Evans, Roshell testify in News-Press trial

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

As the federal hearing into alleged labor law violations at the Santa Barbara News-Press continued yesterday, attorneys extensively questioned former News-Press writers Starshine Roshell and Melissa Evans, while former reporter Tom Schultz returned for a brief stint on the stand to round out his testimony.
Prior to witnesses being heard, however, federal attorneys presented their argument to the court that campaigning for a restoration of journalistic ethics at the newspaper is a protected union activity.

Administrative Law Judge William Kocol brought up the issue yesterday as a key factor in deciding many of the charges in the trial after News-Press attorney Barry Cappello filed a brief last week arguing the activity is not protected.
Cappello reiterated his argument yesterday as well, stating that “Ethics are issues of the publisher, not reporters.”
National Labor Relations Board lawyer Steve Wyllie disagreed, describing that activity — largely the focus of the newsroom unionization effort — as “clearly protected.”
Wyllie argued that News-Press employees attempted to unionize to improve their working conditions and that ethical considerations clearly weigh in on that. He said due to a blurring of the wall between the opinion and news sections, employees had a “justified fear of being disciplined,” which impacted their ability to perform their job.
Wyllie cited an incident when a staff writer and several editors received reprimands from News-Press owner and copublisher Wendy McCaw for publishing the address of a parcel in Montecito where actor Rob Lowe planned to build a home.
Cappello rebutted that requests that management recognize the union is only explicit in two of the four demands that unionizing employees made, making the ethical issues addressed in one of the other demands an invalid bargaining point. Therefore, he argued, campaigning on those issues is not protected.
Judge Kocol said he appreciated the arguments coming from each side, pointing out that the federal attorneys had not been presenting their case on that issue forcefully enough.
Wyllie continued to focus on his argument that protesting on ethical issues is protected while questioning former News-Press reporter Melissa Evans, who took the stand yesterday afternoon.
After discussing Evans’ background at the newspaper, Wyllie asked her if the unionizing employees discussed newsroom contracts at other newspapers while coming up with goals for their campaign.
Evans said they had examined a contract between employees and management at Newsday. Under further questioning, she testified that she had found sections of that contract pertaining to byline protection particularly appealing.
“It would give us some right to raise objections to content changes,” Evans said, explaining that byline protection allows reporters to object to substantive changes to their articles during the editing process and remove their name from the printed story.
Evans said she felt such protection is necessary to keep editors from changing stories or applying inappropriate standards, citing the Lowe incident mentioned by Wyllie earlier as an example of such behavior at the News-Press. She testified that without those protections, her reputation and ability to develop and keep sources would be affected.
Under cross examination by News-Press attorney Matthew Clarke, Evans testified that requests for byline protection did not appear in any demands by the unionizing group to McCaw or News-Press management, or by her personally when asked in an unemployment hearing for her reasons for unionizing.
Evans explained that byline protection was not specifically mentioned because she felt it fell under the larger request for a restoration of ethical standards and the divide between the opinion and news sections at the News-Press.
Wyllie also questioned Evans on issues raised by associate editor Scott Steepleton in her 2006 performance evaluation, which union and federal attorneys allege was lowered intentionally along with those of other union supporters in order to deny their annual bonuses.
One issue involved a feature story Evans said she wrote about a Catholic study group in the spring of 2006. However, she decided along with her editor, Andrea Huebner, to hold the story until the fall, since the study group was taking a break for the summer.
When the story came up for publication, Steepleton, who had since taken over as head of the newsroom, approached Evans and questioned her about the article. Evans said she explained the reasoning behind holding the story.
“He seemed satisfied with that explanation,” Evans said.
She said the issue never came up again until she saw it in her performance evaluation. Evans also testified that issues of her being “caught up in things other than work” and not producing enough work did not come up prior to her evaluation either.
Steepleton testified earlier that those issues served as his basis for lowering her overall performance score, which made her ineligible for an annual bonus.
Wyllie then shifted gears to show Evans a video of footage shot by a local television station of the protest on the Anapamu footbridge. News-Press attorneys maintain that newspaper management fired Evans and five other reporters to disloyalty related to that incident, which they have argued is not protected union activity in part because none of the signs held at the protest contained union references.
During the video, lead union organizer Marty Keegan is heard telling the reporter shooting the footage that the protest was in order to initiate bargaining with the newspaper management over a newsroom contract. Wyllie later argued that those actions showed the protesters had attempted to convey their activity was union-related. Cappello made a point to clarify that the footage shown in court had never aired on television.
Defense attorney Clarke brought that video up again during his cross examination, choosing to focus on whether Evans could tell if the “Cancel Your Newspaper Today!” banner had been affixed to the fencing, a municipal code violation that Cappello has argued would make that activity unprotected.
Evans said she could not tell if the banner had been attached or not. She also testified that a “McCaw, Obey the Law” sign had been present on the bridge, which has not been shown in any photographs introduced into evidence or confirmed by any prior testimony.
Clarke also questioned Evans on e-mails she received from Tom Schultz, asking why she did not turn them over pursuant to her subpoena. Evans said she rarely keeps e-mails longer than several months.
Cappello questioned Schultz about those e-mails when he took the stand in the mid-afternoon. At issue are two messages authored by Schultz that Cappello has argued are “critical” pieces of evidence that portray an attempt by newsroom employees to deliver a letter to McCaw as loud and disruptive.
One e-mail, discussed extensively in earlier testimony, states, “Peeps, we rocked the house, crossed their wires and got ‘em unglued.” The second message refers to the delivery attempt as a “sonic boom” and “blitzkrieg,” and contains references to banging on sauce pans and jackhammering demands into the floor.
Schultz cleared up his reasons for not turning over those messages in a subpoena issued last week following his testimony, stating that his outgoing messages are only saved for up to 30 days.
Cappello then focused on an e-mail from former reporter Dawn Hobbs in which she addressed the recipients as “storm troopers.”
“I just don’t think ‘storm troopers’ is a way to describe quiet and professional behavior,” Cappello argued to the judge.
Schultz replied to questions from union attorney Ira Gottlieb that editorial page editor Travis Armstrong had used that term in a federal hearing in January and that newsroom employees had not previously used “storm troopers” to describe how they walked to deliver the letter. Gottlieb later said the “blitzkrieg” e-mail was clearly sarcastic.
Schultz also testified under questioning by Cappello that he received a bonus in 2006 and had openly expressed his support for the union in the newsroom.
While Evans and Schultz testified for a large part of the afternoon, Starshine Roshell spent most of the morning on the witness stand as attorneys questioned her on the cancellation of her column at the News-Press. The newspaper is charged with terminating her column as retaliation for her union support. Defense attorneys argued that the cancellation was part of a larger attempt to remove the appearance of bias from the newspaper.
Roshell testified that prior to the cancellation, she had written an article about duct tape that referenced a rally in which newsroom employees placed duct tape over their mouths to symbolize a gag order handed down by McCaw preventing them from speaking to the media. Roshell said she also wrote a column referencing the July 6 resignations of many top editors at the News-Press, including editor-in-chief Jerry Roberts.
She also testified that she had directed invectives at Armstrong as he led Roberts from the newsroom, but that Dawn Hobbs had not.
During his cross examination, Clarke asked Roshell to demonstrate in court how she had shouted those obscenities so Armstrong, who was present, could discern for his testimony if it had been her voice or Hobbs’. Judge Kocol interrupted to ask Roshell if she felt uncomfortable shouting invectives in court.
“Not at all,” Roshell responded, eventually shouting out the phrase.
Clarke asked Roshell if the columns of a group of community columnists as well as Scott Steepleton had been canceled prior to her column being canceled, to which she responded in the affirmative.
Clarke then began introducing columns that Roshell wrote for the Santa Barbara Independent following her resignation from the News-Press, eliciting objections from NLRB attorney Brian Gee, who argued that they are irrelevant. Clarke responded that they provide examples of the racy topics Roshell covered.
Gee then argued that the content of her columns had not been raised as a reason her column had been canceled. Clarke said he was not suggesting it had been, but merely pointing out that it would have been a legitimate reason for canceling the column. Judge Kocol refused to hear further testimony on that issue unless Clarke took the position that it had been a reason for the termination of the column.
Clarke eventually took that position, providing numerous examples of sexual language and content in her columns, eliciting chuckles from the audience. Roshell later testified that content was not raised as an issue when she met with Steepleton to discuss the cancellation and that editors had not told her to tone down the language or content of her column in 2006.
Melissa Evans will return to the stand today at 9 a.m. as Clarke continues his cross examination.