Of Fake Newspapers, Nuanced Communications, and Credentialed Media – The Liberal OC

Since 2014, I have a regular series of arguments on social media regarding the Irvine Community News & Views, a/k/a “Larry Agran’s fake newspaper.”

Agran’s opponent for Mayor, Council member Tammy Kim, has written a whole diatribe about it on her website.

She writes:

ICNV exploits loopholes in campaign finance laws to avoid disclosing its financial backers, deliberately skirting transparency regulations. By operating online when there are no elections, it evades scrutiny and functions as an unregistered campaign tool. During election season, it switches tactics, distributing printed editions directly to voters’ homes under the guise of legitimate journalism.

This operation takes full advantage of the decline in local news, deceiving voters with biased content masked as trustworthy reporting. ICNV manipulates the system to push hidden partisan agendas, undermining transparency and deliberately misleading the public.

As the boundaries between news reporting and advocacy continue to blur, it falls upon the readers to navigate the media landscape with caution and mindfulness. The Irvine Community News and Views may wear the garb of a traditional newspaper, but beneath its facade lies a realm of hidden intentions and covert messaging.

The copy uses photos of the summer issue of the Irvine Community News & Views.  It’s eight pages.  Page one is a publisher’s note promoting Agran’s vision.  A story about activists that led the fight to get the city to shut down the All-American Asphalt Plant in North Irvine, which Agran was the council lead on and Kim voted for.  Page 2 is the jump page for the activism story which also credits Dave Min and Mary Ann Gaido.  Page 3 is an endorsement of Agran which notes ICNV endorsed Tammy Kim for city council in 2020 (Kim had no issue with that endorsement and promoted it).  Pages 4 and 5 is one giant story about Irvine’s public libraries.  Pages 6 is a story about transforming the El Toro base into the Great Park to remind new Irvine residents and voters about the fight to do just that with credit to former council members Beth Krom and Chris Mears.  Page 7 is a story about the Veterans’ Memorial Park and Gardens.  The back page is a promotion to register to vote.

For voters living in the Great Park neighborhoods, the Page 6 story is a good reminder of why your house is there today instead of an international airport.  The hard work of Agran, Krom, Mears and Sukhee Kang.  The battle for a Park or an Airport was 24 years ago and it was vicious; developers fought these council members for years.  So I’m amused to see Kim take so much credit for the battles she had no part of whatsoever.  Is it fake news in the ICNR?  Not about that.

The current edition, which landed in my mailbox Thursday, has some political stories on the election and charts comparing Agran and Kim on page 1 and 3.  There’s a page 1 story that jumps to Page 2 about OCPA rates and has well-sourced data rom the California Energy Commission showing that only 54% of the electricity flowing on the grid comes from renewables, not 95.5% claimed by OCPA.  It was easy enough to factcheck that on my own.  Page 4 and 5 has a Roger Bloom bylined piece on Tanaka Farms. Page 6 is a feature on Irvine’s Open Space Preserve with a tribute to Mary Ann Gaido who led the effort.  Page 7 is a feature on Irvine’s park system and arts options.  The back page is a full page public service announcement to register to vote and to vote.

Both issues; 5 of 8 pages of stories that have nothing to do with politics or campaigns.

The paper, over the years, also published a community calendar and sports stories.  But it’s a fake newspaper when there’s no Kim endorsement. And she’s upset that ICNV reported on Kim’s $150,000 contribution from the OC Professional Firefighters Union to use to fight a recall against her that has no prayer of making it to the ballot.

Kim sent a mailer promoting herself – but did not use the fact she’s running for mayor while most voters know she is – paid for by a committee with no members identified and by the firefighter’s union.  And Kim, on social media, confirmed her lawyers are carefully reviewing mailers paid for by this committee.  It’s legal, but it’s a mailer letting voters know who she is and letting you guess what office she seeks.

From Kim’s story on her website, this gem: “Stay informed, stay vigilant, for the truth often lies in the spaces between the lines.”  Now apply this sentence to the mailer Kim sent paid for by her recall campaign account.

I’ll take “Hidden Intentions and Covert Messaging for $100, Alec.”

What Kim hasn’t done is file a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission.  Probably because in 2016, then Mayoral-candidate Gang Chen filed one against Gaido, ICNV and TheLiberalOC and it was quickly tossed.

From that memo from the FPPC, this:

Under the Act, payments made by any broadcasting station (including cable television operator, programmer or producer), website, or a regularly published newspaper, magazine, or other periodical of general circulation, including any Internet or electronic publication that routinely carries news and commentary of general interests, for the cost of covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial is not considered a contribution to the candidate or committee…..There was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that Irvine Community News & Views and the Liberal OC do not fall within this exception.”

 So instead of whining about the paper that once endorsed her, Kim should go ahead and file an FPPC complaint which requires evidence to be submitted and considered, which they already had at least once.  I’ll wait.

While will call it a fake newspaper, the Epoch Times is a real one.  And one that’s highly partisan towards CONSERVATIVE points of view.

Tammy, who attended the bureau opening in Irvine with a who’s who set of OC’s worst conservatives, called the publication “critical to our democracy.”

From our post on this last year:

 Vice Mayor Kim calls the Epoch Times “critical to our democracy.”  She’s been an elected official for nearly three years; how can she be this misinformed about this publication?  She doesn’t read it.  Her staff failed to tell her this was a bad idea.  It’s proof she doesn’t do her homework.  No, The Epoch Times is not critical to our democracy.  And they publish evidence for this every day.

 …

From the Irvine Watchdog piece (in bold); the LiberalOC post is in Italic):

Social media posts reveal that Irvine City Councilmember and 2024 Irvine Mayoral candidate, Tammy Kim, attended and celebrated conspiracy laden click-bait publisher, The Epoch Times, with the opening of its new Irvine satellite office. In attendance was OC Board of Education (OCBE) Trustee Mari Barke, former CA State Senator, John Moorlach, Greater Irvine Chamber President, Bryan Starr, and a representative on behalf of current OC Board of Supervisors Director, Donald Wagner, among other mainly right-wing Republicans.

…

Pushback by fellow Democrats have been unforgiving and abundant. In response, Kim defended that she “…debated about whether or not to attend, but felt it was important to be there to provide a progressive voice. If given the chance, I would also talk to the “newspaper” funded by my democrat colleague (an apparent reference to Irvine Community News and Views) that pays for sponsored ads with fake news.” It remains to be seen if this mistake will pass or haunt the Councilmember in her 2024 Mayoral election. We certainly live in interesting times.

Now, The Epoch Times is a legitimate newspaper as is Irvine Community News & Views, which Kim rails against as a “fake newspaper.”  If you look at the history of newspapers, many were founded with publishers who had a specific political bias.  Alexander Hamilton’s New York Post is still publishing the sort of muckraking news he published himself against his political enemies.   The only “fake news” out there are parody sites like The Onion, Babylon Bee and supermarket tabloids like The Weekly World News.  The Epoch Times is a right-wing publication known for writing conspiracy theories and treating them as legitimate news.  The Watchdog piece has lots of documentation about Epoch Times.

But the bigger picture here is Kim’s inability to “read the room.”

Perhaps Kim should watch The Epoch Times documentary on January 6 if she’d like to see fake news.

Meanwhile….this “critical to democracy” publication is in hot water.  The CFO of the Epoch Times was arrested earlier this summer and charged in a “sprawling, transnational scheme” that laundered as much as $67 million. The CFO allegedly used cryptocurrency to purchase millions of dollars in crime proceeds, including prepaid debit cards, fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits and stolen personal information that was used to bolster the paper’s annual revenue.  What’s a little fraud after all?

******

During the September 10 city council meeting and discussions of reform regarding Irvine’s lobbyist policy, Kim and fellow council member Kathleen Treseder had an extended discussion with Jeff Melching, the city attorney, to define a member of the media, using the language of “credentialed media” and “Associated Press credentials.”

To help both of these council members with demonstrable confusion in understanding modern news media and who lack perspective of historical print media, please know that there is no single media credentialing organization in Orange County today.  The OC Sheriff’s Department halted the practice in 2013 (I still have my expired ID card which I’m told would still be respected by the department if I needed it).

The Associated Press is a wire service which provides news stories to media outlets who subscribe to their service, just like Bloomberg does, just like Dow Jones does, just like Reuters does.  But AP reporters are credentialed by the company, and not a government institution.  Kim needs to understand that not every journalist, even ones who subscribe to AP, can be credentialed by them.

To make it easier for Kim and Treseder, both are credentialed council members, lets look at their own city council credentials for comparsion.  They probably have a city-issued photo ID that affords access to information, materials, staff and courtesy in Irvine City Hall.  That ID, however wouldn’t afford them the same access to staff and resources at say, Fullerton City Hall or Costa Mesa City Hall.  That ID card and $5 will buy them a nice cup of coffee in Fullerton or Costa Mesa however, but only the Five Spot would matter to the business.

The Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, various radio and TV stations, local magazines all give journalists they employe an ID badge that’s used to get into their newsrooms and to show authorities when covering a story (usually required for crime scenes).  This ID badge is the media outlets from for credentialing their journalists.  Showing to a police officer or a public official confirms their employment and grants limited access based on the story at hand.  No every media outlet does this.  The radio stations I did news for Back East years ago lacked the ability to issue these.  So as far as credentialed services go, it all depends.

For what it’s worth, political blogs like TheLiberalOC, the Orange Juice Blog and OC Independent are not typically listed with other news outlets on various government press web pages but political blogs are almost always on the press list for news issued by the OCDA, the OCSD, State Senate and Assembly offices, various cities and school boards, lawyers who issue news about politically-motivated lawsuits and legal judgements, environmental groups and others.  I see all sorts of emails when a press person sends out news spam.  We are also approved for major trade shows throughout Southern California and the massive Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  So, are they (Kim and Treseder) worried about credentialed press or legitimate press?  Blogs? Or newspapers like the Irvine Community News and Views). It was a useless discussion by council members who have a different agenda.

If the intent of Kim’s and Treseder’s extended conversation was to find a way to exclude Irvine Community News & Views, then what about those tabloid newspapers published by developers which include the Irvine Standard?  The Irvine Weekly?

If you’re an Irvine voter and you’re not voting for Agran, go ahead and put the newsprint in the recycling bin.  But if you open the paper, you’re going to see content that also useful, and if you’re  anew voter, background on those to helped make the Great Park a reality while killing an massive international airport.