Chevron Spending $33/Resident For Richmond, CA Elections; Captive Website Main "News" Site

[hatrack]

A few weeks ago, we described how the giant oil company Chevron was barraging little Richmond, Calif. (pop. 107,000), the site of one of its major refineries, with corporate PR disguised as community "news." Its instrument was an objective-looking website, known as the Richmond Standard, purporting to be a news portal for residents of Richmond. Now we have more to say about how Chevron (2013 revenue: $21.4 billion) is trying to influence the upcoming municipal elections in Richmond, which pit a pro-Chevron bloc of city council members against an anti-Chevron bloc.

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Still, leaving coverage of the election to Chevron's PR organ, the Richmond Standard, could be disastrous for Richmond's residents. For example, you won't find a peep about Chevron's political spending in the Richmond Standard. That's par for the course: The website's entire staff, an employee of Chevron's PR firm named Mike Aldax, told me last month that "if you're looking for a story that's critical of Chevron, you're not going to find it in the Richmond Standard."

Give Aldax a point for candor. But maintaining utter silence about the source of the largest block of campaign spending in the entire city is a bit extreme, even for an openly bogus community news website. There's no mention of Chevron's contributions to the election even in the Standard's section devoted to Chevron corporate announcements, which is entitled "Chevron Speaks." ("That doesn't surprise me," Rowan says, "but it does point out what they are and are not interested in covering.&quot

What the Richmond Standard does provide, along with its customary fare of police blotter items and announcements from community groups, are nasty stories about Chevron's critics on the council. One leading target of the Standard is the Panama-born and openly gay Vice Mayor Jovanka Beckles, who long has been the target of vitriolic heckling from the audience at city council meetings. She's also a frequent critic of Chevron.

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http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-chevron-deluge-of-campaign-money-20141013-column.html#page=1