‘Interview’ in Mendocino County Weekly : Some Say Paper Finally Went Too Far

The journalism students at nearby Ukiah High School raked newspaper publisher Bruce Anderson over the coals the other day, and they aren’t the only people in Mendocino County who are mad at him.

“What makes you think you have the right to judge other people?” one student demanded. “How would you feel if somebody wrote something about you that wasn’t true?”

“I use this paper as a weapon against money and power,” replied Anderson, 48, a bearlike man with a penchant for making outrageous statements in and out of print--but with a surprisingly affable manner. “I have the right, as a newspaper publisher, to say what I want about everybody, anytime.”

The publisher and his weekly paper, the 2,500-circulation Anderson Valley Advertiser, are no strangers to controversy. Anderson (whose name has nothing to do with the valley’s) sees himself as a lonely crusader against corruption in what he calls “the Honduras of Northern California.”

Many Targets of Pen

Nearly every politician in the county has felt the lash of his pen. But Anderson’s latest escapade has left some county residents saying that the paper they love to hate has gone too far.

Last month, the Advertiser ran a front-page “interview” with Rep. Doug Bosco (D-Occidental) under the byline of “David Yesson, Staff Writer, The Des Moines Register.”

The story quoted Bosco as calling his constituents who oppose offshore oil drilling “a bunch of . . . know-nothing malcontents who couldn’t care less about anything other than . . . where their next joint is coming from.”

Much of the article focused on Bosco’s absence at recent hearings on oil drilling in his district. Bosco, who supports limited oil exploration, was in Iowa at the time campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri.

Both Bosco and David Yepson, political reporter for the Des Moines Register, immediately protested, saying the interview had never taken place.

For a week after the article came out, Anderson maintained that it was authentic. He said that someone had sent it to him on a computer disc the day before his paper went to press and that he did not have time to check its veracity before printing it.

Finally, in the following week’s edition of the Advertiser, Anderson admitted that the interview was a hoax. He now says the article was always intended as satire. “It seemed like it was working so well that I thought I’d string it along for a few days,” he said.

Many of the paper’s readers initially believed the interview was authentic. Bosco said his office received dozens of calls from constituents who took the article seriously and demanded an explanation.

Ben H. Bagdikian, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, said that if the article was intended to be satirical, Anderson should have made its tongue-in-cheek nature more apparent. “At best, it is incompetent and misleading satire,” he said. “At worst, it violates every principle of decent journalism.”

In the wake of the phony article, the Ukiah Daily Journal, which has printed the Advertiser for several years, informed Anderson that it will no longer do so as of March 10. Bosco said he may sue Anderson for libel.

But Anderson remains unrepentant. The Bosco article, he maintains, was an effective way to attack the congressman’s position on offshore oil drilling.

As for why he attributed the interview to “Yesson”of the Des Moines Register,Anderson said he had seen David Yepson once on a Sunday press show. “This guy seemed very pompous and sort of arrogant, so I figured we’ll just tag his name on it,” he said.

Will Still Publish

Anderson said he intends to continue publishing the Advertiser, and hopes to have it printed in Healdsburg, about an hour south of his home in Boonville.

While county residents say they will continue to read the paper for its “indispensable” mix of local news, opinion, sports, poetry and cartoons, many say they cannot take Anderson seriously.

“We all love freedom of speech, and he’s gone beyond it,” said Ross Murray, 69, of Boonville. “Many of us regard him as just a wayward child.”