From: bob.kittle
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 11:20 AM
To: Michael Shames
Cc: bob.kittle
Subject: RE: Your statement on radio

I sent you an e-mail on Tuesday, the day your letter to the editor arrived here *, telling you that we would not publish the letter for two reasons: First, we don't publish letters that have appeared elsewhere, and your letter already was posted on your Web site. Second, and more important, we do not knowingly publish letters that contain false information. Yours contained several pieces of false information--e.g., that I hung up on you (you terminated the call, not I), that I told you I received most if not all of my numbers from SDG&E (I said no such thing, because I received no info from SDG&E. I did receive a copy of your PUC filing from SEMPRA, as I told you on the phone), etc. I invited you to submit another letter that contained no false information. Michael, your lack of respect for the truth is dismaying. Even the first sentence of the e-mail below, in which you claim incorrectly what I said on the radio, is false. I said I sent you an e-mail, which I did, and it certainly did not bounce back to me. Whether you received it or not is your issue, not mine.

Robert A. Kittle
Editorial Page Editor
San Diego Union-Tribune

* UCAN never received an e-mail on Tuesday from Mr. Kittle. The above letter was the first we had received from him notifying us that he was refusing to print Michael Shames response to the U-T's Opinion. This letter was prompted by false statements he made on the live radio show KPBS Editor's Roundtable (Transcript here).

Subject: RE: Your June 14th editorial and your statements on KPBS

From: Michael Shames
To: Bob Kittle
Cc: Karin Winner

Mr. Kittle -

I am in receipt of your e-mail today declaring that the Union Tribune will not publish a letter to the editor that is published on our Web site and asking me to resubmit what I submitted on June 14th. If that is, indeed, your position then there’s no reason for us to go very much further on the matter of my June 14th response to your controversial and ill-informed editorial. I do wish to protest this policy, though. For the reasons stated below, it is an inappropriate policy in today’s web-based world and it is unfair to those readers who take the time to submit a letter to the editor at the Union Tribune.

You also claim that my response to your editorial was factually inaccurate. As you well know, I’m not going to rewrite my July 14th submission – I stand by everything I said. I wouldn’t have submitted it if it weren’t accurate.

First, you did, indeed, state that SDG&E had given you the data and you stated you wanted to verify it. The subsequent distinction you make between SDG&E and Sempra as the source of the incorrect information in your editorial opinion is specious; SDG&E has already admitted that it is funding the efforts in support of Sunrise. Yours was an editorial about Sunrise.
We also both know that the estimates of compensation paid to UCAN by SDG&E were not researched by you because that information is difficult to compile. It would have taken the better part of a few days to do it because those decisions are no longer compiled by CPUC, the California Public Utilities Commission. The information you used came from Sempra/SDG&E --- they’ve been shopping it to others as well --- not just to you.

Similarly, one can readily deduce that you did not do any original research because it would have been obvious to you that CPUC will not agree to pay intervenors like UCAN if they haven’t generated savings that exceed the compensation sought. Moreover, CPUC will not pay UCAN if we have duplicated the efforts of CPUC's Department of Ratepayer Advocates.

These omitted facts undermine your entire editorial opinion.

Had you researched the issue, instead of parroting SDG&E/Sempra's spin doctors, you would have learned that it is literally impossible for UCAN to cost SDG&E ratepayers $2 million. Under regulatory law, we must save the ratepayers more money than we cost to qualify for compensation. The U-T has acknowledged in many of your news articles, and at least one editorial, that UCAN has saved ratepayers far in excess of $2 million.

Your statements on KPBS Radio's Editor's Roundtable today were disingenuous. For example, one of the callers mentioned a January 2002 editorial opinion that appeared in your newspaper, in your section, directly below your name. The headline below your name reads "Consumers' Hero." You acknowledged that you knew it was on the UCAN web site, but you suggested that it was an "article" not an editorial opinion that you would have known about.

So we both know how much research you did. We both know that you referred to SDG&E, not Sempra on the phone call. We both know who ended our June 10th phone conversation. And both of us know that I was given a deadline of Friday morning to provide any material to you even though I explained to you that I’d not be back to my office until late Friday.

If it isn’t obvious to you, it is painfully obvious to me that in the future, I need to deal with you in writing. Regrettably, even the writing is problematic. I sent you two e-mails asking you to publish my rebuttal. If you did send me a reply via e-mail on Tuesday, then why wasn't my second e-mail, sent on Thursday, puzzling to you?

And why did you ignore my request today that you resend that Tuesday e-mail to me so that I could verify that it was sent properly and there isn’t an issue with our mail server? Is that an unreasonable request?

Clearly you don’t believe me and I don’t believe you. We’ll leave it at that.

UCAN is highly credible in this community because of the value that we place upon research and facts. We research and document just about everything that we publicly say and do. And it is all transparent – we put most all of it out on the Web.

This commitment to research and verification is a standard that I hold for others who claim to publish “informed opinions.” It is a standard to which your July 14th editorial falls woefully short. If you are, indeed, as interested in the truth as you claim, then I’ll refer you to our web pages where we are cataloging each of your documented prevarications. You are welcome….at any time….to post any rebuttal you want. We won’t refuse to publish your responses, notwithstanding your refusal to publish ours.

The Web is a supplemental tool to the printed page that gives the entire San Diego community the opportunity to learn, in greater depth, at what the printed page merely hints. I believe both are important tools. For the U-T to deny the readers of your printed page information that will then lead them to the Web, if they wish for more data, is ill-advised policy. And for you to refuse to publish a thoughtful response to a “hit-piece editorial” because you believe the facts are wrong – but have no tangible basis or proof for that assumption – is simply wrong.

Michael Shames
Executive Director
Utility Consumers' Action Network
www.ucan.org

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Former colleague Don Bauder, and Reader Columnist, says Robert A. Kittle is guilty of "rank deception."