either cannot or will not understand that history is made by those who show up, and that when our destiny is being decided in places like Sacramento or Washington City, we need to be at the table and involved in the discussion, or the decisions made will be made without reference to, and often in derogation of, the best interests of the city.  Having Greg Pettis at the table in those discussions may not produce the kind of revenue that a sanctimonious cynic like Bud England might expect, but Mr. Pettis’ presence at the table has often protected us from decisions being made at our expense, and contrary to our interests.  If Bud England cannot understand that protecting the city from the foreseeable consequences of bad decisions made outside our presence is itself a form of value added, then he really is stranger to anything resembling true wisdom.

Of course, expecting wisdom ---or anything beyond shallow political nastiness--- from either Kathleen DeRosa or Bud England is a doomed enterprise.  Both of those individuals live down to Oscar Wilde’s famous definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  Bud England would not know the value of Greg Pettis’ contributions to the city if those contributions came up and bit him on the rear end.  Indeed, during the 12 winters he served on the council, England developed a reputation for being remarkably ignorant and obtuse, having to have simple things explained to him multiple times.  Not only did he not understand that there was a larger picture to see, he didn’t see the picture at all, and thus has remained a perfect unthinking and uncritical surrogate for a mayor who has little hesitation being confrontational, but who usually prefers to do her dirty work through third parties.

Having relied for the bulk of her story on Pettis’ political opponents, both of whom regard him as an enemy, and having essentially dismissed any comments or remarks that might have portrayed Mr. Pettis in a more positive light, Sone then went on to make much of, and to read much into, the fact that he sought protection in bankruptcy in 2010.

And here lies the great internal contradiction in Sone’s monstrosity.  On the one hand, Sone implies that somehow Mr. Pettis is making himself rich on taxpayer dollars, yet on the other, she takes the contradictory position that Mr. Pettis, having filed for bankruptcy, must be some kind of dishonest ---even criminal--- operator.  Yet, millions of Americans seek protection in bankruptcy every year.  For Sone to take the position she does betrays either willful ignorance or a kind of privileged, entitled contempt for huge numbers of her fellow citizens.  We do not expect our political leaders to enrich themselves at public expense, yet Sone apparently wants it both ways.  If Pettis enriched himself at public expense, he is a bad man; if he did not he is a bad man.  Catch-22.

If Tamara Sone cannot seem to understand that seeking bankruptcy protection is a right protected by the Constitution of the United States, she also seems to take a perverse delight in introducing partisanship into her hit piece.  Here, her lack of due diligence and personal bias show nakedly through.  The clear implication of the article is that somehow Democrats are not to be trusted, that Democratic hands should not be allowed anywhere near the municipal cookie jar.  Of course, the briefest textual analysis of Sone’s hit piece also discloses clear partisan motive on England’s part to fabricate and score political points off someone not of his own party.

Of course, it would have been more honest of Ms. Sone had she bothered to include any of the back story behind why DeRosa and her running dogs have now taken out after both Chuck Vasquez and Greg Pettis.  DeRosa came in for some well-deserved criticism after her unbelievably cynical performance on the recent Council vote to adopt a resolution supporting marriage equality, and she didn’t like that criticism one little bit.  DeRosa has a reputation for vindictiveness, for striking back, usually below the belt, at her enemies, real or imagined.  Today’s article represents nothing more than an effort at political payback, undertaken by a reporter who knows her beat so poorly that she can be played like that Stradivarius by a political operator who will stop at nothing to reward her friends, punish her enemies, and seek by any means available to consolidate political power and criminalize any opposition to her reign.

North Korea has its Kim Jong-Un and legions of sycophantic propaganda toadies to disseminate the boy dictator’s message.  The Coachella Valley has Kathleen Joan DeRosa and the Desert Sun to accomplish similar purposes, and such sycophancy and toadying have only damaged what little reputation the Desert Sun had for being a reliable, trustworthy news source.

-xxx-

Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served on the city Council from 2002 to 2010.  The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Riverside County Democratic Party or any other organization with which he is associated, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.  He is prepared to vigorously litigate against any person or entity which attempts to attack him on the basis of his expression of views herein.  So, Kathleen, back the f--k off; you too, Bud.