Avoid the Noyes

KGO's bulldog reporter Dan Noyes has his own antagonists

Comments (0) By Will Harper and Martin Kuz Wednesday, May 9 2007

KGO-TV's Dan Noyes has made a name for himself in this town by hounding Mayor Gavin Newsom. But it turns out that Noyes has his own antagonists.

Aaron Farmer

More About

A couple of months ago the "Noyes Pollution" blog appeared, casting aspersions on dapper Dan for being a yellow journalist. Of course, it's hard to take a blog run by someone only identified as "King Conchobar" seriously. Early in the blog's existence, Conchobar had to apologize for confusing KGO's Dan Noyes with another Bay Area journalist named Dan Noyes, co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

But last week the King posted something juicy: a famous "lost" video outtake from a live stand-up Noyes did in 1997 at Justin Herman Plaza about a Critical Mass protest. Behind Noyes' head, a former Teamster held up a sign reading, "KGO is bad news for working families." Once the live shot ends, Noyes immediately turned around and barked at his crew, "Unplug me." He then chased after the chubby sign-holder shouting, "Don't you fuck up my work. This is my job, you asshole." Finally, in the distance, in the corner of the camera frame, you can barely make out Noyes and some people scuffling over the sign.

What the video shows — at least to those who don't like Noyes — is a reporter unhinged.

Eric Jaye, Newsom's campaign consultant, says that he was a little frightened by what the video shows. "It might be understandable if a reporter is trying to provoke public figures for (the reporter's own) professional advancement." But when a reporter is willing to chase after someone with film rolling, Jaye adds, "it's more of a concern because you realize it's not an act."

But how exactly did the old outtake resurface? Jaye insists that no one on the mayor's political team (including Peter "Bjorn" Ragone) is behind the resurrection of the decade-old clip or the anti-Noyes blog. Jaye, however, conceded, "I'm not a particular fan of professional wrestling, and I'm not a particular fan of Dan Noyes."

In an e-mail to us, Conchobar said he/she is not a Newsom supporter: "However, it is clear that Dan has some sort of vendetta against the mayor. I am opposed to Dan's bully tactics regardless of who is the target."

Even Noyes himself doesn't believe any of the mayor's people would sink to such depths to slam him. "Clearly, there are people with axes to grind, but I have no idea what those axes are. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it."

As for the behavior shown on the old 1997 video, Noyes says he doesn't think it makes him look bad: "I'm comfortable with what happened 10 years ago."