Beaver advocate and former council member Bill Wainwright wrote a fantastic letter to the editor challenging Lisa P. White’s article on the April 16th meeting. He pointedly asks whether Ms. White attended the same meeting we did. At the time her story broke I wrote White about what I felt was a misleading piece, and she responded that “the real news of that meeting was the fact that the beavers were moving on, and that’s why she lead the story with it.”
Where to begin? Even if it were true that the “beavers were moving on” what exactly would make that the real news? Why have the Martinez beavers even made a single news cycle let alone hundreds? Obviously it can’t be because of the beavers themselves. Otherwise there would be entire sections of the paper dedicated to the Antioch beavers or the Berkeley beavers, maybe even a reporter assigned to the “beaver beat”. The reason the story hit the news at all was the fact that people cared about the beavers, and the public opposed the plan to remove them. The “real story” was always about the enormous civic response.
So if a reporter covering the “real story” attended the April 16th meeting, her coverage would ostensibly be about the public’s response at that meeting. How did people feel about the subcommittee report? How did people react to Ms. Tappel’s testimony? What kind of weight does her remarks about the beavers moving on carry with the people who see them every day? Does it change the balance of interest in the beavers? Will it change the pressure directed towards the city to allow them to stay?
If it were even true that the beavers were leaving, which of course it’s not. The reporter also did nothing to verify this claim. She did not contact people who see the beavers daily or come check for herself. She did not interview the mayor who would benefit most from this rumor. She merely took the words of a self-described environmental scientist and wrote them down as fact. No effort was made to examine Ms. Tappel’s qualifications or learn how she came to her conclusions.
The way I read the article she wrote, Ms. White not only missed the real story of the night, but reported irresponsibly on the fake one.
Mr. Wainwright’s letter is reprinted here with his permission:
Editor:
Your reporter covering the April 16 Martinez City Council beaver report didn’t attend the same meeting we did. We heard a last-minute speaker invited by the Mayor make a thoroughly disorganized, self-serving, error-strewn, and unabashedly offensive surprise presentation. Your reporter led her story with that presentation, giving credence to some of its misrepresentations.
We in the audience also heard a well-prepared, reasoned, thorough and fast-paced Beaver Subcommittee presentation outlining the beavers’ impacts on the downtown environment and mitigation steps to address those of potential harm. That was the meeting’s main event, but only an after-thought for your reporter whose report dignified a maneuver to undercut the Subcommittee’s message: that the beavers could stay.
Only one public speaker out of more than 20 urged the Council to remove the beavers. Your reporter did not report that fact.
We have grown to expect more from your paper. We expect to learn, for instance, that the appearance of the Mayor’s guest came as a surprise to the Subcommittee members, that she repeatedly impugned the Subcommittee’s work, and that he allowed her to filibuster uninterrupted for 25 minutes, deterring many members of the public from expressing themselves because of the late hour.
Bill Wainwright
Thanks Bill for your clarity and for highlighting the real purpose of Ms. Tappel’s appearance. The beavers are lucky to have you on their side.
Heidi P. Perryman, Ph.D.
