Stop, Drop and Roll

31 July 2008 | Alameda Community, Alameda Truthiness | John Knox White

As you know, EBMUD’s drought “policies” are a bit of a prickly point for me. I don’t think the agency’s current course of action is actually achieving the goals EBMUD has set out for itself, and in fact they appear to be a rate-hike disguised as reaction to the drought. (If this isn’t true, their new drought pricing is targeting the wrong customers).

But that’s not what I’m writing about today.

Because of a couple of past posts, KTVU contacted me a little over a week ago, they were looking for a family who was taking steps to reduce water use, but who wouldn’t be described as going overboard. (we still shower in the SD&R hosehold, but we don’t water our grass for instance). But again, this isn’t what this post is about.

They brought camera crew over to shoot this story (video) on EBMUD’s massive leaks (160 million gallons a year, or equivalent to about 1500 West of the Hills single family residences. The point for me is that EBMUD ought to know what the costs of fixing these leaks are when they say it’s not worth their fixing them. But again, not the point.

During the filming, they set up the camera in front of our house and the reporter, Roland de Wolk, and his cameraman, whose name I have rudely forgotten (I didn’t get his card, cut me some slack), engaged in a loving, mock argument over how they were going to make sure that my house number (as in address) was not in the shot. It was quickly clear that as trained, professional journalists, they knew how in appropriate it is to include people’s addresses in storie they shoot.

Longtime blog readers, and the 8 people who watch the Don Roberts show, will remember that “journalist” Don Roberts went out of his way to announce my address on air in 2006 during the city council elections.

I honestly started laughing outloud. I both remember the small band of voices pointing out the defense of it being no big deal (most of them by anonymous posters who didn’t want people to even know who they are) or by self-proclaimed, heck, who knows what they’ve proclaimed themselves to be, who decided to go further by posting even more information about me and my finances, just to show that they can.

It turns out that real journalists (and decent human beings) understand the difference between publicly available information and being a jackass and airing it on TV. (The fact that nobody actually watches Don’s show did reduce the concern). When I spoke with the KTVU folks about it, they were both unsurprised at the unprofessionalism of self-proclaimed citizen journalists, and appalled. (it’s nice to know that as maligned as they are, real journalists actually have ethics and moral centers).

And bringing this all around to present day Alameda. I took a stroll over to ADN yesterday, and there was a late breaking letter from former councilperson candidate [oops] Eugenie Thomson who wrote a letter about email communication problems with what appeared to be 18 different people. The letter ended saying:

Suggestion:

Possibly the Board should consider adding their email addresses to the City website so the public can communicate.

Which, given that Ms. Thomson’s two favorite civic mouthpieces are Don and David “sue em if they call you names” Howard, is heavily ironic. I read this line and thought “how many people are going to want to publicly publish their emails knowing that folks like the double D’s are out there just looking to use the info in an inappropriate manner? I know I learned my lesson. While I used to publish all my contact info so as to be as available as possible, from here on out, thanks to the double D’s, my info is private.