Monthly Archives: September 2017

Throwback Thursday: September 1966

1 Reply

I suppose I should caption this, “Last man standing.”

The photo was taken in September 1966, at my sister’s apartment in Palo Alto.

From the left: My mother’s younger brother, James Peterson Yonge (1921-1994); my sister, Bonnie Pauahi Stevens (1943-2016), and my pre-beard self.

Uncle Jimi was quite a character. He spent his adult life working on ships, first on freighters, then on the Matson passenger liners that cruised the Pacific, rising to the rank of Chief Purser (meaning he ran the ship’s business operations). He had a group of friends who he remained close to his whole life. Kent Bowman, who worked on the land office side of the shipping industry and had a side career as a pidgin english comic, was one who frequently accompanied Uncle Jimi when his ship was in port and they stopped in to have a drink (or more) with my parents. Jimi and his friends were all great story tellers, much to the delight of us kids as well as our parents, although some of the stories were likely a bit off-color and probably not suited for my young ears. It was sad to lose him at a relatively early age.

Palo Alto

Past time to dial back on police secrecy

2 Replies

You might want to check out my Civil Beat column this week, “Ian Lind: It’s Time To End The Secrecy Surrounding Police Officers.”

This was triggered by news reports last week about the testimony of Honolulu Police Officer Denny Santiago before the Honolulu Police Commission.

Santiago complained that internal complaints within the department were simply swallowed up by the prevailing secrecy of the department, leaving complainants open to retaliation for raising challenges.

According to a Civil Beat story about the testimony, Santiago “didn’t want to talk about his pending complaints within HPD, saying that he signed a confidentiality clause when he filed the complaints.”

That comment set off alarm bells for me.

Why? Because back in the early 1990s, this was the norm for agencies with the responsibility to field complaints about public officials, including the State Ethics Commission and Campaign Spending Commission.

Yes, you could file complaints. No, you were prohibited by law from publicly stating that you had done so.

At the time, I was published a monthly newsletter about money and politics. In 1992, I filed a complaint with the Campaign Spending Commission about unreported political expenditures, and then wrote about it in my newsletter. That brought push-back from the subject of the complaint, and the threat of a criminal complaint against me by the commission for violating the non-disclosure provision of the law.

The result was a victory in federal court which was upheld by the 9th Circuit. The law was found to be an unconstitutional restriction on First Amendment speech. And the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the state’s appeal, leaving the decision in place.

The arguments used to justify the unconstitutional policy were the same kinds of arguments now paraded out to justify why police officers and the police department deserve special deference when it comes to public disclosure.

My point in the history lesson was to make clear that none of the terrible outcomes that the state predicted were sure to result from public disclosure of ethics and campaign complaints actually happened when the law was changed. They were all conjecture, and all turned out to be shibai.

In my view, it’s all important context for understanding the new emerging debate over secrecy at the Police Commission and Police Department.

Not all news about news is bad

1 Reply

September brought news of more newspaper layoffs, from the publishing giant Gannett down to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, owned by British Columbia-based Black Press.

But browsing around, not all the news is bad.

From CJR.org: “Investigative reporting has found a new home: podcasts”

INVESTIGATIONS HAVE BECOME a staple of the podcast world, due in large part to the fandom surrounding true-crime productions like Serial and Criminal, and to an extent, the gumshoe-inspired Mystery Show. On those shows, the hosts assume the role of detective, bringing listeners along for the ride as they unspool threads of the mysteries at hand. The new crop of investigative podcasts like Frontline Dispatch take a different approach. They aren’t solving mysteries, or even attempting to, but revealing truths—about abuses of power, environmental degradation, and so on.

They’re full of twists and turns like Serial and Mystery Show before them, and entertain as much as they inform. But solvability is not the goal; accountability is. It’s the same logic heralded by a long tradition of print and visual investigative reporters.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Review-Journal fields veteran investigative team”

The Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative team was nothing more than a job advertisement 16 months ago.

Now, with last month’s hiring of investigative reporter Anita Hassan from the Houston Chronicle, the six-person team is complete.

Assistant Managing Editor for Investigations Karisa King joined the Review-Journal from the Chicago Tribune a year ago after a national search for a team leader. King said the reporting team she has assembled will hold accountable Southern Nevada’s most powerful institutions by weaving together data analysis, hard-hitting interviews and compelling storytelling.

Baltimore Sun: “Sinclair Broadcast launches national investigative team”

“We are having incredible success with accountability reporting in multiple markets,” Scott Livingston, Sinclair’s vice president of news, said in an announcement. “Viewers want an honest presentation of the news and appreciate the hard work and dedication required to research and uncover the truth regarding the issues that impact their lives.”

Sinclair plans to shift some daily news coverage resources in many markets to investigative journalism and boost the total number of investigative reporters to more than 100.

Niemanlab.org: “This former hedge fund guy is a one-man nonprofit investigating some of America’s shadiest companies”

“I was like, I can’t believe a year and a half after the financial crisis, no one is doing this stuff. I’m not talking about writing these massive, 10,000-word thumbsuckers about some crappy company that did something to a politically vulnerable population. I’m talking about companies that wake up every day and, using the imprimatur of the law, do things that are unconscionable and appalling. I said: I’m gonna take a public filing, I’m gonna use that as a springboard, I’m gonna write about companies that I think are crap, but I’ll write fairly, I’ll dive into them, I’ll give them a long chance to comment.” He did this first on a blog called The Financial Investigator, then, in 2012, launched the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, a nonprofit where he would do this reporting full-time.

So there’s some good stuff going on out there despite the continuing economic woes of the industry.

Auckland shows vulnerability of fuel supplies

3 Replies

The airport in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, has a new sign up: “Out of gas.”

That’s right. The airport’s supply of aviation fuel has been totally cut off by an accident involving the single 10-inch pipeline that supplies all the fuel for planes flying out of the city.

Although there’s some limited fuel in storage, airlines are scrambling to cope with the cut-off, cancelling some flights, requiring others to reroute for refueling at other airports. Long haul flights may be diverted to Australia or Fiji to fill their tanks.

Observers say the potential for this kind of problem has been well known for years.

One news story cites a government report done several years ago which suggested a “short term” disruption of fuel supplies could be handled by “flight rationalisation and fuel bunkering”.

That is bureaucratic jargon for significant disruption. Air New Zealand responded by accusing MBIE of minimising the downstream implications, including a hit to the country’s reputation as a tourism destination.

“If a country’s fuel security reputation suffers through fuel outages which significantly affect flights over a period of time, it will receive international publicity and it will cause some agents to recommend other destinations.”

Already trans-Tasman flights are being cancelled, and the Air New Zealand submission makes it clear why.

Most of the planes which fly the Tasman cannot carry enough fuel to fly from Sydney to Auckland and back without refuelling in New Zealand. Long haul would face unexpected stopovers in Nadi in Fiji and Sydney.

The disruption could last ten days to two weeks, according to news reports.

This is getting personal. Meda is scheduled for a stint as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Auckland’s School of Social Sciences, and we’re scheduled to fly to Auckland in two weeks.

I’m wondering whether Honolulu Airport’s source of aviation fuel has redundancy built-in? Could this scenario be played out here at some point?