A free press is supposed to be a keystone in a democratic society. Timber communities were anything but, and the press was not, by any means, “free”. Like everywhere else, defenders and enablers of the status quo took it as a given that the corporate media has a “liberal” bias. This is, of course, an utter myth, as the media is only as liberal as the—generally arch conservative—corporations that own it, and numerous studies have conclusively proven this.[1] Even by these circumstances, the media coverage of the Bari and Cherney Bombing and Redwood Summer had been atrocious. A good example of this was the reporting of the Hearst owned San Francisco Examiner’s Jane Kay’s environmental writer who wrote some of the following statements in her article about the lead-up to Redwoodstock:
“Logging families have been angered—and threatened—by the often obnoxious presences of the ‘unwelcome invaders’ who (have engaged in direct action during Redwood Summer)…
“(J)ust as Redwood Summer organizers predicted—and perhaps because they did—the weeks were peppered with violence against them that harkened back to its namesake “Mississippi Summer”…
“And in the end, Redwood Summer has spawned a nasty polarization between the logging communities that make a living off felled trees and the crusading environmentalists.
“The desired dialog over sustainable forests—where more trees are grown than are logged—was as rare as a logger at a Sierra Club meeting.”[2]
The emphasized statements either represent a substantial bias against the Redwood Summer activists, outright falsehoods, or misconceptions. Never, not once, did any environmentalist ever knowingly threaten anyone working in the timber industry. While it may have been somewhat accurate to argue that their presence represented a threat, it had been conclusively proven that the biggest threats to the long term livelihoods of timber workers were (1) automation, (2) outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, and (3) raw log exports, all of which were the results of decisions made by the capitalist employers. Likewise, Redwood Summer didn’t spawn the polarization any more than they closed the mills, nearly destroyed the habitat of the spotted owl, or cut the Mendocino and Humboldt County timberlands at 300% of inventory. Suggesting that the violence experienced by the activists was their own doing is akin to blaming an abuse victim for the suffering meted out to them by their abusers. Kay’s definition of sustainable logging is deeply misleading and inaccurate as well. Sustainable logging requires that cutting not exceed the rate of forest growth as measured by quantity and diversity of biomass not merely the number of trees. Had Kay bothered to talk with one recent logger who had ultimately aligned himself with Redwood Summer, Duane Potter, she would have learned that the number of trees planted had nothing to do with whether or not they contributed to a sustaining, thriving forest habitat!
Kay’s description of the participants in Redwood Summer was no less biased. She underplayed the numbers, for one thing, stating that the total number had never exceeded 2,000 (the “Greens” had numbered as many as 3,000 at one point in Fort Bragg alone), and perpetuated the myth that the majority of them had been from elsewhere, stating:
“Some used vacation time from steady jobs. Others were students or had flexible lifestyles. Many had never seen a redwood, never heard a chainsaw, never protested. Most had never sat in a tree or tried to convince hostile opponents that, in the end, they were on the same side of saving jobs by saving forests.
“Yet as unwelcome visitors to timber towns, they were seen as intruders on the rural North Coast—spoiled brats who have a questionable work ethic and bad manners.”[3]
Again, these statements are highly misleading. Those that organized Redwood Summer were mostly residents of the north coast themselves, as were many of its participants, perhaps as many as 2/3rds of them. Those that were outsiders were welcomed by the organizers. Evidently, the organizers of Redwood Summer were not “true residents” of timber dependent communities, much like the Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Trade Unionists, etc. were not “true Germans” during the reign of Adolf Hilter and the Nazis. Some of the supporters of Redwood Summer were in fact, themselves timber workers, such as Walter Smith, Duane Potter, Gene Lawhorn, or Pete Kayes. They were no more “intruders” than were the members of the Sahara Club, who were from the southeastern desert communities of California, further away, geographically, than much of the state of Oregon. William Perry Pendley was from Colorado. Yet he was welcomed as part of the community by the corporate heads and the corporate apologists in Mother’s Watch. Hurwitz was from Houston, T. Marshall Hahn from Atlanta, and Harry A Merlo from Portland, Oregon. There were students involved in Redwood Summer, though a typical example was Lisa Henry who, though she was a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, she was a resident of Fort Bragg. If one wanted to cast aspersions about the universities and colleges being “bastions of political correctness” as is often the case for those on the political right, it’s true HSU had an Earth First!er, Bill Duvall on its staff, but then they also had Carlton Yee. Duvall might have openly advocated civil disobedience as a means to an end, but then Yee had openly advocated and admitted to engaging in election fraud. None of this was ever discussed in Kay’s article or anyone else’s from the corporate media. Whether one was an outsider or not actually depended more on the color of one’s ribbons, and the interests of their class, than the location of their home.
Kay’s statements read like a list of corporate timber talking points and were often the same sort of rhetoric spewed by the likes of Mothers’ Watch or even the Sahara Club. In her article she mentioned the former only once, devoid of any context or description of the vigilante mob organizing role that it played. She never mentioned the Sahara Club, the Stompers, and other like minded groups at all. She also saw fit to ignore the role of “wise use” industry front groups such as TEAM, WECARE, and the MSLF who had done far more than any environmentalist to foment violence, extremism, and polarization. Not once did she mention that, with a few notable exceptions, such as Art Harwood—whose name was not mentioned in her article at all—the vast majority of the attempts at dialog and overcoming polarization had either been made by the “radicals”, namely Earth First!, the IWW, and Seeds of Peace, or neutral groups like Middle Ground. Even the Sierra Club, which she did mention, had assumed that Earth First! would be the ones who initiated the violence. Kay could perhaps, in her defense, argue that she was merely reporting the facts based on the information she had available, but if that were the case, she had done a minimal amount of research. Her comments were scarcely unique among those that had covered Redwood Summer. The pro corporate, pro resource extraction for profit bias was not accidental, naturally. It has been demonstrably proven that the function of the corporate media is to serve as a propaganda system for the corporate capitalist class’s interests. Therefore, if a problem is actually caused by those interests, reporting this accurately is simply “off of the table.” The most one can do is attempt to be “balanced” within that context.
In a bizarre editorial, the Ukiah Daily Journal questioned those that lamented at the fact that Redwood Summer would routinely get front page coverage and Community Solidarity did not by positing that the latter didn’t use “slick propaganda”, while the former did.[4] The very idea that the Yellows didn’t get at least as much coverage as the Greens was a very dubious argument, considering that every mainstream North Coast publication, including especially the Journal, Press Democrat, and Times-Standard routinely covered everything the Yellows did, and published countless letters espousing the Yellow perspective. One must also question the Journal’s description of the lack of “slickness”, considering that most of their signs, leaflets, T-shirts, hats, antenna balls, and press releases were mass produced and often funded by corporations, like Georgia-Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, Simpson, and Maxxam. In fact, the signature sign of the “Community Solidarity” coalition, a yellow rectangle with a stenciled black slogan reading “WE SUPPORT OUR TIMBER INDUSTRY”, which also included the outline of a yellow ribbon, was originally conceived of by McKinnleyville residents and Mothers’ Watch supporters Ann and Randy Dean.[5] However, Ann Dean admitted the industry’s involvement in a letter to the Eureka Times-Standard thanking Louisiana-Pacific and Shep Tucker for improving the design of the stencil![6] Evidently the Ukiah Daily Journal didn’t consider the barrage of paid advertisements by G-P, L-P, Pacific Lumber, or the North Coast Forest Industry—all of which contributed to Yellow efforts financially, as “propaganda”. Since the decision on where to place an article in the newspaper was the decision of the editors, an editorial absolving oneself of such responsibility is like arguing that a person is not responsible for their own decision to read the paper. In all likelihood, the decision to place stories about Redwood Summer in the limelight was primarily made to maximize the sensationalism of the story.
The worst offender among the corporate press was consistently the Eureka Times-Standard, whose reporting on Redwood Summer, Earth First!, and the IWW wasn’t just biased against them, but was in many instances gleefully so.
The Times-Standard’s reporting was no coincidence. If one had any doubts, one only have read the editorial that periodical published on Wednesday, September 19, 1990 in response to Earth First! – IWW Local #1’s announcement of Redwood Summer’s continuation as “Corporate Fall.” The editorial began:
“Just when North Coast residents breathed a sigh of relief as the ‘Redwood Summer’ anti-timber demonstrations reached their self-pronounced end on Labor Day, tax-payers are faced with ‘Corporate Fall.’
“Corporate Fall is another way for Earth First (sic), International (sic) Workers of the World and other ultra-socialist organizations to raid the public coffers and consciousness with their myopic quest to save the world from itself.”[7]
This wasn’t merely a negative opinion, it was outright slander. Redwood Summer was never “anti-timber” it was anti-liquidation-logging and anti-corporate-timber. However, in the mind of capitalist newspapers, anything critical of corporate capitalism was anti-business, period, because such publications either accepted a majority of their advertising revenue from corporations or were owned by corporations themselves.[8] The notion that either Earth First! or the IWW were “raiding the public coffers” was laughable, because nobody had fought harder and more diligently to keep the actual raiders of the public coffers from doing so, but again, since the Times-Standard primarily served those same corporate interests, they would never have admitted this. The Industrial Workers of the World are “ultra”-socialist in the sense that they are unapologetically anti-capitalist, but the same could not be said of any of the other partners in the Redwood Summer coalition, and in any case, the term “socialist” is a political code word used by corporations and the shapers of public opinion to identify a dissident political tendency, such as Earth First!, as being politically unacceptable. Likewise, their use of the word “tax-payers” was further Orwellian sleight-of-hand intended to suggest that only those who marched in lockstep with the existing order were “hard working, tax-paying, ‘real’ Americans,” a very old and well worn lie. Historically, all movements that challenge the dominant paradigm are labeled by the latter’s defenders pejoratively in such terms as, “(being on) a myopic quest to save the world from itself”, and are always dismissed as being composed of “outside agitators who don’t work, don’t pay taxes, and are not part of us and our community.” The same rhetoric was used against the union organizers during the Great Lumber Strike of 1935.
Indeed, the Times-Standard even engaged in some good old fashioned red baiting, opining:
“Even the Soviet Union, the birthplace of Marxist philosophies that Earth First!, the Wobblies, and the other Redwood Summer principals expound ad nauseam, has discovered the benefits of the free enterprise system and is pinning its hopes on private corporations to resuscitate its economy.”[9]
Had the editor bothered to conduct any historical research, they may have been shocked to discover that Marxism originated almost a half century earlier than 1917 in England, France, and Germany (although it was a continuation of several centuries of earlier, radical European tendencies); that the Industrial Workers of the World originated in the United States of America in 1905 based on a combination of indigenous radicalism peppered with European Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist tendencies (a full twelve years before the Russian Revolution); that the IWW’s first activity in Humboldt County took place in 1907; that Soviet “Communism” was an utter corruption of everything Marx, the IWW, and most leftists stood for; that the IWW had criticized the USSR and its brutality well before it became fashionable for American Capitalists—many of whom allied with the URRS in World War II—to do so; that most of the founders of Earth First! were openly hostile to Marxism; and that both the IWW and Earth First! had been almost as critical of the USSR and other so-called “Communist” states as they were of capitalist economies for their economic and ecological failings. One may question the utility in quibbling over such facts, but it demonstrates that the editor of the Times-Standard was either ignorant or willfully lying, and if this was true about the IWW and Earth First!, it follows that it was likewise true about other related issues as well. For these reasons activists frequently referred to the publication as the “Slime-Slanderer.”[10]
One could scarcely imagine a more biased editorial policy than this, but the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance made the Times-Standard seem progressive by comparison. Fortuna’s local periodical was essentially the mouthpiece of Mothers’ Watch, TEAM, WeCARE, and any other Humboldt County chapter of corporate timber front groups. Its Christian fundamentalist editor, Glenn Simmons, routinely pontificated from the extreme right end of the political spectrum lambasting Earth First! for its “paganism” and “ungodliness” as much as he excoriated the movement for its political views. Most of the editorials were essentially verbatim regurgitation of corporate timber’s cruder talking points, though from time to time, it reprinted other right wing whoppers, such as the absurd notion that Mark Twain, an outspoken socialist, was in favor of laissez faire capitalism! That publication’s reporting on Redwood Summer wasn’t merely one-sided; it was dead set on making it a non-event. Virtually every major Redwood Summer rally and no small shortage of the smaller ones were not even covered by the publication, except in the context of the much less frequent and generally much smaller Yellow counter rallies, which the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance reported on as if they were the big story and not merely an exercise in corporate propaganda. No doubt the paper’s eager willingness to run full page advertisements from the major timber corporations operating in Humboldt County, which it did in practically every issue, was a motivating factor.[11]
What actually passed for a “liberal” media, meaning free weekly entertainment publications with a large percentage of advertisements and a modicum of political reporting was mixed at best. The Los Angeles Weekly’s Dan Goldin had written a fairly extensive, but ultimately misleading and dismissive article titled “Lost in the Woods” which included a statement, formatted as a poll quote, that read, “Redwood Summer was supposed to halt the destruction of California’s Old-Growth forest. Except it didn’t happen”[12] This was not actually the expressed goal of Redwood Summer; as Darryl Cherney described it:
“The original goals were threefold. One: to draw nationwide attention to the plights of America’s forests, particularly in Northern California. Two: to slow the logging companies down to sustained yield with our bodies. And three: to call for an end to speciesism.
“The first goal, I think we accomplished hands down. We’ve drawn international attention. We’re going to see several documentaries and lots of articles coming out in the future. We drew about 3,500 participants. Aside from media, we reached a lot of people directly who will return home to communities around the country and around the world.
“The second goal…We did slow down the logging with our bodies, but not to sustained yield. Most significantly, the CDF began turning down THPs in record numbers. It’s directly related to a combo of Redwood Summer and Forests Forever. It’s directly related to public scrutiny. We also did stop several THPs with our bodies. We shut ‘em down and lawsuits came and we tied them up in court.
“As far as speciesism goes, there’s a long row to hoe here in terms of waking up the human species to its me-first attitude. I think we woke a lot of people up, but the human race is still in its early morning grog and hasn’t comprehended the complete message yet. Really, with the exception of the first, these goals are very lofty, and no group could be expected to achieve them in a mere three months.”[13]
According to Anderson Valley Advertiser editor and publisher Bruce Anderson, Marc Cooper’s exposé in the Village Voice, “Redwood Bummer: If an Earth First! Protest Falls in the Forest and No One Hears it, Did it Happen?” was not appreciably better. The article described the summer long campaign as a conflict where “15,000 loggers and millworkers” were caught in a crossfire between jobs and environmentalists. However, the author didn’t quote, and most likely didn’t bother to interview, a single logger or mill worker. His primary representative of the industry was P-L President John Campbell, whose approach to demonstrators was to run them down in his car. According to Anderson:
“Most loggers and millworkers will tell people they trust (the AVA, not to boast, hears it a couple of times a week) that they know the corporations are raping the woods, wrecking fisheries, have no concern whatsoever for the long-term interests of rural Norcal communities, and will soon be gone along with their woods jobs…
“The media meanwhile goes blithely along interviewing management people and management’s yellow ribbon goons as if they were representative of workers.”[14]
Even mainstream environmental publications seemed prone to regurgitate corporate timber’s talking points. Outside Magazine, of all publication published an article comparing different environmental groups on a scale of conservative to radical, depicting the latter as mad bomb throwing lunatics, which was utterly inaccurate, given the fact that no radical environmentalist had ever been convicted of such an act.[15] Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society had rammed corporate whaling ships, but this was still a fair distance away from throwing bombs.
The one exception to the corporate media’s tendency had been Mike Geniella’s reporting for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Geniella had been on that publication’s staff for ten years, and four of these had been spent as the Mendocino County bureau chief in Ukiah on the paper’s timber beat.[16] He had been the lead reporter in the region on most local news stories, and he had broken major stories and won awards for his coverage.[17] He had, naturally, been the reporter assigned to cover the Bari and Cherney bombing and much of Redwood Summer[18] with his colleagues Bleys W Rose and Chris Smith.[19] His coverage of Redwood Summer had been considered the most “fair and balanced” by just about all sides. Letter to the editor typically praised him for making sense of all of the confusion.[20] The coverage in the Eureka Times-Standard, the region’s other major daily, by contrast, while comprehensive, had not been balanced, nor had reporters David Forster[21], Marie Gravelle, Ed Lion, or others showed the same amount of fairness. Its editorial policy had earned it the name “Slime-Slandered.” Geniella’s wife, Theresa ran a small cottage industry with her sister producing items for Montessori School catalogues. Mike and Theresa had four boys, ranging in age from 3 to 13 years old, and they lived north of Ukiah.[22] Rose and Smith were not as highly regarded. One reader described Rose as a reporter, “who did (Geniella claims) win a Pulitzer Prize, once, sometime, somewhere,” and Smith as “vacuous and sophomoric.”[23] Judi Bari’s description of Rose was not even as charitable, describing the latter as having “a record of writing vicious hit pieces against both Earth First! and the peace movement.”[24]
One of Geniella’s shining moments was to write a series of articles, in August of 1990, connecting the FBI’s “investigations”—which more accurately involved surveillance, infiltration, and disruption—of Earth First! in Arizona, Montana, and California. It included a map and a list of the people targeted by the Bureau, and it actually described the FBI’s intent to ensnare Earth First! in a sting operation using provocateur Michael Fain.[25] Geniella worked very hard on this series of articles[26], but the lead article was given the unfortunate headline, which Geniella didn’t write, “FBI targets Earth First! in Terror Probe”. The headline implied that the article was about the FBI investigating Earth First! as terrorists, but in fact the article was the first to point out a connection between what was most likely an interlinked COINTELPRO campaign against the environmental movement in three separate locations.[27] According to Geniella, his intent was to show how little the FBI actually had to show for their supposed investigations—which made sense if one considered the possibility that the FBI wasn’t actually conducting an investigation at all[28], a point that the corporate press had ignored[29], even though the local and environmental press had been suggesting this since the bombing.[30] Many readers questioned why Geniella was giving Bari the benefit of the doubt if she were guilty, and some of his colleagues hinted he might be too close to the victims—hence his skepticism—but Geniella reported that he received no pressure from the editors to soften his critical reporting on the FBI.[31]
On Sunday, September 9, 1990, Geniella gave a ninety minute interview about his reporting of Redwood Summer to Anderson Valley Advertiser and New Settler Interview reporter Lynne Dahl. From that, Dahl “distilled” fifteen minutes worth of conversation, of which she printed word-for-word in an article which appeared in the September 12, 1990 edition of the Anderson Valley Advertiser.[32] When asked, by Dahl his assessment of Redwood Summer, Geniella responded candidly:
“I think it’s a mixed bag. Clearly Redwood Summer accomplished a number of things. Earth First! used to attract 30 or 40 people here on the steps of the Court House. So bringing in over 2,000 to a rally in Fort Bragg is quite impressive. Redwood Summer has tapped into frustration people have about the environment. The sensational aspect of the bombing [of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney], I’m convinced, having been to some of the colleges, frightened some of the people away. For Redwood Summer to have been able to regroup and to do Somoa, which I think was absolutely critical, and to pull it off like they did, and then to do Fort Bragg, well you have to give them a lot of credit. What is often overlooked is that they showed the true character of the Earth First!ers and environmentalists involved. I ran into the local Highway Patrol commander not long ago and he had nothing but praise for the Redwood Summer organizers after the Fort Bragg rally. There was all this talk about violence and when the test came clearly it was the Redwood Summer people who kept the lid on that situation. The down side, if there is one, is it’s allowed those against timber reforms: industry, company representatives, Mothers’ Watch groups; these people to pound away and misrepresent the environmentalists as terrorists, radicals, hippies, Redwoodstock—keep these things in the forefront to distract from the real issues: overcutting, job levels, long term directions.”[33]
There is nothing particularly biased or controversial in that statement, and it is mostly a statement of fact. However, it isn’t biased towards timber corporations or the Wise Use movement. Geniella emphasized how high a priority he set for his own accuracy and fairness and that he didn’t like making mistakes. This was challenging considering the copy editing process with which Geniella had direct experience. As he described it:
“Having worked as a copy editor, I know the tremendous amount of copy coming across the desk that you must layout and then write the headlines for. It’s an intense job, particularly on a daily paper that goes to press at midnight. The pressure is there, the copy is moving, you have to meet certain deadlines. So it’s very hard to think it through, read the article carefully, and retain accuracy.”[34]
He also agreed with some of the letter writers who had been critical of the reporting of the events in Fort Bragg on July 21, 1990. He pointed out that he had just returned from covering the Earth First! Round River Rendezvous in Montana and was was rushed for time. He was attempting to cover both the rally in Fort Bragg and the FBI’s “terror probe”, but he put his own emphasis on the former and left the planning of the coverage of the events in Fort Bragg to his staff (Rose and Smith), whom he admitted were knowlegible, but “(hadn’t) lived and breath this and are not familiar with all the issues.” Geniella elaborated:
“With the main story I collaborated. I had nothing to do with Chris Smith’s story [describing the environmentalists as “long haired vegetarians,”] I’m sorry I didn’t because I would have raised some complaints about his assessment. Our main story coverage was maybe lukewarm. But it was the “vegetarian” story that drew the wrath of the people, and not unfairly. The reporter’s attempt was honest; he was not out to do anybody in. It was a case of his not having enough experience with the situation to assess it correctly.”[35]
Geniella also admitted that the lack of coverage by the Press Democrat of the environmentalists’ speeches and the dialog on the flatbed truck—what he called “Redwood Summer’s shining moment”—as well as not noting that Yellows had been whipped up into a mob hysteria by their leaders, “Probably was unfair”.[36]
Dahl also probed Geniella for his opinions on the bombing and the FBi’s subsequent response, to which he responded:
“I can honestly say that I was never comfortable with the pronouncements that were coming out of Oakland and the FBI and that I remained skeptical to the end, even when it appeared, (falsely so) that the nails were down to a batch of a thousand. The problem was that it did not add up in my mind…
“(Some colleagues were arguing) That clearly the cops say this, so god, that’s got to be it. But obviously now, that is not the case. But there are still people out there who still believe that the FBI is going to come up with this sledgehammer, that it’s only a matter of time…
“I know that (the FBI) were up here talking to some people, but I’ll have to say to some amusement…you know we received that Lord’s Avenger letter and there was an agent who came and picked that up and took it to San Francisco. I have never heard from the FBI since. I must admit I have a problem cooperating with the FBI just because I don’t think reporters should be in interviews with any FBI agent or law enforcement agency. Our attorneys would probably resist that involvement but I’m a little bit surprised that there wasn’t even an approach. We had possession of the letter and we knew many things about this case and the key personalities involved.”[37]
Less than two weeks later, the Press Democrat removed Geniella from the timber beat. The Anderson Valley Advertiser broke the news on September 19, 1990, stating:
“Though no one is talking much, Mike Geniella, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s man in Mendocino County, has been taken off timber stories on the grounds he’s too close to ‘radicals.’ The PD, through a receptionist, will only say they are not discussing assignments. The PD is also believed to be upset with Lynne Dahl’s interview with Geniella which appeared in last week’s AVA, even though the interview itself was of a non-controversial nature. Tuesday morning, Geniella would only confirm that he’s been taken off timber stories and that he’s asked the Newspaper Guild to look into his reassignment. As for PD management, the Geniella move is simply additional evidence of their professional cowardice. American newspapers were once run by giants—it’s dwarf time in journalism these days.”[38]
Lynn Dahl elaborated in a letter to the editor in that same edition that she had received a phone call from Geniella the previous day describing his suspension. Dahl explained that her interview had been edited for length, though none of the statements from Geniella she had included had been abridged, and that what had been omitted was the reporter’s rehashing of corporate timber’s positions, which she felt needn’t be regurgitated yet again. Dahl elaborated:
“(I)t was obviously my choice to not rehash all the arguments of the summer and simply give a quick overview of his reflections as a reporter. During our interview Mike presented a very impartial, unbiased understanding of both industry and the environmentalists. Feeling pro-timber views have been more than abundantly covered in the press, I thought it refreshing to hear someone give a fair shake to both sides of the timber turmoil…Mike was absolutely not endorsing Redwood Summer, he was simply reflecting on its impact. Nowhere in his Press Democrat articles or in this interview did he ever take on the cause of any party involved in this maze of timber confusion. He has set out to clarify, not to influence, and has spent a great deal of time and energy attempting to accomplish this goal.
“Mike said that Redwood Summer was a ‘mixed bag’, this action is not; it’s clearly unfair. Mike should not be another casualty of the summer’s activities. He has greatly helped the Press Democrat’s readership stay on top of events this summer.”[39]
The story was ironically reported in the Ukiah Daily Journal on September 21, 1990[40], a full two days before the Press Democrat announced the change.[41] The sense was that some of Geniella’s statements made in the interview had raised the hackles of Press Democrat editors, perhaps because they perceived a “lack of impartiality”, which—of course—really meant that the reporter wasn’t carrying the water sufficiently unquestioningly for corporate timber.[42] Editor Mike Parnam, engaging what sounded like doublethink, praised the quality and fairness of Geniella’s reporting, but expressed concerns about portions of the interview. Bruce Anderson denounced the Press Democrat’s actions as “appalling”, arguing that Geniella was, if anything, about as fair and balanced as they came.[43] Tim Stoen, who had opposed Redwood Summer and who had unsuccessfully challenged Frank Riggs for the Republican nomination for the chance to run against incumbent Democrat Doug Bosco in the upcoming election registered his dissatisfaction.[44] Several locals, in a community forum published in the Mendocino Beacon, hardly a shining example of independent journalism—though not a complete mouthpiece for corporate timber such as the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance decried a culture of censorship that pervaded the North Coast surrounding the timber industry, citing in particular Bill Bailey’s attempt to have the Lorax removed from the Laytonville School’s second grade required reading list, the Mother’s Watch blacklist, and, of course, Geniella’s suspension.[45]
Numerous reporters, editors, and publishers belonging to the Mendocino Coast Press Club, led by Jim Sears, and which included Lynn Dahl, North Coast News columnist Nancy Barth, New Settler Interview editor and publisher Beth Bosk, freelance journalist Heidi Cusick, Bud D’Arezzo, George Dushek, Melvin Gilbert of A & E Magazine, Elinor Hayes, Liz Irwin and Judy Nichols of North Coast News, Margaret MacDonald, Judy Tarbell of Ridge Review Magazine, and Ralph Turrentine wrote an open letter to the Press Democrat assailing their decision, declaring:
“The Mendocino Coast Press Club questions the reassignment of Mendocino County Bureau Chief Mike Geniella. An examination of what has appeared in The Press Democrat and the Anderson Valley Advertiser, on balance, does not seem sufficient to move Geniella from the timber beat.
“In our opinion his coverage of this vital and contentious issue has been insightful, informative and evenhanded. To deprive your readers of his knowledge and experience just prior to the election is a disservice to all.
“It should be noted that Mr. Geniella is not a member of our group. All members have been, or presently are, gainfully employed in the print or electronic media, including those who have worked for the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, the Baltimore Sun, and others.[46]
The writers requested that the Press Democrat reconsider its move. With the exceptions of Dahl and Bosk, most of the signers were anything but radicals. Nancy Barth, for example, was at best a moderate, politically and certainly no supporter of Redwood Summer. Immediately following Redwoodstock, she had written yet another sneering and dismissive column which included statements like:
“As predicted, the leadership of Earth First! has self-destructed. Founder Dave Foreman, beset by his own legal problems, has split with cofounder Mike Roselle who recently said, ‘We don’t need Foreman in Earth First! if he’s going to be an unrepentant right-wing thug.’ Meanwhile, the recovering Judi Bari is involved with a new movement, the Earth Action Network. Darryl Cherney, advised by the Anderson Valley Advertiser to take ‘some time away from the front,’ has been keeping a low profile in Humboldt County.[47]
Most of these statements, especially the nonsense about Judi Bari leaving Earth First! in favor of the “Earth Action Network” (which was a short-lived project of a handful of Bay Area activists, many of who were Earth First!ers and IWW members anyway) are at best misleading, being quoted out of context, if not false. For Barth to support Geniella demonstrates the high level of respect the latter enjoyed among his peers as well as further demonstrating that he was not biased in favor of Redwood Summer as his suspension might suggest.
The irony of the situation was, at least as far as Bruce Anderson and Judi Bari were concerned, at least, Geniella’s reporting near the end of Redwood Summer had become limp and was too biased in favor of corporate timber.[48] In fact, Judi Bari had hinted that Geniella had pulled his guns as early as the days following the rally and counterdemonstration in Fort Bragg.[49] Bari and Anderson both cited as an example an article Geniella wrote just before his suspension titled, “Foresters Contend Logging in Balance,” which began with the statement, “More than 50 professional foresters, armed with new data claiming logging on the North Coast is in balance with growth, are demanding an interim state audit of harvest rates before November’s crucial election on competing forestry reform initiatives.” The foresters were said to “work in the private sector.”[50] Anderson deconstructed this statement by pointing out that in Mendocino County, this meant that essentially G-P and L-P called the tune, and though he didn’t elaborate on the situation in Humboldt County, there the masters were P-L and Simpson, in addition to L-P.[51] Bari’s assessment of this article was even more damning:
“It cited 53 professional foresters, ‘all of whom work in the private sector in Mendocino County,’ claiming that there is no overcut here. By calling them ‘private sector’ instead of ‘corporate’ foresters he gives the impression that they are independent. He never asks the simple question of who they work for (which in Mendo County is usually L-P or G-P), or why, if there’s no overcut, are they logging six-inch pecker poles.”[52]
Bari cited other examples of Geniella’s caving in to corporate bias, including his one-sided description of P-L President John Campbell’s altercation with Bob Serina:
“‘Campbell said protesters rocked his car and pounded their fists on rolled up windows as he tried to leave,’ wrote Geniella. ‘The timber executive later described the experience as very frightening.’ What Geniella didn’t write was that Campbell had picked up protester Bob Serena on the hood of his car as Campbell attempted to break through the picket line, and that Campbell then floored it and careened down the road with Serena clinging for his life to the car hood. ‘That’s called balanced reporting,’ Geniella answered when I complained to him about the inaccuracy.”[53]
Bari was also critical of Geniella’s wrap up article on Redwood Summer, opining:
“You won’t find any of his legitimate praise of EF! organizers in this article. Instead he starts out. ‘Redwood Summer, the series of logging protests christened by a violent explosion, is set to end this week.’ The implication, of course, is that EF! was the cause of the explosion, not the victim. No further explanation is given, and when he gets into listing acts of violence associated with Redwood Summer he omits the bombing entirely and bends over backward to make it look like both sides were violent.”[54]
Still, Bari agreed that Geniella’s suspension was unfair, calling it “an outrageous act of censorship (marking) a new low in corporate media kowtowing to big timber,” and that it was already having “a chilling effect on local reporters of lesser stature, who are rushing to censor themselves so that they (wouldn’t) meet the same fate.” Bari also decried the double standard which allowed reporters to uncritically report corporate opinion and P.R. as fact and dismiss actual fact as “anti-timber bias” stating:
“What this really shows is what a hoax any claim of objective reporting is. No reporter has ever been disciplined for being ‘too close’ to Harry Merlo or Charles Hurwitz. Geniella describes a reporter’s job as having a front row seat on the parade of life. But when you are dealing with forces as ruthless and powerful as big timber, there are no seats. We are all in the parade.”[55]
Bari wasn’t necessarily suggesting a direct conspiracy, however, assigning the motivation to silence Geniella to the class consciousness of the Press Democrat’s ownership whose executives were among the same class and caliber as the CEOs of corporate timber:
“Geniella has filed a grievance with his union over the Press Democrat’s violation of his right to free speech. But the union is encountering its own problems with corporate greed. Wages and working conditions have been deteriorating at the Press Democrat ever since it was taken over by The New York Times in 1985. As bargaining begins on their new contract, management has put forward their proposal to eliminate wage scales and impose a “merit” system based on management evaluations. Work could also be assigned to anyone, including non-union employees. Severance pay, rehiring rights and union security would be eliminated, and a ‘management rights’ clause would preclude dissent by employees in most areas. Employees would also be subject to drug testing and searches of their belongings and vehicles on company property.
“These conditions are strikingly similar to the labor practices of Louisiana-Pacific, which might help to explain why the Press Democrat is willing to go to such lengths to support their corporate buddies in the timber industry.” [56]
This certainly made sense, and this process of media censorship as structural analysis as opposed to sinister conspiracy theory has been well documented by many, particularly Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky[57], as well as North Coast resident Norman Soloman and his colleague Jeff Cohen.[58] The corporatization of local media on the North Coast was not a new phenomenon. Anderson Valley Advertiser reader Evan Johnson described how both the (by then defunct) Mendocino Grapevine and Ukiah Daily Journal had devolved into “something equivalent to The Weekly Reader” as opposed to vibrant community organs.[59] Bruce Anderson himself had repeatedly disdained the transformed Grapevine referring to it often, derisively of course, as the Grape-yup (in reference to “yuppies”).[60] Much of this was simply the result of economics and consolidation, which was an increasing trend nationwide, but part of the change was due to the evolution of the North Coast from primarily being a timber and fishing based economy to one relying more and more on high end tourism, particularly bed ‘n breakfast inns.[61] Still, Bari saw the reaction of the Press Democrat, and, by extension, corporate timber, that the efforts of Redwood Summer had been effective at reframing the issue.[62]
Several years later, in the course of uncovering the truth about their bombing, Bari’s and Cherney’s legal team uncovered a potentially much more sinister motivation for Geniella’s suspension: The FBI wanted him out. In response to Geniella’s aforementioned exposé connecting “Operation Thermcon” in Arizona, the FBI’s infiltration of Earth First! in Montana, and the bombing. Richard Held, himself, in a memo “discovered” by the legal team through the Freedom of Information Act, accuses Geniella of “lying” and “making the FBI look bad.” Held announced his intention to have FBI head William Sessions contact the New York Times, the Press Democrat’s parent company, and take corrective action, though what specific action was recommended is not specified. Bari gave a copy of this memo to Geniella, who asked the editorial staff of the paper who denied the allegations, calling the memo and its contents “coincidence”.[63] While there is no substantive proof that this was indeed the actual reason for Geniella’s suspension from the timber beat, it still indicated that the powers that be, whether the FBI, corporate timber, the police, or the employing class in general, were willing to censor and cover up inconvenient truths. In light of the results of the case against the FBI and OPD, Geniella’s article was fairly mild. The inconvenient truth was, there was no freedom of the press in timber country.
Notes:
[1] Cite: Manufacturing Consent, the books by “Fair”, etc…
[2] “Bitter End to Redwood Summer”, by Jane Kay, San Francisco Examiner, September 2, 1990. Emphasis added.
[3] “Bitter End to Redwood Summer”, by Jane Kay, San Francisco Examiner, September 2, 1990. Emphasis added.
[4] “Propaganda Primer on Logging”, editorial, Ukiah Daily Journal, September 21, 1990.
[5] “Word Smith: Couple Harnasses the Power of Words to Even the Odds in the Timber Crisis”, by David Forster, Eureka Times-Standard, July 1, 1990. Ironically, Dean credits Redwood Summer for raising the issue and concedes that not everything Earth First!ers had been saying for years had been wrong.
[6] “L-P Improves Pro-timber Sign”, letter to the editor by Ann Dean, Eureka Times-Standard, June 30, 1990. The date is not incorrect. The timing of this letter and the article that followed the next day, which does not mention L-P’s involvement is strangely ironic given the circumstances.
[7] “Sigh! – Here We Go Again”, editorial, Eureka Times-Standard, September 19, 1990.
[8] Cite Manufacturing Consent.
[9] “Sigh! – Here We Go Again”, editorial, Eureka Times-Standard, September 19, 1990. Emphasis in the original.
[10] Need Sources.
[11] Need citations.
[12] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990.
[13] “An Interview With Redwood Summer Strategist and EF! Musician Darryl Cherney”, by Sharon Seidenstein, Ecology Center Newsletter, October 1990.
[14] “Media Watch”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 19, 1990.
[15] “Seeing Things from ‘Outside’”, by Gaye LeBaron, Notebook, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 13, 1990.
[16] “PD Reporter Yanked from Timber Coverage”, by Chris Calder, Ukiah Daily Journal, September 21, 1990.
[17] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[18] “Press Democrat Reporter Moved from Timber Beat”, Willits News, September 23, 1990.
[19] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[20] “Excellent Reports”, letter to the editor by Mary Saddler, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 2, 1990.
[21] See, for example, “‘Redwood Summer’ Sputters After Fanfare of Opening Day”, by David Forster, Eureka Times-Standard, June 22, 1990. Forster repeats the tenor of the previous day’s editorial describing the Samoa rally as a “fizzle” and repeats the extremely low crowd estimate of 250-300 when most other sources placed it at 700-750.
[22] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[23] “The Geniella Affair”, letter to the editor by Evan Johnson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, October 24, 1990.
[24] “Dave Foreman Comes to Ecotopia”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, March 13, 1991.
[25] “FBI Targets Earth First! Followers in Terror Probe”, by Mike Geniella, “Montana Case Has Professor, Students Baffled”, by Mike Geniella, “Feds Accuse Arizona Activists of Plot to Sabotage Nuke Plants”, and “Bari, Cherney Still Suspects in Car Bombing”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 5, 1990.
[26] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[27] “Who Bombed Judi Bari?”, Judi Bari interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, Issue #89, 1995.
[28] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[29] “Who Bombed Judi Bari?”, Judi Bari interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, Issue #89, 1995.
[30] For example, see “Redwood Summer Bombing: Police Framing, Not Investigating”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, July 1, 1990.
[31] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[32] Letter to the editor by Lynn Dahl, various publications including Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 19, 1990 (“Press Democrat Thuggery”); and Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 25, 1990.
[33] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[34] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[35] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[36] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[37] “Reporting the News for the Press Democrat, an Interview with Mike Geniella, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[38] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 19, 1990.
[39] Letter to the editor by Lynn Dahl, various publications including Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 19, 1990 (“Press Democrat Thuggery”); and Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 25, 1990.
[40] “PD Reporter Yanked from Timber Coverage”, by Chris Calder, Ukiah Daily Journal, September 21, 1990.
[41] “PD News Beat Change in Timber Country”, by Randi Rossman, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 23, 1990.
[42] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[43] “Press Democrat Reporter Moved from Timber Beat”, Willits News, September 23, 1990.
[44] “Geniella Always Fair”, letter to the editor by Tim Stoen, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 26, 1990.
[45] “Censorship Assailed”, by Richard Aaron, et. al. (at least three dozen others), Mendocino Beacon, October 4, 1990.
[46] Open letter to the Press Democrat, by Jim Sears, et. al., various publications, including Mendocino Beacon, October 4, 1990 (“Reconsider Reassignment”); and Anderson Valley Advertiser, October 10, 1990.
[47] “Mendocino Undertow”, by Nancy Barth, North Coast News, September 6, 1990.
[48] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[49] “1990: A Year in the Life of Earth First!”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, January 2, 1991.
[50] “Foresters Contend Logging in Balance”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 17, 1990.
[51] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 19, 1990.
[52] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[53] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[54] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[55] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[56] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[57] Cite Manufacturing Consent.
[58] Cite the three books, plus Extra.
[59] “The Geniella Affair”, letter to the editor by Evan Johnson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, October 24, 1990.
[60] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, numerous citations, Anderson Valley Advertiser, 1984-86.
[61] Although there is no substantive proof of this, there is even a possibility that in the early to mid 1970s, the Mendocino Beacon once sported a subtly placed “IWW” lettering in the latticework of its lighthouse logo during the early-to-mid 1970s, which was likely an intentional reference to the Industrial Workers of the World, as any such lettering is an unlikely coincidence, as letterings such as “IXIXI”, “IXXXI” or simply “XXX” would have more likely resulted from a mere coincidental pattern. No doubt the editors of the Beacon in the increasingly renegade political atmosphere of the 1980s decided to relegate the IWW to the memory hole, as the logo in later years shows a blank band where the “IWW” letters once graced it. The Beacon’s editorial policy likewise took a much more conservative (and less independent of capital) political direction in its editorial policy.
[62] “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.
[63] “Who Bombed Judi Bari?”, Judi Bari interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, Issue #89, 1995.