We’ve been waiting for the Orange County Register to cover the story about Jordan Brandman’s Wiki-report for the past eight days. We are pleased to say, they finally found the story and decided they had to cover it. Yesterday afternoon, Andrew Galvin, the Register’s county government beat reporter wrote about the toll Brandman’s contract may have on the prospects for Acting Clerk-Recorder Renee Ramirez getting the job permanently. (Read: Consulting contract complicates clerk-recorder appointment)
Since Galvin does make mention of the controversy over Brandman’s performance as a contractor, he moved the Affliction Counter back to zero days. Galvin was able to get Brandman to take his call and answer at least one question about the controversy:
In a brief interview this week, Brandman said, “I am fulfilling the obligations of my contract with the clerk-recorder.” Brandman declined to explain why he requested two deadline extensions. He also declined to comment on the allegation that the section of his draft covering population demographics was lifted from Wikipedia.
So at this point we are pulling the Affliction Counter until we find the register ignoring a story that Afflicts the comfortable political elite in Orange County.
Actually, there are probably dozens of stories about how the O.C. Register ignores stories that might afflict the comfortable political elite in O.C.
For instance, when did the Register last run a story about Supervisor and Executive Management salaries and benefits. While the supervisors have taken a hard stand against general employee bargaining groups, they have done nothing to cut their own generous benefits packages.
Rather than report on the extra benefits given to elected and executive management, the Register continues to harp on the living wage and basic retirement security afforded to general employees.