Editor Charged in Slugging of Mendocino County School Chief
Assault charges were filed Friday against a newspaper editor who allegedly slugged Mendocino County’s schools chief during a heated exchange at a school board meeting, the district attorney said.
Bruce Anderson, editor and publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, was charged with misdemeanor assault and battery and battery committed on school property after he knocked School Supt. James Spence to the ground at the school board’s April 25 meeting, Dist. Atty. Susan Massini said.
Witnesses to the brawl told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat newspaper that Anderson delivered the blow after Spence called him “a third-rate McCarthyite” during the meeting in Point Arena, located between Mendocino and Ft. Bragg, about 200 miles north of San Francisco.
Anderson, 48, faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail if convicted, but such a sentence is “not likely,” Massini said. Anderson will be notified by mail to appear in the Point Arena Justice Court within the next month, Massini said.
Anderson recently appeared in the news over a hoax interview he printed in his 2,500-circulation weekly published in Booneville, in Mendocino County.
The fake interview quoted Rep. Douglas Bosco (D-Occidental) as calling his constituents “a bunch of easily stirred-up, know-nothing malcontents.”
Anderson later admitted he made up the quotes.
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