Editorials

San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein has added another corollary to the paper’s Greater Eunuch theory of press objectivity by taking two staffers who had the nerve to marry one another off the part of their city hall beat which involved reporting on same-sex marriage. And yes, they were same-sex, in case you couldn’t guess.  

The paper defended its action in a column on Monday by its on-staff “Reader’s Representative,” in which the logic was so convoluted that it was just about impossible to follow. Here’s a sample:  

“Reader complaints that the paper’s decision reflects discrimination against [Liz] Mangelsdorf and [Rachel] Gordon because of their sexual orientation fall flat. Both are highly regarded, both have covered gay issues for years.” 

Sure, we know that the Chronicle has plenty of gay reporters, has had them for years, some quite distinguished. But what about the fact that the two “have covered gay issues for years”? What’s different about this story? Still covering gay issues, just like they have for years, right? Why are they taken off the beat now? 

Another quote: “The bottom line, as Associate Managing Editor Kenn Altine puts it, is that it’s not about the person, it’s about the action.”  

Which action would that be? Presumably they didn’t just up and get married with no previous history of a relationship which most likely had some action component. What raised their activities in the sexual arena to the point that the Chronicle had to take official notice?  

Marriage, arguably legal? Deputy Editor Narda Zacchino and columnist Bob Scheer have been married for a long time. If Leah Garchik gets married to a man, will she be taken off the gossip beat? If Liz Smith marries a woman, will her column be dropped? Jon Carroll, like many Chronicle columnists before him, actually writes about his (different-sex) marriage from time to time. (But no, we can’t use him as an example, since they do seem to be trying to fire him.)  

A pair of tortured reverse analogies which fail to illuminate the Chronicle’s logic: 

“The decision also does not mean, as some readers have erroneously concluded, that African Americans cannot cover African American issues or that married people cannot cover the same-sex marriage issue.” 

Why is it fair that heterosexual married staffers can cover the same-sex marriage controversy, when according to some observers they are the beneficiaries of the state’s discriminatory policy of allowing them to marry while excluding same-sex couples? How does the Chronicle determine what’s “the issue” in a story?  

Does the decision mean that only African Americans can fairly cover the story about UC Board of Regents’ Chairman John Moores’ insinuations that UC inappropriately favors African-American applicants? But European Americans and Asian Americans can’t, since, according to Moores, they were discriminated against? Or maybe it’s the other way round? No, that couldn’t be right.  

Maybe “objectivity” means that parents of potential applicants to UC, no matter what their race, shouldn’t cover Moores’ activities. No, that couldn’t be right either. We have three reporters at the Planet who could be assigned to cover the regents: one is a parent of two African-American UC students, one is a UC graduate and has no kids, and one has no kids and went to school out of state. Which one should we assign to the story, following the Chronicle logic? Door number three. But what if he knows nothing about education? (Moores’ outlandish behavior, by the way, was the subject of an excellent Chronicle editorial on Monday. Good job, even if the anonymous writer happens to be African American!) 

But of course, long-time (more than a year) Chronicle readers suspect that what’s really going on in this case is another lame attempt to defend management’s indefensible firing of reporter Henry Norr a year ago for participating in (1) anti-Iraq war protests and (2) sympathetic encounters with Palestinian refugees. “See, we are too being consistent, aren’t we, so there!” their action seems to say.  

How close does a relationship have to be before it causes readers, in the words of the Reader’s Rep, to “doubt that journalists could retain a healthy skepticism while on the story”? Well, my collateral ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Perhaps the Chronicle’s Greater Eunuch theory, carried to its illogical extreme by little minds, would argue that because my great-great-grandfather was Ralph Waldo’s brother, I shouldn’t quote him in this paper.  

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet.