Big in the news the past month is the use of the term “fake news.”
Certainly, this is not limited to mass media and all their outlets. We are deluged in Santa Clara by rumor mongers of the web.
This leads us to look at the social media “news” being spewed out on blogs in town. This misinformation and commentary is being published as “truth” and it couldn’t be further from it.
“Unofficial: Santa Clara City Council,” an anonymous Facebook page, has been running comments for a couple of years. This one is an example of journalistic color. Yellow.
Grasping at straws is an understatement. These blogs are gossip columns that massage rumors into stories that read like a cheap novel. “It was a dark and stormy night…”
You must wonder how the “Santa Clara News Online” blog obtained so many email addresses? And it showed up at the start of the election season. Coincidence? Not really. The author of this site has been dedicated to discrediting the Weekly. And after warning him–he disregarded our warning–we sued him. Now he is pleading for help on GoFundMe, to defend his BS.
Currently he has found a new target and is attempting to trash Vice Mayor Dominic Caserta, a candidate for County Supervisor. The latest flak is over Caserta’s expense allowance of $1900 for a government conference in Yosemite. It is obvious, the blog’s owner has never attended a conference, particularly where rooms start at $300 a night. On his blog, he suggested Caserta could stay at a Best Western for $107 a night. One problem, it was 70 miles away, which is about the same distance he should be from a computer.
On these blogs, no one is being critical of Mayor Gillmor. While challenging Caserta’s $1900 conference expense they have omitted mention of the $200,000 in City money paid for an empty independent audit of the 49ers, or the $120,000 no bid contract awarded for the redesign of BAREC. Oh, did we mention the omission of the money being spent on the 21 law suits pending at City Hall? Coincidence? Maybe not.
It was posted on social media, that the Santa Clara Weekly was associated with BLUPAC. This is another major work of total fiction. Like the Abominable Snowman–a made-up myth. Falls into the category of “unsocial media.”
Burt Field, of Stand up For Santa Clara wrote a comment how the “Weekly does not publish every week.” According to our printer, the Weekly has printed a newspaper every week for the last 10 years totaling 5.6 million copies. Check your facts Master Field, before your fingers flit freely.
Field also alleges the Weekly charges too much for City legal ads and the City could save thousands by going to another publication. Where does he get this stuff? (He made it up folks). The Weekly is the least expensive adjudicated publication in Santa Clara.
The Weekly also verifies every story and we check our facts. However, since our City culture is changing, maybe facts are no longer in fashion. Caveat emptor!
We have no problem with the truth, regardless who writes it.
The problem seems to be there is so little of it.