WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH THE DESERT SUN?

Summary: The Desert Sun’s inability to do basic due diligence, let alone its inability to delink its editorial positions from its news reporting, and the almost pathological defensiveness of its editorial staffers and reporters leaves a lot of us wondering what is wrong with our local newspaper.  Apparently, the Desert Sun is having difficulty accepting the ineluctable shift in the Valley’s political demographic from reliable Republican redoubt to purple oasis, while at the same time continuing to provide a reliable platform for psycho-guano conspiracists, climate change denialists, and Obama Derangement Syndrome sufferers.  Something is very wrong with the Desert Sun that can only be cured by a comprehensive, prophylactic change its personnel.

Our local Gannett newspaper, The Desert Sun, seems to have both a credibility problem and a defensiveness problem.  Its staff seem to have difficulty getting their facts straight and often get remarkably defensive when faced with even the slightest accident of reproof.


In the online edition of today’s newspaper, there appeared an interactive graphic detailing the political races that would be on the ballot in the November election.  To access the races for the California Legislature, one had to click on a button labeled “General Assembly.”


While a large number of states call their parliamentary bodies General Assemblies, California does not.  California has a Legislature, and has had one since 1850.  It’s not a hard thing to find out; a simple Google search should presumptively enable anyone wanting to know about California’s political institutions to ascertain what our parliamentary body is called.


On TDS’s Facebook group entitled “You’ve Got Issues,” I pointed out the error, and suggested, as I have in the past, that such an error is harmful to the newspaper’s credibility, and supports a growing public sense that TDS is increasingly out of touch with its readership.


Oh, that certainly didn’t sit well with the folks up on Gene Autry Trail. 

The Desert Sun’s Rob Hopwood posted Saturday afternoon a reply to my admittedly somewhat reproving comment.  Metaphorically slapping his fist down on the table, he insisted that it had been just a mistake on his part because he had once covered politics in North Carolina (which has a General Assembly) for Gannett and that he had simply slipped into a habit pattern.  What I found troubling about Mr. Hopwood’s comment was his acknowledgment that he had lived here in California since 2007.(!)
Seven years ought to more than enough time for even a Gannett employee to have done some basic learning about the state in which he resides.  Given that Desert Sun editorial-page editor James Folmer had been caught out in a similar gaffe several years back, when he, too, had referred to our Legislature as the General Assembly, one might think that Desert Sun staff, even the large number of them who are recent transplants to California from elsewhere, would remember to do some due diligence rather than appear to be fundamentally lacking in knowledge about the politics of their own state of residency.

Unfortunately, not only did Mr. Hopwood resent being called on his error, but he also continued to insist that I was somehow wrong for having called him on it, and that I allegedly knew nothing about him that would give me any rights to criticize him for making the error he did.

Now let us recall that this was an egregious error that was immediately obvious to any digital user of TDS’s website; it displayed to such users a strong indication that TDS had not done due diligence.  It also reinforced the growing public perception that our local Gannett newspaper is increasingly out of touch with an increasingly Democratic-leaning and increasingly well-informed readership that often turns to larger metropolitan newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, or even to the Gray Lady herself, the New York Times, for its information.



I certainly default to the Los Angeles Times for any serious coverage of the political and other issues of the Golden State.  Mistakes like the one this Gannett newspaper made this morning are large part of why I get my information from the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, and other larger newspapers throughout California.  If I want to know what’s happening elsewhere, I will default to the Gray Lady or to the Washington Post, or even to foreign sources such as Asahi Shimbun or the South China Morning Post.  But never to The Desert Sun.  I just don’t see these other news sources making the kind of fairly gross, entry-level errors that cause me to doubt their basic credibility and trustworthiness for covering the news.

Unfortunately, unless something truly spectacular happens in our local Desert that causes reporters in New York City or Los Angeles or elsewhere to take notice, I must perforce rely for local news on our Gannett outlet.

And what disturbs me about relying on the Desert Sun for news is how untrustworthy I know the newspaper really is.  Its staff don’t seem to be of the take any form of criticism very well.  Recently, I suggested, again in the “You’ve got issues” Facebook group that the Desert Sun would do well to stop overhyping high school football in this Valley. 

That criticism also engendered an angry, defensive response from the Desert Sun.  I got a very defensive —even fist-pounding— response from James Folmer to the effect that high school football in this Valley is a “big deal,” and that our local Gannett newspaper would make sure that it remains a “big deal.”  In short, the Desert Sun will continue to feed the poisonous paradigm that elevates high school football to a privileged position far above any other form of secondary school activity, implying in every column inch of its coverage that other high school sports or activities are simply not as valuable as high school football.

As much as the Desert Sun seems to think that high school football is the only worthwhile activity in which our secondary schools and our secondary school students engage, the Desert Sun also eschews any form of political neutrality, eagerly participating in the political infighting that naturally occurs in a Valley that is in the throes of an ongoing political realignment.

Barely a generation ago, the Coachella Valley was a reliable Republican redoubt.  At every level of government, local electorates could be relied upon to send registered Republicans to city councils, school boards, special districts, the Legislature, and Congress.  Today much of that has changed.  Our Valley is now represented in the House of Representatives by Democrat Raul Ruiz, M.D., and in the 56th Assembly District we continue to be represented by Democrat Manuel Perez.  At the local level, a substantial number of Democrats now sit on local school boards and city councils.  This development cannot be welcome to the Desert Sun, which has routinely describes itself as “socially liberal and politically conservative.”



Our “socially liberal and politically conservative” newspaper seems to have spent much of the last several years raging against the dying of the Republican light and the ineluctable passing of GOP dominance in this Valley.  In both 2008 and 2012, the Desert Sun ran racially tinged endorsements of the GOP’s standardbearers for President.  In both cases, the Democratic nominee was Barack Obama, the first African-American ever elected President of the United States.  One might have thought that even a “socially liberal and politically conservative” newspaper such as the Desert Sun might have thought better than sneaking racial dog whistle rhetoric into its editorials supporting John McCain and Mitt Romney.

But, when the Desert Sun decides it wants to carry any particular politician’s water, discretion has never gotten in the way.  Not only has this Gannett newspaper routinely slanted its news coverage to jibe with its editorial position, but it has also allowed itself to become a platform both for political vendettas and also for simple Obama Derangement Syndrome whack jobs pushing whatever psycho-guano conspiracy theory occurs to them or which they’ve managed to pull off of right-wing Internet scream sites.

Certainly, the Desert Sun has been no stranger to carrying water for individual politicians throughout the Coachella Valley whom it has decided it will support, even at the cost of harming its own credibility.  This Gannett newspaper’s unquestioning, uncritical, ill-concealed support for outgoing, lame-duck Cathedral City mayor Kathleen DeRosa has become almost a stuff of a cynical telenovela, as DeRosa cultivates Desert Sun executive editor Greg Burton, with whom she apparently plays golf on a regular basis, and spoon feeds ill-informed Desert Sun reporters (many of whom have been in this Valley for less than the year, and who do not know their beats at all) with scurrilous material intended to attack her political rivals.

Early last year, the Desert Sun carried DeRosa’s water to the extent of running two lengthy attack pieces targeting Cathedral City councilmember Greg Pettis.  Much of the information was based on half-truths or outright lies, and Desert Sun reporter Tamara Sone soon found herself facing a pushback from the community that led to her departure from both the newspaper and from a community that, in rallying to Mr. Pettis’s defense, unequivocally let it be known that Ms. Sone was persona non grata to whom no one would be willing to give any information.  Readers should take a look at Palm Springs blogger Bond Shands’ careful coverage of the way in which the Desert Sun actively worked against Mr. Pettis’s 2008 Assembly primary campaign.

Of course, even the Desert Sun’s editorial board has not been above wading into political infighting in Cathedral City.  Full disclosure, the Desert Sun’s editorial board has seen fit to attack me on DeRosa’s behalf in print on more than one occasion, while also providing a platform for letter writers to do much the same thing.  Indeed, when DeRosa referred to me publicly in nasty, homophobic terms, the Desert Sun saw fit to run a “Thumbs Down” editorial attacking me for allegedly "overreacting" to the slur.  By all means Desert Sun, exalt the bully and attack the victim.  Way to stay classy.

Of course, the Desert Sun’s tendency to provide a platform for whack jobs and nut cases is well documented.  While an increasing number of other mainstream print media outlets, such as the New York Times or Los Angeles Times have followed the lead of the British Broadcasting Corporation and declared a policy of not publishing climate change denial letters, the Desert Sun continues to publish them, along with all manner of other letters invoking various forms of conspiracy theory, usually involving some kind of scurrilous, race-based attacks on President Obama.

A number of years ago, I called the Desert Sun’s editorial board on the issue, and encountered fairly defensive pushback that the Desert Sun felt it had to give a platform to haters in order to bring them “out of the woodwork.”  Such reasoning was specious then and speeches now.  By giving haters a platform, the Desert Sun has simply enabled other haters to gravitate around them, helping to create a critical mass of nastiness and hatred.  By printing hateful, scurrilous letters, the Desert Sun doesn’t bring haters out of the woodwork where they can be criticize, it simply gives them a kind of spurious legitimacy and credibility that they do not deserve; The Desert Sun is, to all intents and purposes, an enabler of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

What’s the matter with the Desert Sun?  Clearly the Desert Sun is a newspaper out of touch with its readership and on the wrong side of history.  That’s what’s the matter with the Desert Sun; perhaps it’s time for readers to find other news sources and perhaps it’s also time to find reporters and editorial staff who will be willing to do due diligence and who won’t throw defensive temper tantrums at the slightest sign of criticism.

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