Oh man, did you hear what happened to CalCoastNews? It totally got Gawkered!
That’s a reference to the news media website Gawker, which suffered a blistering legal defeat from Hulk Hogan for a sex tape it ran of the wrestler/reality TV star. The case awarded Hogan $31 million in settlement money, which resulted in bankruptcy and the shuttering of Gawker.
It’s not for sure that bad for CalCoast and its owners Karen Velie and Daniel Blackburn—they owe $1.1 million to Arroyo Grande hazardous waste contractor Charles Tenborg. They got enough significant information totally wrong in a story about Tenborg that a jury voted the site guilty of defamation.
It isn’t clear yet if CalCoast will go the way of Gawker, but smalltime online journalism isn’t exactly a millionaire’s industry.
A hit like that is also incredibly embarrassing, much like the Santa Maria Police Department’s recent “Fake News Award,” garnered from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for the fake press release that I don’t need to explain for the 100th time.
While that’s a case of government officials outright lying, they do already have ways and means to keep information from the public, like these ad hoc committees that local boards have relied on lately. Ad hoc meetings can be closed to public eyes and ears.
For instance, the Allan Hancock College Board of Trustees doesn’t want to tell us exactly what trustee and local business owner Dan Hilker did to piss off the rest of the board, but it was something significant. The board formally censured Hilker after an ad hoc committee investigated his violations of its standard practices.
Boards like Hancock’s are required to report on what goes on in ad hoc meetings, but all the public gets to know in this case is Hilker did something naughty, he was censured, and he’s sorry.
But how badly do we really need to know exactly what Hilker did? Sure, I’m curious about it, but I’m not about to just take it on faith from an anonymous source so I can get some click bait out of it. Local elected bodies do enough already to give us clickable headlines.
There’s the Lompoc City Council, which received two Brown Act violation warnings—one in 2014 and another in 2016—from the Santa Barbara County District Attorney for meetings it held in closed session. Not a huge deal really—the latest warning was just a slap on the wrist—but it addressed some real concerns from residents.
There’s also all the infighting going on in the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors. Fourth District Supervisor Lynn Compton is madder than hell over what she says are misallocated funds, essentially taken from Nipomo and funneled elsewhere in SLO County. Fellow supervisors Adam Hill and Bruce Gibson accused Compton of “spreading misinformation.”
And did you hear that FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency is investigating possible collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia to win the election?
Damn, are Trump and his administration about to get Gawkered too?
The Canary is often gawking at the headlines. Send your thoughts to [email protected].
