Political Showtime

BY HANS LAETZ

It was a classic study in modern media manipulation last week, when newspaper reporters and TV crews trudged out to Malibu not once, not twice, but three times to cover all the events surrounding the governor and the environment. Each of the three events were case studies in style over substance, pictures over context.

Such are the real-world pictures of political science, journalism and environmental activism that collided in a perfect storm in Malibu, when our coast was front and center in the political kabuki theater that will affect the view off the Malibu coast for generations.

Local anti-LNG activists had scrambled into action last Monday, when Democratic challenger Phil Angelides’ advance team asked about using Bluffs Park as a backdrop to come out against the BHP Billiton Cabrillo Port project. The next day, LNG opponents learned that Governor Schwarzenegger was planning a media extravaganza at Pepperdine on Wednesday, two days before Angelides.

Activists read this as a surefire hint that the governor was going to endorse Cabrillo Port, and hasty calls were made to the media announcing a preemptory press conference before Schwarzengger’s motorcade rolled in. LNG critics urged the press to “ask him about his support for Cabrillo Port.” But local reporters had already tried that. Their inquiries were directed by the governor’s press office to the governor’s campaign office, and from the campaign office back to the state capital. No answer.

So that was the question of the day as participants were bused up to Pepperdine. The scene that awaited awed even jaded reporters, who said it would have been hard to top the tightly-scripted and highly-staged signing ceremony that the the governor’s script doctors had created.

No expense was spared as Pepperdine University was transformed into an elaborate television stage. Nature reserved judgment, the Malibu coastline, the biggest prop of all, was shrouded in smog from the wildfire near Castaic.

Later, the Los Angeles Times broke the story that several industries that stand to benefit from the Greenhouse Act were paying for the day’s events. The Times estimated $25,000 in costs, but it was clear that more was spent in Malibu alone.

The governor spoke, as did a half dozen dignitaries with important things to say, like the president of the big garbage recycling firm that helped pay for part of the program. But as the speeches wrapped up, no one had mentioned the elephant in the room, the LNG terminal just 22 miles away from Pepperdine that would generate greenhouse gases equal to five percent of California’s current output, according to one scientist.

So, when the governor jokingly asked the crowd if anyone else wanted to talk, one Malibu reporter shouted out a question from the press pen at the rear: “Governor, what about BHP Billiton and its greenhouse gas?”

The governor ignored the question, treating it as coming from a heckler. The reporter was then introduced to several earnest press aides and a plainclothes Highway Patrol officer, who were very concerned that he get an answer to his question without any more shouting.

Because LNG never came up in the governor’s remarks, the impact of the Malibu LNG terminal remains unanswered. The Malibu anti-LNG rally Wednesday got virtually no play on TV, and even the L.A. Times missed the local angle.

The Phil Angelides news conference on Friday, where Oxnard and Malibu officials got to speak, gathered a smattering of local TV coverage and a small article on page B-10 of the Times. But AB 32 got TV news, color pictures and front-page treatment all across the state.

The corporate money used to manufacture the governor’s environmental image was well-spent. The governor will go through this election without being pressed to reconcile how he will reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020, while at the same time increasing greenhouse gas emissions dramatically through Cabrillo Port and its attendant, transpacific supply chain.

The smog-shrouded coast was an apt metaphor for it all.