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Following Up: Mercury News Treats H1B Debate as Non-News

23 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Following Up

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Following Up, H1B, immigrants, Immigration, journalism, Mercury News, Neil Chase, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, tech, tech workers, workers

The story of the video of a major debate on U.S. immigrant tech worker policies that earlier this week looked like it was being kept under wraps now looks like the story of a video that never was – due to some astonishingly unenterprising journalism from the Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s main newspaper and therefore a leading source of information on the technology industry.

As RealityChek regulars know, the story began with a June 1 debate in Silicon Valley centering on the controversial H1B immigrant visas. Squaring off were the Valley’s new Democratic Member of Congress, Ro Khanna and Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. (A tech entrepreneur took part in the event, too, but in a minor way.)

Technology companies claim that the H1B and similar programs are crucial to accessing the world’s best talent. Critics charge that they’ve overwhelmingly been used to cut their costs by replacing native-born U.S. workers with much cheaper foreign counterparts. Khanna favors relatively modest changes to H1B policies; Matloff believes major surgery is needed.

Matloff, who’s become a valued friend of mine, has written that the event marked  the first time a debate has been held between an elected official and a researcher on the topic, a major event in that sense. (Khanna has not disagreed.) Matloff also noted that a videographer from the Mercury News was present and apparently recording the proceedings.

Yet the Mercury News failed to cover the debate and never posted a recording on its website. Matloff asked a reporter on the paper to find out why, and was told that a recording existed, but that “it was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this…” Matloff then speculated that the paper failed to make the video public because Khanna performed poorly – leading the Mercury News, which editorially has sided with the tech industry on H1B and related issues, to consign it to non-event status.

I emphatically agreed that the video’s import deserved to see the light of day, and last Sunday urged the Mercury News to post it both to perform a public service on a major technology policy area and to affirm its journalistic chops. Gratifyingly, the post and follow-up tweets prompted Khanna readily to agree, and to call openly for the video’s posting. (For the record, he contends that it was Matloff who was highly ineffective.)

Two days later, Matloff and I got answers from Mercury News editor Neil Chase. In the version he sent Matloff, he wrote, “We had a photographer there who captured some still photos and some video for use with a future story, but we didn’t attend with the intention of taping the full debate and did not.”

Based on information Matloff had shared with me and my own journalistic experience, yesterday, I sent Chase the following email. I had hoped to get a response from him in time to prepare this post, but no such luck yet:

Dear Neil,

Many thanks for your comment to my blog and my apologies for the short delay in responding.  

I must confess, though, that the response leaves me somewhat mystified on two counts.

First, the statement that the Mercury News videographer did not “record the whole event” doesn’t track with an email from one of your reporters, Ethan Baron, to Matloff.  Baron said, in response to the latter’s query re the video’s availability, “it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna.”  Granted he’s conveying some uncertainty here. But Matloff also has written in his blog that “the videographer seemed to be taping continuously.”  In addition, Matloff noted that “the video cam [was] on a high tripod, seemingly much for an occasional clip.”

Similarly, it sounds odd, as your email indicates, to give the videographer the responsibility for choosing the portions of the debate to be shot.  Was this the case?  If so, what were the criteria used to determine what was captured?  Or were they simply taken to get a bit of file footage of each participant, irrespective of what they were saying at the time?  

Second, I certainly don’t mean to tell you how to do your job.  But as someone with a journalistic background, I’m hard pressed to understand the paper’s seemingly offhand attitude toward this event.  After all, the H1B issue has been described as crucial by the dominant industry in the region served by the Mercury News, and it’s surely of comparable importance to all your tech worker subscribers.  The new Congressman from your area, Rep. Khanna, has been touted by several national publications as a rising star in the Democratic party, and possibly all of national politics.  To his credit, he was willing to appear in public with an outspoken, prominent critic of the H1B and related programs – a rare event at the very least, according to Matloff.  And of course, H1B and other immigration issues have become even greater controversies nationwide since the last presidential campaign heated up.  So from all appearances, the leading paper of Silicon Valley would be expected to view the debate was highly newsworthy from the get-go.  And yet it seems from your email that no coverage was ever planned.  

Now it’s clear that some fur was flying at the event, and that Rep. Khanna and Matloff are begun feuding in public over what was said and over their qualifications to claim expert status on the issue.  I.e., because of this aftermath, their debate has become by any reasonable definition even more newsworthy.     

So I respectfully make the two following requests:

1. Would you check whatever video archive you have – including whatever the videographer might possess – to determine conclusively whether a full recording of the debate is indeed available?  (If not, I would hope to find out how it was disposed of, and why.)

2. Would you assign a reporter to cover this emerging Khanna-Matloff dispute — in which a local Congressman who’s increasingly prominent nationally has publicly gone after a critic on an issue that’s one of his top legislative priorities, and a major national concern?  The Mercury News would get an excellent scoop, and perform a valuable public service at the same time.  

Thanks for your consideration, and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Alan

As per the email, I’m still hoping that the Mercury News finds a recording and shares it, and that it reports on the differences between Khanna and Matloff, which cut to the heart of the debate on H1B and broader questions and arguments concerning the future of the domestic workforce in an age of rapid innovation. At a time when Fake News abounds, it would amount for welcome coverage of some real news.

Following Up: Progress in Freeing the Mercury News H1B Debate Video

19 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Following Up

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Tags

Following Up, H1B, Immigration, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, social media, tech workers, Twitter

What a day it’s been for RealityChek on Twitter today! Yesterday, I posted on the peculiar failure of the Mercury News, the top newspaper in technology industry center Silicon Valley, to post a video it made of a landmark and apparently heated recent debate on the H1B visa program. Under this controversial feature of U.S. immigration policy, American employers can secure foreign workers they can demonstrate are needed because they boast special talents that generally can’t be found in the U.S. workforce.  

Thanks to this item, and to some tweets today, I seem to have persuaded the most prominent participant, Rep. Ro Khanna (D.-Cal.) to ask the paper to release the full version.

Another participant in the event, University of California, Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff, had already made such a request, but got a “Thanks, but no thanks”-type answer.

So this morning, I decided, via Twitter, to ask Khanna to join the campaign. It was great to see him respond, and after a few tweets back and forth, at about 1:45 PM EST, he declared, “I have told them [the Mercury News] I would welcome the release of the tape if they have one. I would love for this to be public. I’m all for transparency.” So let’s hope that a request from a Member of Congress will do the trick. And let’s also hope that the paper still has the video!

I’ve asked Khanna to let me know the Mercury News‘ answer as soon as he can, and of course, I’ll pass the word on to you – ideally with a link – right away. And FYI, you can get in on this kind of action first-hand yourself by following me at @AlanTonelson. As with RealityChek, feedback is always welcome, and that includes heavy doses of snark!

P.S. Just for a bit of context, a major point of contention between Khanna and Matloff is a bill sponsored by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa that attempts to address H1B-related problems.  Khanna is another sponsor of the legislation; Matloff considers its remedies inadequate.

Im-Politic: Free the Mercury News H1B Debate Video!

18 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

H1B, H1B visas, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, media bias, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, technology companies, technology workers, Voice of America, wages

There’s been no shortage of controversy stirred up by the H1B visa program that brings immigrants to the United States to take jobs allegedly requiring special talents – mostly in technology companies. So when what could well have been the first public debate ever that centers on this subject is held that included a researcher on the visas (who has charged that they overwhelmingly go to foreign workers who simply lower wages for companies who want to replace more expensive Americans) and a politician who’s been strongly in favor, you’d think a major newspaper would find that pretty newsworthy.

In the case of the Mercury News, however, you’d be wrong. And much worse, it looks like the San Francisco Bay area daily is keeping a video of the event under wraps because it makes the politician – whose views closely mirror the paper’s pro-H1B editorial stance – look absolutely terrible.

Here’s the skinny on the event. Precisely because there’s no recording available, I’m relying on this account from participant Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, a leading national authority on immigration issues and the H1B program in particular, and a strong critic of the latter. Joining Matloff on a panel convened at the newly opened offices of the Voice of America’s Silicon Valley bureau were freshman Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna and Kamran Elahian, who Matloff describes as “an immigrant tech entrepreneur.”

According to Matloff, most of the H1B exchanges took place between him and Khanna, who has been characterized in the press as “the favorite of the tech industry since he tried to first overtake incumbent Mike Honda in the 2014 election” in large part because of his defense of the domestic tech industry’s H1B practices.

As Matloff describes it, Khanna – who has also been described in the national media as a rising Democratic party star and champion of pragmatic fixes for economically besieged middle class Americans – was stunningly ignorant about recent H1B-related news developments. More troubling: Khanna sunk to thinly disguised personal (and completely unjustified) attacks on Matloff and several times seem to have flown off the handle when presented with evidence that clashed with his preconceived ideas.

I’d say “Don’t take my (or Matloff’s) word for it; see for yourself” – but I can’t. The debate was filmed by the Mercury News, but in response to a query from Matloff about whether the video would be posted, a reporter he knew at the paper told him that

“it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this, but I know videos of such events are often just used in bits and pieces…”

As Matloff noted in an email to me, “Certainly it would have cost the Merc nothing to put the video on the Web, quite easily and simply.” And it’s hard to disagree with his judgment that the paper “would be performing a major public service by placing the video online (in full, of course).”

So it’s necessary to take seriously Matloff when he speculated, in that same email to me: “I can certainly see the Merc wanting to protect Rep. Khanna. They had endorsed Khanna, and generally feel their loyalty is to the tech industry. Their coverage of H-1B has been fair, but their editorial position has always been pro-H-1B.”

Matloff’s views are hardly dispositive – though I have always found him to be scrupulously honest. What could not be clearer, however, is that the Mercury News could reenforce its claims to objectivity by posting the video. With every passing day that it fails, the case for questioning its motives can only grow.

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