The latest from the Sonoma Independent full article here:
Why Did Press Democrat Run Extortionist Claims Against Hospital on Front Page?
Newspaper Editors Refuse to Answer Questions or Run Letters About Journalistic Ethics of Providing Megaphone for Shakedown Lawsuitby Jonathan Greenberg
for The SonomaIndependent.org
In one of the worst breaches of journalistic ethics by a major California newspaper in recent years, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat last week used its front page to smear the Sonoma West hospital and its largest philanthropist based upon unsubstantiated, easily-disprovable allegations by a disgruntled former employee bringing a shakedown lawsuit.
The Press Democrat (“PD”) breached a fundamental rule of journalistic ethics by rushing to publish damaging allegations as front-page news. The headline, “Lawsuit: Hospital donor dishonest” was followed by the sub-head, ‘Ex official Goldfarb says Smith asked him to cook Sonoma West books.”
Neither the article by reporter Martin Espinoza nor the lawsuit itself provided a shred of evidence to support the article’s reckless headlines. Espinoza noted that neither hospital chair Dan Smith nor the hospital itself could comment on pending litigation. Indeed, as any journalist knows, when a person or a hospital is slapped with a lawsuit, their attorneys require them to not talk to the press until their legal response is filed.
Soon after the article appeared, Gail Thomas, president of the foundation assisting the Sonoma West Medical Center (SWMC), wrote to supporters, “It is disheartening that what we view as completely unsubstantiated allegations can be spread in the press because of the filing of a lawsuit and, since the allegations involve personnel matters, the hospital is prevented from readily and easily refuting all the allegations.”
Why did the Press Democrat not wait for a legal response to the incendiary allegations? Why instead did they choose to publish a one-sided story that did not come close to passing a journalistic sniff test for veracity? What was the rush to vilify Smith and disparage the struggling community hospital?
In its opening paragraph, Espinoza’s article misleadingly called Douglas Goldfarb’s shakedown a “whistleblower lawsuit.” At the same time, the article also noted that the former CFO, who worked at the hospital for only six months before quitting, would settle his claim and stop trying to ruin the hospital and Dan Smith’s reputation if he were paid $250,000—or 12 months salary. ‘If they go to court,” Goldfarb’s attorney Daniel Bartley warned, “it will be a lot more.”
In other words, the newspaper delivered the extortionist’s ransom note, price-included, while somehow still calling him a whistleblower.
Any common sense analysis of the lawsuit (which I have fully read) shows the Press Democrat’s headlines to be misleading and irresponsible. The plain reading to a reader of the phrase “cook Sonoma West books” and the term “dishonest” means self-interested corruption. Smith and his wife, Joan Marler, have, as reporter Espinoza well knows, sacrificed most of their net worth, have gone massively into debt, and have had to sell the restaurant they’ve owned for a decade in order to come up with the $15 million in donated capital necessary to reopen and sustain the hospital and its life-saving emergency room.
In addition, Smith has donated two years of his time without pay to manage the Herculean effort of being the first community hospital in California history to close and then reopen. Smith has also donated the electronic medical-records system and related support services for the new hospital.
In spite of these sacrifices, the lawsuit claims that Dan Smith’s true nefarious objective has been to “use SWMC as a vehicle for self-dealing in service of his personal financial interests and the financial interest of his business.”
The Press Democrat’s one-sided coverage made sure to fulfill the claimant’s extortionist intention to not just disparage Dan Smith and his software company, but the reputation of the hospital itself. It repeated the lawsuit’s unsubstantiated claim that the Sonoma West Medical Center’s electronic medical record system, “often produced serious errors that ‘endangered patients lives.’”
There have been no reports of harm done to a single patient since last November’s reopening of the small community hospital. SWMC’s reputation for personal, humane care remains identical to that of its predecessor, Palm Drive Hospital, which Consumer Reports in 2013 ranked as the safest hospital for patient outcomes not just in Sonoma County but in the entire state of California.
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