https:\/\/concussioninc.net\/?p=10877<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
by Irvin Muchnick<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Weeks prior to the <\/span>Daily Californian<\/span><\/i>‘s<\/span> pretending that it wanted to publish my opinion piece on new evidence of the University of California’s cover-up of the 2014 Ted Agu football conditioning death — before ultimately censoring it because of the fear of a lawsuit over (shudder) opining that the institution and its football program had a suspect value system — the <\/span>San Francisco Chronicle <\/span><\/i>didn’t even let the article out of the end zone. Here’s <\/span>that <\/span><\/i>story.<\/span><\/p>\nOn March 27, the <\/span>Chronicle<\/span><\/i>‘s deputy opinion editor, Lois Kazakoff, emailed me, “I’m sorry, I can’t use this.”<\/span><\/p>\nI asked Kazakoff why. She didn’t respond. Neither did John Diaz, the editorial page editor.<\/span><\/p>\nOn April 1, I kicked this unanswered question up to Audrey Cooper, the <\/span>Chron <\/span><\/i>editor-in-chief. Cooper wrote back that the opinion department didn’t report to her, but even so, she “asked them to respond to you.”<\/span><\/p>\nLater that day, Kazakoff did write to me more fully. The monumental stupidity of her message deserves full-text reproduction (colon-within-colon usage included):<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“I sent you a note last week saying that we couldn’t use the piece. You want to know why: The commentary section is set up to publish community concerns about the current issues in the news: the Boeing 737 Max accidents and worries of FAA failure to oversee certification; the Giants’ need to suspend Larry Baer for domestic violence concerns; the impact of the Dynamex ruling on the gig economy. We look for pieces that offer a strong role for the reader. The Chronicle did significant reporting on the Ted Agu story. Today, we’re focused on new and different stories and the commentary they engender.”<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So, to review:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
1. The UC Berkeley Golden Bears football team physician, Dr. Casey Batten — now with the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League — withheld from the Alameda County medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Beaver, the university’s knowledge that Ted Agu was a sickle cell trait carrier, and pushed the coroner to rule that Agu had died of run-of-the-mill heart failure. A year later, Beaver testified that he didn’t know about sickle cell trait and had the sheriff’s office revise the autopsy to reflect that Agu’s death was, in fact, a sickling episode. Asked about this whole sequence at his own deposition, Batten testified:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Umm, I don’t recall that I had a conversation where we – I think we did say something along the lines of it appeared to be, but it was – I think it was – it might have been after – I really don’t recall when I spoke with him.”<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(The California penal code includes provisions for lying to police officials. More on this shortly at Concussion Inc.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
2. The <\/span>San Francisco Chronicle <\/span><\/i>never covered any of this as news. Nor will it publish it as opinion. It seems that they only do the really important stuff, such as “<\/span>the Giants’ need to suspend Larry Baer for domestic violence concerns” after the team’s president was caught on TMZ having a fight with his wife.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
3. The Daily Californian <\/i>won’t touch the subject either, if the author of the opinion piece insists on a conclusion as extreme as: “At the world’s greatest public university, the commercial priorities of the football program obliterate education, morality, and other core missions.”<\/p>\n
Oh, no. Can’t have that.<\/span><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PREVIOUSLY: Annals of Journalism, Pt. 1: Opinion Piece For Berkeley’s Daily Californian on UC’s Ted Agu Football Death Cover-Up, Scheduled For Publication Today, Was Killed [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAnnals of Journalism, Pt. 5: San Francisco Chronicle Was Worried That a Ted Agu Football Death Cover-Up Opinion Piece Might Crowd Out Its Important Unique Coverage - Concussion Inc. - Author Irvin Muchnick<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/concussioninc.net\/?p=13808\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Annals of Journalism, Pt. 5: San Francisco Chronicle Was Worried That a Ted Agu Football Death Cover-Up Opinion Piece Might Crowd Out Its Important Unique Coverage - 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