San Jose Mercury News' Shameless Business Bias: Lehigh Cement and Scott Herhold

A few years ago, San Jose Mercury News sided with Toll Brothers, a big housing developer, to try to force their way to build massive number of condos in Cupertino. That "Condotino" project was only finally defeated when Cupertino citizens brought the issue to the ballot where 2/3 of voters, through precious votes, publicly embarrassed the council members that favored the proposal (yes, majority of the City council then was infamously known to work with Toll Brothers, too, and was about to approve the project until the citizens were so upset and decided to take the issue to the ballot themselves). Learn more about whom those council members were by reading other articles in Google search results of "Condotino."

That was a few years back. These two days, another San Jose Mercury siding with big business, this time, Lehigh Cement, surfaced. Fortunately this time, other news media caught the news and exposed the ugly truth of Lehigh Cement already elsewhere. It's quite shameless that San Jose Mercury News time and again decided to tender to the interest of big business and attacked any such grassroot citizen efforts. This time, a SJ Mercury writer, Scott Herhold, publicly attacked, in a round-about way, the only City Councilman, Barry Chang, that focused much of his recent effort in bringing public awareness to the issue. Perhaps little did Mr Herhold foresee, the State of California has spoken today, and EPA have sided with citizens over the years, too. It may not be that publicly aware yet, but it's time to let the ugly truth out: about Lehigh Cement, about San Jose Mercury News, and this time, another business-effected writer, Scott Herhold.

Scott Herhold attack on Councilman Barry Chang on July 23rd, 2011: http://www.mercurynews.com/cupertino/ci_18537110

News of State of California's notice to Lehigh Cement on July 25th, 2011:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/south_bay&id=8270786

(See more of EPA's warning to Lehigh about its violations back in 2010 in the other articles in the "Related Content" of the same article.)

Here is Barry's grassroot effort to get Lehigh to "abide by" the law:

http://www.change.org/petitions/hold-a-polluting-cement-plant-accountable-to-the-law

which has garnered so much support that I don't know how Scott Herhold and Mercury News can still act and write as if today were the stone age of media, as if citizens could still only know most of anything through newspapers instead of the real truth and facts out there. Aren't we glad Internet is here to expose the ugly truth and that other news media, available readily online, catch the real news and break it out to the wider audience?

Enough said.

(Can't wait till the shameless and business-serving SJ Mercury to finally wither in the age of citizen journalism.)