“Prowling” Media Goons
Photo by Matt C
Elaine Forbes, the former San Francisco Port Commission’s Executive Director and (currently on-leave) Sausalito City Manager, was arraigned on Wednesday in Marin County Superior Court on four misdemeanor counts. None of the misdemeanors Forbes is charged with involved any violence or physical harm, unless you count the self-inflicted damaged of allegedly draining several bottles of alcohol on the vessels Forbes is said to have unlawfully boarded in Sausalito Yacht Harbor.
Forbes’ family has stated that Forbes is experiencing a mental health crisis, a claim that seems credible in light of the details, and for an official whose long public record seems otherwise unblemished. Many Sausalito residents spoke in support of Forbes at the last City Council meeting, with one longtime resident asking why law enforcement had chosen to arrest Forbes instead of bringing her to the appropriate medical facility for an evaluation.
Many more expressed exasperation with the media’s predatory coverage of Forbes’ arrest.
It was a reasonable question. Why was the media, even the London-based Daily Mail, so focused on the Forbes arrest?
In a week when four U.S. military personnel were flown home in caskets, and the controversial Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act was passed by Congress, Bay Area media largely ignored the issue of the war and its impacts at home and abroad. Instead, they breathlessly reported that, in the hours prior to her arrest, Elaine Christina Forbes was alleged to have emptied a jar of maraschino cherries into a shoebox on someone else’s expensive yacht.
In other words, media seized on Forbes’ mishap to distract from the actual news.
Forbes’ unremarkable misdemeanor counts were: prowling (on boats, one count); unauthorized lodging (on boats, two counts); and petty theft (of clothing, one count). The “thefted” clothing appears to have been a t-shirt and shorts she changed into while on one of the boats. (Forbes might not have purloined the meager outfit had she not been arrested while wearing them.)
Despite the scant damage, no fewer than ten local and national news reporters and photographers showed up to watch the arraignment on Wednesday afternoon in Marin County Superior Court. For its part, ABC-7 could find so little else to report in the Bay Area that they camped outside the courthouse the prior Tuesday. At one point during a shift change on Tuesday morning, ABC-7 had at least three very large media trucks stationed outside the courthouse.
The Men’s Club
Nearly every reporter and photographer stationed outside the courthouse, eager to capture a glimpse of Forbes, was male. This was the scene as they began to trickle in:
“It’s money,” the Murdoch-controlled California Post’s boyishly handsome photographer smiled sheepishly in explanation for his presence, while the more aloof San Francisco Chronicle photographer offered no such excuses.
On a bench across from them, excluded from the men’s club, sat Gina Castro, KQED’s young photographer. “It’s always like this,” she whispered with quiet resignation, of the men’s club on the other bench that offered her no seat.
One of the local news cameramen had dragged in a comically large video camera and a tripod. The tripod, which was taller than himself, looked more like weaponry than video equipment. “Is that a tripod or a rocket launcher?” I’d softly teased him, as he heaved the massive mount to the security check-in. In no mood for joking, the cameraman glared at me.
Why Is KRON4 Dan Kerman Defending Sam Singer?
On Tuesday (the original day of the arraignment, which had to be moved to Wednesday), KRON4’s Dan Kerman had paced the hallway outside Courtroom M, dismissing my gentle suggestion that the media presence might be excessive.
“She’s a public figure,” he asserted testily.
“Okay, but for misdemeanors?” I asked.
Kerman ignored the question.
I then asked Kerman if the hiring of the infamous corporate and police public relations guru Sam Singer, supposedly a decision by Forbes’ family, might be counterproductive. Forbes, I pointed out, was already a somewhat sympathetic figure, and had done no real damage, as opposed to other Singer clients like Chevron or the Oakland Police Department.
“Singer doesn’t represent the Oakland Police Department,” Kerman huffed, dodging the question I had posed, “he represents the Oakland Police union.” And then he sulked off.
But to most victims of the OPD, that was a distinction without much difference.
And why should Kerman have to be defensive about Singer in the first place? Weren’t reporters like Kerman supposed to ask tougher questions about PR masters like Singer? For that matter, shouldn’t they be asking tougher questions about their own media outlets?
Why TV News Is Easier Than Actual News
For all the media coverage of Forbes over the past seven days, you would hardly know a detail ignored by everyone from the centi-million-dollar “liberal” KQED to the News Corp-owned California Post. All have “declined” to report basic points that were published last week in the humble Military Times, a publication that is mostly read by U.S. military personnel:
“The war has cost U.S. taxpayers at least $37.5 billion, has led to the deaths of 18 U.S. service members and injured more than 450 troops. It has killed thousands of Iranians.”
That’s all: In two sentences that provide four simple truths, the Military Times once again demonstrated it is more responsible than The San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, or Dan Kerman, all of whom appear to have dodged reporting on the actual financial cost of the U.S.-Iran War, or summarize U.S. casualties, or even to consider Iranian casualties.
A Question of Status And Color
Almost none of the arraignments I regularly observe in various Bay Area courthouses elicit any interest from the media, where the majority of the defendants are, like most who appeared in person before Judge Mayfield later that day, Black or Latino.
U.S. media accepts, largely without question, that daily arrests and prosecutions fall primarily on the poor and working-class. The fact that Forbes, who is white and whose sub-$300K salary is middle-class by Bay Area standards, was actually arrested for her transgression made her the unlucky exception to the rule. Yet none of the media coverage could be bothered to point that out.
A public records request I ran in 2020 retrieved information from the Marin County District Attorney showing that over a 32-year period (1989 through 2020) the Marin County sheriff and local police departments arrested — and referred to prosecution — Black and Latino people at a rate far above their demographic presence in the County.
The law enforcement agencies surrounding Marin City (Marin County Sheriff Office, Sausalito Police Department, and Mill Valley Police Department) arrested and referred to prosecution Black people at a rate over eight times the Black demographic presence in the County from 1989 through 2020.
This reality has been consistently denied by local TV news stations. The Marin Independent-Journal, which has an official partnership with the County of Marin, had never bothered to investigate the matter themselves. Nor has the San Francisco Chronicle ever reported the disparity.
Why It’s Important To Report The Media’s Selective and Sensationalistic Coverage
When the Forbes story became sensationalized – not only locally but in the pages of the Daily Mail and the Murdoch-owned California Post – I knew it would be important to watch not only how the case was handled by the media, but by the special appointment judge in misdemeanor court, Cindee Mayfield.
I was particularly interested in capturing how the media conducted itself in the courtroom and how it impacted the defendant. When Tuesday’s arraignment was continued to Wednesday, I immediately went upstairs to submit a media request in person in room 113. (Several larger outlets only submitted their media requests the following day.) I returned early to court the following day to check in with the clerk in Room 113 about the status of my request and was told there was no answer yet.
Judge Mayfield Does Not Owe You An Explanation
The judge in Forbes misdemeanor case is Cindee Mayfield, first appointed to the Mendocino County Municipal Court in by Republican Governor Pete Wilson in 1997. Mayfield was elevated to Mendocino County Superior Court the following year due to court consolidation, and retired from Mendocino County Superior Court in 2025. She is temporarily assigned to Marin County Superior Court.
Beyond that simple outline, very little biographical information is available on Mayfield online, and zero biographical information on Mayfield is available on the Marin County Superior Court website. The message from the courts is: we don’t expect you to need any background information on judges, who have absolute immunity, and near-absolute power.
But it was Judge Mayfield who approved so many media requests to record the Forbes arraignment: from centi-millionaire outlets like KQED, to the billionaire-owned California Post, to the Hearst-controlled San Francisco Chronicle.
Thus, it was Judge Mayfield’s decision to grant media access to News Corp’s California Post that resulted in the following exploitative headline: “California city manager’s (sic) Elaine Forbes’ unhinged expression in court after boozy boat burglary shocked elite locals.”
That is a striking headline, particularly since the California Post’s reporter, Annie Gaus, missed the entire arraignment, and had to rely on me to tell her to go ask the Post’s photographer for his recording. And at no point, unless you selectively located the most out-of-context split second of video, did Forbes appear “unhinged”. Forbes looked very nervous, which is fairly normal for any defendant in court, and tried to ignore the excessive media presence.
The headline is not only the fault of the Murdoch-controlled California Post, a publication that would not be able to exploit the Forbes story as effectively as it did without media access. The privilege it gained (and predictably abused) through Judge Mayfield’s permission to record during the arraignment should raise questions about Mayfield’s own lack of judgment: During the Forbes arraignment, there was more media than audience. And while media was restricted to the far left side of the courtroom, the sheer number of them, and their predatory focus on the defendant, constituted a not-insignificant distraction.
The arraignment was, however, mercifully short. Forbes’ attorney, Randall Knox, argued that Forbes posed no threat, and Mayfield ordered her released from jail on the condition that she submitted to evaluation at Marin General. Why any of that justified so much media coverage remains unexplained.
Judge Mayfield’s Prejudice
Most of the reporters granted media access by Judge Mayfield on Wednesday had never reported from Marin County Superior Court. And only one reporter in Wednesday’s hearing had reported in depth on any case in Marin County Superior Court. That reporter is myself, and yet I was the only reporter whose media request to record was denied by Judge Mayfield.
The issue is not any absence of prior bylines; I have previously been published in The New Yorker Magazine, The New York Observer, and The New York Times Magazine. These are credentials that most reporters at even KQED do not have.
Nor is the issue one of reach; the Marin County Confidential substack has a healthy subscription base of attorneys, educators, other journalists, and elected officials, as well as labor organizers, physicians, nurses, and tech industry workers.
The principal distinction between myself and the media outlets granted access by Mayfield appears to be financial: on a near-zero budget and working through an ongoing physical disability, I have provided more detailed reporting on the courts than KRON or the California Post — or even the Marin Independent-Journal, which favors very thin reporting on cases out of Marin County Superior Court.
Judge Mayfield provided no explanation for why my request was rejected. Nor did she provide any time for me to appeal the decision. I was only handed the official paperwork moments before the arraignment started, paperwork that looked nearly identical to the approved requests.
And neither I nor any of the deputies present had any idea I was not allowed to record at the time of the arraignment.
By denying my media request to record/publish still photos and video, Judge Mayfield is restricting the public from seeing the conduct of the moneyed media outlets in the courtroom.
But if the public could see what the million-dollar news outlets get away with, might they start asking for more transparency on their own cases?
And is that why Mayfield denied my request?
The beauty of a temporary judge is that they are even less accountable to the public than the regular judges. No one in the Clerk’s office nor the Court’s administrative office had any idea how to appeal such a decision. Email queries sent on Wednesday to the clerk for Judge Mayfield and to the Court’s Executive Officer, James Kim, remain unanswered.
The question here is not, “Do cameras belong in court?” since Judge Mayfield already determined that cameras were warranted. The question is, since cameras were “warranted”, why was the only camera that would have included the media’s conduct – and its impact on the defendant – excluded?
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