Young Journalist Fights Big Oil to Save One City's Elections
Chevron Corporation is spending millions to influence local elections in a Northern California city.

(Photo: Getty Images)
October 20, 2014 By Samantha Cowan

Samantha Cowan is the digital producer for TakePart Live. She previously worked for the Oprah Winfrey Network.
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The Richmond Standard’s Web banner proclaims that it’s a “community-driven news” site—and sure, it offers tidbits about the Northern California city’s businesses and crime blotter, but the byline for every story should probably read "Chevron Corporation."
“They provide a useful service. The problem is in presenting themselves as a neutral news service when there’s certain news that they will never cover, ” Harriet Rowan told TakePart on Sunday.
Rowan, a 26-year-old journalism student at UC Berkeley, writes for her university’s publication, Richmond Confidential. While the Chevron-sponsored Standard won’t report stories that put the company in a negative light, Rowan revealed just how far Chevron is willing to go to influence the community where it has run a refinery for more than a century. It has also started a "Richmond Proud" ad campaign and has a Twitter feed that boasts an impressive slate of good deeds, but the newspaper goes beyond traditional PR. The controversial oil company, responsible for a refinery fire in August 2012 that sent nearly 1,000 people to a hospital in Richmond, has spent $3 million on the upcoming election to help support its desired mayoral candidate and city council members. It's hoping to unseat a government that has been critical of Chevron.

Chevron: Sorry Our Fracking Well Burst Into Flames—Here's Some Pizza
Chevron’s independent expenditure committee operates under the name Moving Forward. The committee represents itself as a coalition of small businesses and local groups, yet 99 percent of its funding comes from the oil conglomerate, according to financial reports compiled by Rowan.  
Here are the highlights of our interview with Rowan, edited for length and clarity.
TakePart: How did you discover Chevron's financial contributions to Moving Forward? Were you already suspicious of their influence in local campaigns?
Harriet Rowan: Moving Forward was founded in 2012 and has spent money in previous Richmond elections. I knew that they got most of their money from Chevron and that they were an outlet for Chevron to send their money for candidates that they supported. I knew that they were going to be sending money. I went and looked at their campaign finance report that they handed in to the city clerks saying how much money they were actually spending, and one thing that I did find that I don’t think has been pointed out by anyone beforehand, along with the specific number, was that Moving Forward is actually a group of three campaign committees that have separate ID numbers and submit separate reports but seem to have almost exactly the same name. I went and found that information and figured out the process by which Chevron’s giving money to Moving Forward. Moving Forward is giving money to the two other Moving Forwards, and then those two Moving Forwards were spending money in the elections.
TakePart: As a journalist, do you see an ethical problem with the Richmond Standard. Is this slanted news? Is all news biased?
Rowan: I think the Richmond Standard, unfortunately, provides a service that isn’t provided in a lot of other places in Richmond. Richmond Confidential tries to provide this service that is news, things that are going on in Richmond. But there’s not enough of it. There are not enough people reporting; there’s not enough information. People are looking for more. The Richmond Standard kind of fills that void. What’s unfortunate is that it’s not clear that it is a PR group for Chevron. I wouldn’t even really necessarily call it a news site except for that it presents itself as a news site, and it does report on news that’s happening in Richmond, but it doesn’t have a lot of standard ethics that a lot of other journalism outlets have.
Most of the stories that the Richmond Standard writes are just about crime or events that have happened, local sports. They provide a useful service. The problem is in presenting themselves as a neutral news service when there’s certain news that they will never cover. Like the story that I wrote.
TakePart: You're up against a massive corporation—what's your advantage? What do you hear from the people that your reporting is reaching? 
Rowan: I think people in Richmond are really thankful to know how much money is being spent to influence their vote, exactly where that money is coming from, and how it’s being spent. The next step of that would be to understand why, which is something we’re all trying to figure out. I mean it’s a massive amount of money that is being spent. As of now they have spent what would be about $75 per person. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being more like $100. It’s not per vote. It’s per registered vote, and then only a fraction of those people vote. We won’t know until the election and how many people vote, but when you look at it that way, they’re spending $100-plus per vote that is being cast in the election. I think that there is something that makes people uncomfortable about that amount of money being spent.
TakePart: To do this work, were you inspired by any journalistic heroes? 
Rowan: I worked at a reporting and advocacy agency before that did a lot of campaign finance stories. I would say my bosses and my colleagues at the Center for Media and Democracy definitely helped to have the skills in order to be able to report this story. To a certain extent, it was an obvious story. There was a group between 20 and 30 of us who were dedicated to reporting on Richmond. I’m one of the few on the politics team, and when the campaign filing reports were due, I started looking into them, and I saw that $3 million was moving around, and so the story was just right there.
TakePart: It’s funny that you say that, because you were the first person to report on this. So a lot of big reporters did miss this.
Rowan: I think it would have come out eventually. Not only is it a big story because it’s so much money; it’s a big story because it’s an example of our political system after the Citizens United decision. This is a relatively new development in our democracy, and it’s important to see the real-life implications of the Supreme Court decision. People hear about money in politics and big money in politics, and they hear these kind of vague words, and it’s hard to really see it in a concrete way. So when people in cities are seeing all this money being spent, and then you break it down for them—this is how much, this is what they’re spending it on, how they are able to spend it, and this is the process they use—I think that people really appreciate that information because it makes it more accessible.
TakePart: What would you say to young journalists who want to do the kind of work you're doing? 
Rowan: It’s simple. Depending on where you are, there are different laws that require independent groups to report how much money they’re spending in elections. Everyone talks about how newsrooms are being cut, and reporters are being asked to do more with less. There’s a lot of stuff that’s out there—stuff that’s supposed to be out there for the public. And the reporters need to go out and find that information. Sometimes it’s just as easy as calling up the city clerk and saying, “Hey, I want to see documents,” and putting that information out there. That’s really all that I did.