The second reason the Fang acquisition of the Examiner ought to be viewed with an extremely jaundiced eye has to do with the government's role in this little charade.
When one news media organization appears to be gaining unfair control of a news market, it is just and right that the antitrust division of the U.S. Justice Department step in. Clearly, there was reason for Justice to review Hearst's intended purchase of the Chronicle, which could, at least in theory, have led to an unnatural Hearst monopoly over San Francisco's daily newspaper market.
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But the Fang acquisition of the Examinerraises real questions about whether the deal has anything to do with antitrust concerns. From the limited information available to me, I have formed an opinion about the proposed Examiner sale, and this is what the deal looks like to me: The Independentand the Democratic machine jointly mau-maued Hearst and the Justice Department, creating enough public hubbub and/or private political pressure to freeze Justice in its tracks. With Justice frozen, Hearst couldn't get a sign-off for its plan to buy the Chronicle. Eventually, because Justice wouldn't move, Hearst gave in to the mau-mau, agreeing to subsidize the Fang purchase of the Examiner, because even if paying millions of dollars, for no real legal reason, to a friend of the mayor was an indignity, that payout would probably cost less, in the long run, than continued stalling, or an antitrust action (no matter how groundless), by the Justice Department.
In other words, in my opinion, the Fang-Hearst deal creates an appearance that the Justice Department's antitrust operation, either knowingly or ignorantly, allowed itself to be used to grind a whole lot of money out of the Hearst Corp., to the benefit of a family that just happens to be very close to Willie Brown, who just happens to have serious stroke with the Clinton administration. In fact, the Justice Department all but blessed the deal beforehand, agreeing to limit the review period for the Fang acquisition of the Examiner to just 10 days.
It is hard to feel sorry for Hearst, which has plenty of money and has, in my view, behaved shamefully (and shown it will cave when the stakes are high enough, thereby making itself vulnerable to repeated mau-mauing here in the home of the mau-mau). But it is easy to believe that there is something strange-looking about the role the antitrust section of the Justice Department played in this deal.
It's even easier to think that another part of the Justice Department -- perhaps its public integrity section -- needs to investigate this entire matter, to find out whether Justice has done justice, or just danced the San Francisco mau-mau, to a cockeyed tune played by political hacks.
