THE HATCHET JOB CONTINUES

The Desert Sun’s Tamara Sone’s Reckless Disregard for the Truth

Summary: The Desert Sun’s vendetta against Greg Pettis continues.  Its headline writers betray the fundamentally slanted nature of the paper’s coverage, and its de facto alliance with Cathedral City’s increasingly unpopular mayor.  Moreover, Tamara Sone, the author of this latest monstrosity, again sips from the fountain of lies that has come from one of Cathedral City’s former council members.  Finally, and most offensive to me personally, were the untruths and innuendo Sone saw fit to lob in my general direction, by making claims about me that can be documented as untrue.  Obviously, our local Gannett organ has decided upon a war of extermination against Greg Pettis.  This latest effort from Tamara Sone is not responsible journalism; it is an acid concentrate of despicable nastiness.

And so the Desert Sun’s rabid pursuit of councilmember Greg Pettis continues.  In a piece rushed into publication this evening, headlined “Greg Pettis got special deal on bad check,” Tamara Sone of our local Gannett organ has pushed forward with another hatchet job.

Having confronted strong pushback from community members and readers angered by its prior reckless disregard for the truth, the Desert Sun has made it abundantly clear that it will stop at nothing to phabricate a phony scandal destroy Greg Pettis.  Ethics be damned; integrity be damned; truth be damned.

First, let’s start with the headline, which is clearly intended to convey both an editorial bias and an unmistakable impression that Mr. Pettis has been guilty of some form of illegality.  The only inference a reasonable reader could draw is that Tamara Sone and their corporate masters, acting as some sort of Star Chamber, have tried, convicted, and now seek to extract their pound of flesh from, Greg Pettis.  The Desert Sun has never been known for maintaining even a pretense of objectivity in its headlines or its coverage, and this latest monstrosity certainly leaves readers scratching their heads and wondering whether the watershed decision in New York Times v. Sullivan was correctly decided.

Second, let’s take a look once again at how Sone ran as quickly as the coyote runs to the henhouse to solicit more questionable “factual” assertions from former councilmember Bud England, whose reputation for being an uncritical and reliable political water-carrier for incumbent Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa is so well known in Cathedral City Has as to go virtually without saying.  We know that Mr. England played fast and loose with the truth in Sone’s prior story, and it was perhaps too much to expect that having been put on very public notice of England’s credibility issues, Sone would have been more circumspect in relying so heavily on so compromised a source.

Third, Tamara Sone has been recklessly disregardful of the truth.  That’s right, as I rather expected her to do, she outright lied in her story.  In her breathless, mendacious opus, she included the following language: “Former council member Paul Marchand did not return a phone call from The Desert Sun or an email with questions about the loan. However, he posted on his Facebook page: ‘I am not aware of any provision of so-called special loans having been made during my tenure.’”

Sone’s representations were untrue, and were known to her to be untrue at the time they were offered to the public for the public’s consumption. 

The true facts were that at 12:48 PM on May 7, Sone left a voicemail message for me indicating that she had “some questions.”  The nature of her proposed questions was not specified, and I was naturally somewhat reluctant to engage in an open-ended conversation with a reporter about whose integrity I entertained, and entertain, the gravest doubt; I was not disposed to put up with ambush questions. 

In fact, just five minutes later, at 12:53 PM, Sone sent an e-mail to me reading as follows:

“Hi Mr. Marchand, I am working on a follow-up story to the Pettis package that ran on April 28 and I have a couple of questions. When you were on council, did council have to approve special  loans that were granted council members? If not, why?
Were you ever told when a council member had taken a loan?
Do you feel that council should be advised of any loans members take? Why or why not? Thank you for your assistance.
Regards, Tamara Sone.”

It was evident from the very short lapse of time between Sone’s voicemail and her e-mail to me that her apparent intent was to cover in an e-mail the ground she had planned to cover in a voicemail.

At approximately 4:10 PM, I responded to the e-mail and also posted its contents, and my response thereto, on Facebook.  I did so because it was reasonably foreseeable to me that Sone might take some or all of my remarks out of context.   

So that readers may know the totality of my response (in red), is appended hereto:

Ms. Sone:

Please find my reply to your latest round of interogatories.

In limine, let me point out that these are observations based on my time on the City Council, and may not reflect current practices and/or policies and procedures.  My responses are in italic. (and also in red in this post)  This is also the first time you have contacted me on this matter.

I am working on a follow-up story to the Pettis package that ran on April 28 and I have a couple of questions.

I’m glad you are.  Hopefully this one will be more balanced and fair than the last one.

When you were on council, did council have to approve special  loans that were granted council members?

I am not aware of any provision of so-called special loans having been made during my tenure.

If not, why?

Come on, Tamara.  That’s a foolish question which assumes facts not in evidence.  Sounds like you are in “solution looking for a problem” mode here.  If there was no policy, it was in all likelihood because the eventuality that would have required a policy to be formulated had never occurred.  Your question is non sequitur, and makes about as much sense as asking why we never had a policy on rebuilding Noah’s Ark.  Never having had a Noachian deluge, we never needed to consider building an Ark. I’ll make the point again.  Policy formation is usually event or occurrence driven.  If there was no event to trigger the consideration of a policy therefor, why would we have wasted taxpayer time and resources developing a solution for a problem that had yet to arise.  We had more important things to do.


Were you ever told when a council member had taken a loan?

Assumes a fact not in evidence.  Since I was not aware of such an occurrence taking place, your question is plainly intended to secure a result you are desirous of hearing, and reflects confirmation bias  And no, I don't have a husband to have stopped beating, either.

Do you feel that council should be advised of any loans members take? Why or why not?

Tamara, you should be aware that you are trenching on an intersection between a duty of disclosure and constitutionally guaranteed rights of privacy.  Disclosing private personnel matters is a grave breach of ethics and law, though I do know that the mayor and former Councilmember England did in fact traffic in such private information, attempting to use it against me (you want more, you’ll need to call me, I won’t commit such information to writing).  It appears that you are pressing a particular agenda here, of trying to impose a de facto duty which may not exist in law.  Let me point out to you, as I did in my blog, that we have only one Legislature in California, and had it chosen to legislate in this matter, it would have done so.  It is not the function of The Desert Sun to try to impose duties that, should it see fit to do so, would be emphatically within the province of the Legislature.  I detect an agendum here.

Thank you for your assistance.

You are welcome.

(Closing citation omitted for brevity).

In her article, Sone pulls the classic dishonest reporter trick of implying that I was in some way concealing things from her.  Anytime a reporter includes such noxious language as “telephone calls were not returned,” or, even worse, “telephone calls were not immediately returned,” and fails to include a disclaimer about imminent deadlines, you know that the reporter is deliberately trying to cast the interviewee in the worst possible light. 

Certainly, in this case, no other conclusion is possible.  Sone was not working under any particular deadline; while this may be a hatchet story whose publication is of great interest to DeRosa and her supporters, it is certainly not time sensitive, and Sone’s characteristically snarky reference is both a lie of omission and a malign masterpiece of deliberate and offensive innuendo.

I don’t mind being lied to nearly so much as I mind being lied about, and what is abundantly clear is that having been spanked in this blog, Tamara Sone is spoiling for payback.  Not only is she looking to impugn my own integrity, but she is certainly carrying political water for one of the most sociopathic mayors ever to disgrace the history of Cathedral City.

If the last article constituted journalistic malpractice, this one is nothing more than an acid concentrate of sheer despicable journalistic nastiness.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California.  The views contained herein are his own, and are not to be construed as constituting legal advice.  Any attempt to retaliate against him will call forth appropriate litigation.