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Meet the Press (COVER STORY) - Page 2by Lance Corcoran, CCPOA Chief of CommunicationsLC: You do a piece on the Corrections contract and you'll have a 104 responses! It's amazing. AF: Well, there are organized groups out there, organized family groups and there are the correctional employees, the officers, they read this stuff, too. And I know that these stories get posted on things like PacoVilla, which has a lot of correctional officers reading it. They get posted on prisontalk.com, they get posted by the family groups, and so there are these networks out there where these stories get posted and that drives traffic to our website. And because there are all these organized groups that are reading these stories and posting our stories on their websites, that draws traffic and I know that some of the groups are actively soliciting people to respond to the stories. LC: That's very true. But I want to talk now specifically about the CCPOA contract. It seems to always get a great deal of focus, not just from The Bee, but from the press in general. AF: Yes. LC: Why do you think there's so much interest in our contract and really nothing reported on the contracts of other state bargaining units? AF: Again, I can't speak for everybody else, I can only speak for myself. Going back 10 years, I think it was '98, I believe that at that point a bunch of state unions got the shaft that year and you guys got a pretty nice deal, if I remember correctly. LC: Twelve and a half percent. AF: Yeah, now that's a big story. Why is that? Why did that happen? So you have to get into the politics and whatnot, influence, and campaign contributions. LC: But no one ever looks at the fact that we elongated our work day, our work week went from 40 hours to 42 hours. There were a lot of things to that contract that were very unpopular. There were things that other unions wouldn't accept, so that's part of the balance. AF: Yeah. LC: Going back to 1991, we were the first union to come in and say we'll take a 5 percent cut for a year. We were the first union to say that and what did everybody else do? They killed us. AF: See, you got me on that one. I mean, I didn't cover that one. LC: Let me ask you this, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen... AF: Yeah (laughter)... LC: ...negotiated a very lucrative contract in 2006 for their members. AF: Right. LC: Some would call it a "sweetheart deal." Why is that phrase consistently used in describing CCPOA contracts but never when describing CHP contracts? AF: Again, I can't answer for everybody else. I read some of the other stories in the other papers, and I can't answer the whole media on this one, Lance. I can answer for myself and go back and do a Google search and see, you know, type in CCPOA, Furillo, and sweetheart and see if it pops up. I would say that it probably does not. LC: Alright, fair enough. AF: Look it up and if it does then I've got some answerin' to do, but I don't think so. You guys are big stuff! Compare you guys and the CHP. I tried to do that balance. You know, one story kind of looking at both of them at the same time, because you guys seem to be wanting to always have yours viewed in the prism of them. LC: We just want the same respect. AF: And I did that story over the summer, I think it was about a year ago, I can't remember exactly when, where I tried to go here's their deal, here's your deal. I tried to look at that in a balanced way and it was not an easy story to do. It's going to be different versions on every little item in there, so it was a very difficult thing to do. But I tried to do it. LC: I'm going to give you a copy of a story running in our next issue of Peacekeeper that addresses what we believe to be an unholy relationship between DPA and CHP. (Vol. 25 #4, June 2008) You'll love it. AF: Hmmm... LC: OK, let's talk about the newspaper business for a minute, what are the different roles... AF: But let me just go back on the contract for a little bit... LC: Alright. AF: I know that the five-year deal that you got occurred in a time when I was not covering Corrections. I was doing other stuff so I don't know what the other papers said but I've gone back and looked at our clips from when that deal was finalized and it was not very well covered. The way that contracts are covered now, the way that this current contract negotiation was covered, we wrote almost nothing about it until the deal was done and then the Legislature started. I think (Bee columnist) Dan Weintraub had done a column after the deal was done and portrayed it in a way that I think has shaped coverage on that deal ever since. So we didn't–and you know that's a column and Dan has his right to characterize any way that he sees fit in a column–but the newspaper did not do the kind of groundwork reporting that needed to be done on that deal. I don't know if anybody else did, either. I don't know if the Times did, I don't know what San Francisco or San Jose papers did, or Orange County, or whoever else, but I know that we did not. That deal kind of shaped things over the next five years and it was like you said, people had the perception that it was a sweetheart deal and it was characterized as such and some people in the Legislature got their backs up about it. LC: Some have said it was the demise of Gray Davis. AF: And it was. Editorial writers have gotten their backs up about it. Anyway, I think that shaped things going into this most recent deal. LC: Let's talk about columnists, editorial writers, news reporters. What are the differences? AF: Well, I'm a news reporter and I'm trying to find out what's going on, and I'm trying to put it in context, and I'm trying to present everybody's point of view, all the multiple points of view, and try to put it together in some kind of comprehensive, intelligible, digestible fashion, fairly and accurately with context and analysis. That's what reporters do. LC: OK. How about columnists? AF: Columnists can do all of what I just said but they can also offer an opinion and they can shape. LC: Are you saying that you don't shape or offer opinion? AF: I don't. I don't. LC: So you endeavor not to. AF: I endeavor not to. I mean, I'm a human being and every judgment that I make on whether this is news worthy or not, or if this is a fact that needs to be in the story or not, or where does it go in the story, obviously my judgment comes in and my human fallibility comes in and my opinion might come in, in terms of where I think this fact should be played in the story. So in that sense, yeah, your opinion affects everything that you do. LC: What about editorial writers? AF: Editorial writers are out to influence. Their main thing is to influence. Look at the amount of space that they have; generally, editorials are pretty short. So they don't pretend to give you every side of the story. They don't even pretend to be fair and I would say they're not fair and their opinions are their opinions. They're meant to influence and people certainly have the right and the responsibility to disagree with us. LC: Alright, so you are a news writer? AF: Yes. LC: You have an editor? AF: Yeah, a bunch. LC: A bunch? AF: (Laughter) Stacks, levels. LC: (Laughter) How much control do your editors have over news articles? AF: Well, the number one control that they have is whether or not they're going to run it or off it. LC: Do they also give you assignments based on how much space they have? AF: That influences stuff more all the time because our paper's going to be getting smaller and when it gets smaller we're going to have to be smarter. But, editors have a very big influence on how things are played on assignments, although they've given me a pretty free hand to kind of present this beat as I see fit because I've done the work, I've got a track record of producing good stories that are relevant. And they respect that, but they still say, "Hey, maybe you ought to be doing this, maybe you ought to check out this story on the beat," and then when I turn the story in to get edited, if they see a hole in it, "maybe you'd better call Lance Corcoran and get him to discuss this or answer this question." LC: Or, "maybe you ought to get him to say something stupid..." (Laughter) AF: (Laughter) Yeah. Or, maybe if they spot holes, and also if there's something that I can't–I mean, there are many times where they have saved my ass. LC: Oh, yeah? AF: Where I might have had a mistake in the story that they caught. LC: So, once you've completed an article, how much authority do editors have to eliminate information or even add information that you didn't write? Do they ever do that or do they go back to you? AF: Well, they do some eliminating. LC: Some eliminating? AF: Most of the time for space. I can say that I have never had a fact that was vital to a story, that may have shaped the story one way or another, taken out by an editor because they wanted to have the story slanted a certain way. Never. Not once at The Sacramento Bee. LC: So there's never been an instance where you've had a hard time recognizing what you originally submitted? AF: Never. Never. And any reporter who ever tells you that "Oh, my editor made me do this," you know, starts that whining crap, I wouldn't trust that reporter. Because every reporter, if their paper is any good, gets to not so much have final say but they've got to be OK with what's in the paper. If they're not, I know at our paper you have the right to have your name taken off the story. LC: Wow. Really? AF: So any reporter who tells you, "Oh, my editors made me do it," or "That's not the way I wrote it," you know is full of shit. LC: (Laughter) And talking about names, why is it that reporters and columnists have their names with their articles... AF: Just a final thought on that...Every story that I have ever done that has my name on it, I am 100 percent responsible for anything in it. LC: Very good, and I've called you on it a couple of times. AF: More than a couple. (Laughter) LC: (Laughter) On a Saturday. (Laughter) AF: (Laughter) And that's why I love ya. LC: (Laughter) So, with respect to names on articles...The columnist and reporter names are out there, Dan Walters, Dan Weintraub, Andy Furillo. Why is it that editorial writers don't put their names to what they write? AF: Because it's the paper. It's the paper's official editorial position. Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3  Print This PageBack to Volume 25, Issue 5 Back to PEACEKeeper Main Page |
