Charges fly at paper

In the latest in a series of charges and countercharges at the Santa Barbara News-Press, the newspaper alleged in a front-page article Sunday that the computer hard drive used by former editor Jerry Roberts had once contained images of child and adult pornography.

The article came after months of turmoil at the paper. In July, Roberts and a number of other key personnel resigned over what they described as meddling in editorial content by News-Press owner Wendy McCaw. In the months since, some three-quarters of the editorial staff has been fired or quit.

At a news conference Sunday attended by a dozen former staffers in a show of support, Roberts dismissed the report as “utterly false, defamatory and malicious,” calling it “a desperate attempt to ruin my reputation.”

A newspaper spokeswoman said an attorney designated to comment on the situation was unavailable.

Sunday’s article, which ran without a byline, noted that prosecutors had concluded it was not possible to determine who had put the images on the computer or when they were placed there. The images were found by a company that had been hired to recover deleted files from the hard drive after Roberts quit, the paper said.

In the months since Roberts’ resignation, the paper’s management has reacted strongly against a staff effort to unionize, prompting the National Labor Relations Board to file a complaint against McCaw’s company, Ampersand Publishing, alleging improper firings of pro-union employees.

Roberts said the computer assigned to him was purchased used and had been used by other editors before he arrived. He denied any knowledge of the pornographic material and said he was considering pursuing a defamation lawsuit.

The Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office concluded that there was “no single viable suspect,” according to a March 2 letter from prosecutors to a Santa Barbara police sergeant made public by Roberts’ attorney.

The material was discovered initially last summer after Roberts and other editors left the paper. At that time, Ampersand had the hard drives from the newsroom examined by a data recovery company. The firm contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after discovering the material, and the center in turn contacted Santa Barbara police, who then took the hard drive.

According to the News-Press article, the recovered files contain 15,000 pornographic images.

Raul Gil, former News-Press systems director, stated in a signed declaration in January that Ampersand was in possession of the computer for a week before it was sent to the data recovery firm.

“From the first day of this tragic situation at the News-Press, this controversy has been about ethics,” Roberts said Sunday. “Most people who read this and hear my statement will see this for what it is -- a smear.”

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catherine.saillant@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com