The Marin I-J's Rick Halstead Claims Libel; Top Talent Resigns from The Pacific Sun Over "Spiking" of Article on Pro-Palestinian Protest
1. Why The Marin I-J's Richard Halstead suddenly claimed libel, 2. Award-winning investigative journalist Peter Byrne and News Editor Will Carruthers resign from The Pacific Sun/North Bay Bohemian
1.Halstead Claims Libel and Slander
Richard Halstead was miffed. "You're going to get sued," he snipped repeatedly to me near the doorway of the Marin County Board of Supervisors' public meeting room this past Tuesday.
I pricked up my ears. It was surprising that Richard Halstead, the longtime reporter at the Alden Global Capital-owned Marin Independent-Journal, was talking to me at all, let alone what he was saying.
Halstead has long bristled at my criticism of his publication, and of his biased and often inaccurate reporting. For most of the time he has worked at the I-J, spinning his narrative of the County that has largely omitted the critical voices of workingclass Black and Latino residents, Halstead had been spared public scrutiny, particuarly at Board of Supervisors' meetings.
Halstead's selective reporting has been so fawning of the County's white power structure (and particularly its sheriff) that it sometimes comes off as an extended audition for a gig as the County's public relations man. (And why should Richard Halstead not apply for such a role, given that the County's Public Health Officer, Matt Willis, had officially announced that the County-staffed "OD Free Marin" had formed a partnership with The Marin Independent Journal on drug awareness/drug messaging?)
But in all that time, Halstead had never threatened me with the possibility of a lawsuit.
Why the sudden change? Earlier that morning, I had published an article on substack.com which detailed, among other things, The Marin Independent-Journal's biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian issue – and the peculiar mandate from Alden Global Capital that all of its US newspapers, including the I-J, run a deeply biased October 18 editorial on the conflict that denied any mention of the retaliatory mass bombing of civilians by Israel.
(It's my understanding that the I-J has also "declined" to report the shocking number of reporters and media workers who have been killed in Gaza over the last 31 days; at least 37, per the Committee to Protect Journalists, with the vast majority killed by Israeli airstrikes. Or the record number of UN aid workers killed in Israeli airstrikes in the last month, which is 29.)
Was my accurate depiction of the anti-Palestinian bias at The Marin Independent Journal what set Halstead off?
Not only had there been a general silencing of pro-Palestinian voices in the Marin I-J, but there was demonstrable hostility from the Board of Supervisors toward the one meeting attendee who consistently called for a ceasefire.
And in calling for the Supervisors to demand a ceasefire again on November 7, I had mentioned the Marin I-J's record of bias, and its official partnership with the County of Marin.
This County-I-J partnership was officially announced on March 28, 2023 by Public Health Officer Dr. Matt Willis, who doubles as the executive director of the opaque, County-staffed "coalition" OD Free Marin. As Willis stated clearly into the record:
“Because communication and outreach and awareness are such an important strategy for us, we're partnering with The Marin Independent Journal for a weekly communication that will go out in all the printed media and social media, offering key messages, and telling stories of people who have been affected directly by this in our county.”
If you think Willis' description sounds like "sponsored content" that might need to be disclosed as such, you're probably right. But it doesn't appear that The Marin I-J has been doing that in its coverage of either “OD Free Marin”, or the County's "management" of the opioid crisis, which includes championing everything from deadly rehab centers to drug-testing the County's wastewater. It might also explain why the Marin I-J apparently never bothered to investigate the County's inflated numbers for opioid-related deaths in the County.
In a nearly two-hour telephone call I had with Dr. Willis on June 9, 2023, we discussed that partnership. Dr. Willis neither disputed the partnership's existence, nor his own announcement of the partnership. So it is curious that the Marin I-J's Richard Halstead claimed on November 7 that I was going to be sued for stating a fact which Dr. Willis had publicly asserted, and which I had repeatedly included in articles and public comment for months – with no protest or contradiction from either the County, OD Free Marin, Dr. Willis, or anyone at The Marin Independent Journal prior to Halstead's assertion in the incident I am reporting.
It didn't surprise me that Halstead didn't seem to care about the details or the facts of the matter. "You're going to get sued," he continued to threaten near the doorway of the Supervisors' chambers.
"Sued? For what?" I asked.
Halstead said it was because I had lied about The Marin Independent Journal's partnership with the County, which he asserted didn't exist. His statement was confusing. So I took out my phone and pressed the “record” button.
"Let's get this on the record," I said.
Halstead didn't flinch, but he did moderate his tone once I hit the record button. "For your own benefit. I'm warn–" he stopped and corrected himself: "I'm suggesting that you should be careful about what you say in public about people."
"Of course, of course," I replied.
(In fact, I am careful about what I say, knowing that I am being held to a higher standard than Richard Halstead has been. It was Halstead who wrote a highly biased 2021 article about my work wherein he falsely reported that I had refused to be interviewed. Halstead's claim was untrue, as proved by multiple emails: I had repeatedly informed the I-J editorial staff and Richard Halstead that I was willing to be interviewed by then-I-J reporter Lorenzo Morotti, who was a much more responsible and even-handed reporter. And the bitter irony is that Halstead had to write about my work at all – my research involved a cache of law enforcement data I had retrieved that Halstead, in his many years at the Marin Independent Journal, had never bothered to pursue.)
Halstead continued: "...because you repeatedly make statements which are completely erroneous."
I tried to get Halstead to be clear, instead of his making blanket statements, by asking him, “Are you denying that The Marin Independent Journal has an official partnership–" but at this point Halstead turned his back on me, apparently unwilling to answer the question.
Halstead began walking out of the hall toward his office next door to the Board of Supervisors' chambers. I kept the phone on and did what any reasonable reporter would do – I tried to get an answer, walking a few steps behind him.
"Wait a second," I said, "you're saying that I'm saying something wrong, but you won't explain your statement."
He kept walking.
"Richard, does the Marin IJ have an official partnership with the County on drug messaging or not?"
Halstead did not reply, so I added, "That's a simple thing to explain."
He turned around at that point. "On drug messaging? I have no knowledge of that."
Consider Halstead’s statement. If Halstead didn't have any knowledge of it, why was he claiming that my statement was false and thus cause for a potential lawsuit? Is Halstead so accustomed to dismissing women that he doesn't even need to formulate a reason for his claims?
When I pressed him on the fact that the partnership was officially announced by Dr. Willis (who, one would imagine, should know), Halstead appeared, like many people with a little too much power in Marin, to be insulted by the question.
Incapable of addressing my point, Halstead huffed exasperatedly, "Well, I have no knowledge that there's no green men on the moon, either."
Let that sink in. The veteran reporter at the I-J, Richard Halstead, took the time to repeatedly threaten an independent reporter, investigator, and whistleblower that she would be sued for reporting something more accurately than he had. And then, when confronted with the fact that the statement had come from Marin County's Public Health Officer, Halstead did not address his own error, but instead pivoted to a discussion of men on the moon.
As to the partnership, Halstead said I would have to talk with the publishers of The Marin Independent Journal. This was an interesting assertion, given that Halstead (whose responsibility it is to cover the very meetings wherein Willis had first announced the partnership), should already have heard Willis’ announcement.
Perhaps because Halstead realized he couldn't win on this point, he then pivoted to a different claim: "The I-J is not the only person you slandered and libeled over many many meetings."
"Okay, tell me,” I encouraged him. I genuinely wanted to know what he considered libelous or slanderous.
"Well... things about... I... you know what? I don't have time for this,” he flailed.
I couldn't help laughing briefly. "Yes,” I sighed, “because I haven't done it. You can't prove this."
Halstead turned back to face me, "Yes, you have," he insisted.
"Tell me who?" I asked again.
"I don't," he stammered, "I don't have a full record of them."
"Uh-huh." I said.
Of course, I hadn't asked for "a full record", and Halstead wouldn't need a full record to make his point. He would just need one concrete example, and yet Halstead, the "veteran reporter" who repeatedly threatened that I was going to be sued, was incapable of providing a single instance in which I had "slandered and libeled" anyone.
Halstead wracked his brain. Finally, he said, "What about the guy who, uh, who was in the, uh, drug task force, uh, Mark what's-his-name."
"Yeah, Mark Dale?" I said. It was strange that Halstead was not even able to recall Mark Dale's group, which was not the "Drug Task Force" but the "Alcohol and Other Drug Advisory Board". (Although Halstead's confusion about the title is somewhat revealing about what the AOD Board actually is.)
"Mark Dale, yeah." Halstead replied.
"Okay, what did I say that was–" I said.
"You repeatedly slandered him,” Halstead asserted.
In reality, I had correctly identified the fact that Mark Dale had bragged about inflating the opioid overdose statistics for the county. That was an excellent story that Halstead had completely declined to report himself.
"Okay, but how?” I asked. “But what? What did I say about him that's not true?"
Halstead again had no answer, so he walked away. He seemed to have a vague idea that what I said was upsetting to him, but he had no evidence that it constituted "slander" or "libel".
I pointed out to Halstead as he walked away that you can't just claim "slander and libel” and then say you don't know the details.
Halstead started muttering to himself that he didn't have the time for this.
"You're a reporter, Richard," I reminded him. The facts should matter.
"I'm not speaking publicly," Halstead said into the camera in a public place where everyone could hear and see him him. In fact, Halstead was speaking publicly. We were not in a private meeting space, and there were many people well within earshot of our unquiet conversation in the hallway. "I'm speaking to you, for your own benefit," he said, sounding like a particularly miffed schoolteacher in 1930's Kansas.
This seemed to me a very interesting distinction for Halstead to try to make.
"You are speaking on record," I reminded him. "And you're trying to intimidate someone who's trying to tell the truth about your publication."
In fact, it was important for The Marin Independent-Journal to clarify the details of their partnership with the County's OD Free Marin, and to disclose in any related articles that they have a partnership with the County.
The best part of the video is the end, when Halstead tries to escape the questions he couldn't answer by sliding into Room 322, but comically and very briefly forgets that the door opens inward, not out, from the hallway. I've done that so many times at Civic Center, and at that moment, I felt genuine empathy for him.
*****
Halstead's invocation that I was going to be sued could be interpreted in any number of ways, but it was most likely not, as Halstead purported, meant for my own good. Halstead has no fondness for me, or for many other workingclass people in the County, a dislike which he repeatedly demonstrates in his reporting.
So what was Halstead's warning about? Some possibilities:
1. It may have been simply an attempt to silence my repetition of Matt Willis' statement about the County's partnership with the Marin I-J on drug messaging, which is a reputational stain on the I-J because the I-J has apparently failed to disclose the partnership in their reporting on topics related to drugs.
2. It's possible that there have been additional partnerships over the years between the County and the Marin Independent Journal that were simply not announced, and Halstead hopes to ward me away from examining that by suggesting I am at risk of "being sued." Looking at the I-J's sycophantic reporting on the County Sheriff, it's feasible that there have been prior I-J partnerships with that County office. (And it's worth noting that the County's OD Free Marin is itself tightly linked with law enforcement.)
3. As local media and politicians, buttressed by the surrounding silence from Marin County activist groups, double down on "support for Israel", there is a general attempt to quash any pro-Palestinian voices, and Halstead may simply be fulfilling – consciously or unconsciously – that pattern.
This incident of attempted intimidation by Halstead occurred against a larger friction. The same day, Will Sommers, in The Washington Post, reported that Hearst Magazines had implemented policy that warned employees that they could be terminated for liking "controversial" content on social media, and encouraged employees to report other employees who had liked "controversial" content. "The new policy comes as divisions over the Israel-Gaza war roil the media industry...” Sommers wrote. “Hearst isn't the only media outlet whose internal politics have been roiled by the Israel-Gaza war."
And as the great Jewish Currents reports in considerable detail this week, simply signing a letter in support of Palestinian civililans was enough to get Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen removed as a speaker from the 92nd Street Y.
That's mild compared to the 37 journalists and other media workers killed in Gaza over the last month. I don't see much coverage of that issue, or any coverage of that issue, in Marin County's local media.
Link to tweet containing Video of Halstead comments:
https://x.com/marindatanow/status/1722732540501623086?s=46&t=q4VsCWEzorcI3TrikyJ90g
2.
Top Talent Resigns from The Pacific Sun
Yesterday afternoon I was informed that both Peter Byrne and Will Carruthers had resigned from The Pacific Sun/North Bay Bohemian “alternative weekly” media outlet.
Peter Byrne is a national award-winning investigative journalist who has contributed to the publication for 18 years, and helped build The Pacific Sun’s reputation. Will Carruthers has been a news editor at the the publication for several years. (I wrote one article for The Pacific Sun back in 2021, and have had much criticism of some of its recent decisions.)
I was able to speak with Peter Byrne and with the Pacific Sun’s Publisher, Dan Pulcrano, about the resignations. I have just now received an brief statement from Will Carruthers confirming his resignation.
According to Byrne, his resignation was prompted by Dan Pulcrano and Editor Daedalus Howell "spiking" his article on a pro-Palestinian protest in Santa Rosa.
The description of the protest as “pro-Palestinian” is mine; Byrne does not use the term, and I will share more thoughts from Byrne and others about that term, in the upcoming article.
I plan to publish a full article on the resignations later today or tomorrow morning.
©️2023 Eva Chrysanthe