Don't Swat Gadflies For Civility's Sake

Let's hear it for the gadflies. The cranks. The loons. The nuts.

Let's hear it for the dirt diggers, the barrel scrapers and the uncivil speakers of truth to power.

Let's celebrate, if only for the three short minutes before the cops move in, those local residents who have better meeting attendance records than many of the city council members who get paid to show up every week.

Let's raise a strong cup of coffee to the people whose very names make every bureaucrat shudder and every recording secretary's eyes roll.

They are often known by their many aliases: Ohno Nothemagain, Whywont Thatguyshutup and Cantwe Banhim.

They run websites such as Thirty Miles of Corruption, which has proven an endless source of headaches and heartburn for Riverside County and city officials. Perhaps you've seen their names in the letters columns of this esteemed newspaper. Sometimes they even make news – the headlines often include words such as “arrested” and “removed.”

Last week, the headline was a bit more unusual: “City pulls meeting video after speaker's allegations.”

The city was Riverside. The venue was the weekly meeting at 3900 Main St. The speaker was Vivian Moreno, proprietor of the aforementioned Thirty Miles site. Her allegations concerned misconduct among city officials and employees, including charges of unlawful discrimination, racial insensitivity, sex in the workplace and booze parties.

The city's response was extraordinary.

Riverside's interim city manager, Lee McDougal, pulled the video of the meeting from the city's website and refused to broadcast it on local cable television. His rationale: “I don't think this organization should be broadcasting slander.”

If you want to see the video, you'll have to file a public records request and that's no fun at all.

Moreno's problem – potentially – is that she identified one misbehaving employee by name and other by job title. She also told a Press-Enterprise reporter that she hadn't checked out the allegations. It's not that she knows the charges are true per se, Moreno says, but she believes them because “I know the culture that goes on in the city of Riverside.”

The difference between, say, a newspaper columnist and an activist is that my editor won't accept “I know the culture” as a reason to publish serious misconduct claims. If I'm wrong, I'd be fired, and the newspaper likely would be sued and forced to publish a retraction.

In short, I'd need solid proof – documents or corroborating statements from people who would be in a position to know, as opposed to an anonymous e-mail from someone I think might be a City Hall insider.

If Moreno is wrong and she knew she was wrong, or she leveled her charges against those Riverside city employees with a “reckless disregard for the truth,” then she might find herself looking at a defamation suit.

This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise

This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise