'Citizen McCaw': A Santa Barbara story
The feud betwen the publisher of the local newspaper and former employees is now a documentary.
Were it a reality show, the blurb might read something like:
A reclusive and litigious animal rights-crusading blond billionaire libertarian divorcée with no journalism experience buys daily newspaper in upscale beach town and insists on doing things her way or the highway. Complications ensue.
For residents of this upscale beach town, the reality show has become, well, a daily reality.
In July 2006, the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press, four other top editors and a columnist resigned over what they alleged was billionaire publisher Wendy P. McCaw's efforts to meddle in local news coverage, a charge that McCaw denies. More than 70 other News-Press employees, fully one-third of the paper's staff, have since quit or been fired. Thousands of readers have canceled their subscriptions in protest, with many complaining that they no longer know what's going on around town because there simply aren't enough experienced reporters or editors left to cover the news.
Now comes "Citizen McCaw," a documentary chronicling the whole messy affair.
The film, which premiered Friday before an enthusiastic, sold-out audience at Santa Barbara's venerable, 2,200-seat Arlington Theatre, is not simply a story about a strong-willed publisher at odds with her equally strong-willed staff. It is, according to its director and narrator, Sam Tyler, a cautionary tale about the 1st Amendment rights of journalists to report the news fairly and objectively, without influence from anyone -- even if that anyone also happens to be their boss.
"You take away a reporter's ability to tell the truth, and what happens to this town, to this country?" Tyler said. "These journalists who stood up to [McCaw], they're heroes."
Indeed, Friday's screening was followed by the appearance of 23 former News-Press reporters and editors who mounted the Arlington stage to a standing ovation.
McCaw's attorney, A. Barry Cappello, denounced the documentary as a "factually flawed hit piece masquerading as a docu-drama" and threatened possible legal action.
According to Cappello, it wasn't the fiftysomething, Stanford-educated McCaw who was injecting opinions into news stories but many of her editors and reporters. As a business owner who bought the paper with "her own hard-earned capital," McCaw had every right, Cappello said, to weed out that bias, dictate how the news would be covered and seek to restore what she perceived as flagging consumer confidence in her product.
