Then he uttered a bound-to-be-classic assessment of his unsavory position: "That's a long-winded answer, saying absolutely nothing, which I am required by law to do."
I see part of my job as pointing out extraordinary forms of journalistic malpractice.
Last week was rich in this regard.
I found two journalistic felonies, one in the Examiner, one in the Chronicle.
But the Ex takes the cake.
In the Oct. 13 issue, on the front page, the paper saw fit to run this story: A cop under routine investigation for shooting a suspect to death (all such incidents are investigated as a matter of policy) was a bystander to an altercation on the street eight years ago, when he was 23 years old, before he was a cop, and during which he did not throw a punch or harm anyone in any way. He was sued with others, his friends, who did throw punches, and a civil case brought against the group settled the matter. Officer Ian Martin Furminger ended up paying $27,500, an absolutely piddling amount in the world of civil suits.
It took reporters Jim Herron Zamora and Scott Winokur -- yep, it took two intrepid reporters -- 37 paragraphs to tell this amazingly irrelevant story, which unfairly smeared a cop.
You may remember Zamora. He's the guy who wrote what I consider to be a meritless piece in August parroting District Attorney Terence Hallinan's baseless accusation that Municipal Court Judge Ellen Chaitin is biased in favor of rapists, all the while leaving out crucial facts that undermined Hallinan's thesis.
Meanwhile, over at the Chronicle, a columnist I usually enjoy, Ken Garcia, wrote his second exceedingly weird slap at Sharon Stone and her husband, Examiner Executive Editor Phil Bronstein.
His first one was amazingly ill-considered; it complained that the Examiner didn't cover the marriage of Stone and Bronstein.
This latest one, however, makes me wonder what happened to make Ken so darn jealous and angry at the storybook couple.
In the Oct. 17 Chronicle, he takes aim at Stone for making some off-the-cuff remarks in Elle magazine trumpeting her husband's paper and making some mild criticism of the Chron. This is the kind of petty BS a good columnist wants to drive an extra mile or two to avoid. But Garcia dove right in for a second time, flinging crude sexual innuendo about Stone's sex drive -- the kind of comment that usually gets a guy punched in the face -- and then going on to trash her new movie, which isn't even in the theaters yet.
My main question -- other than when and where did Stone snub poor, injured Ken -- is where the hell were Garcia's editors? You know -- those people who are supposed to pull out-of-control columnists aside and counsel restraint.
George Cothran (gcothran@sfweekly.com) can be reached at SF Weekly, 185 Berry, Suite 3800, San Francisco,
