By David L. Grey

Media Watch

California’s energy story is actually expanding, or should be, as Bay Area news media tone down their crisis-of-the-day coverage. Important energy decisions await in Sacramento and locally.

It is during these more reflective stages that major newspapers have opportunities to explore many questions of where we are, seem to be and ought to be headed, and why.

One prime example (see “Media Watch,” March 14): the large, proposed power plant in South San Jose, commonly called the Metcalf Energy Center, which is currently under final review by the California Energy Commission. Its fate is expected to be announced by very late spring.

This is happening after months of public hearings and more than two years of both public and private maneuverings by plant builder Calpine-Bechtel, Cisco Systems, the San Jose City Council and Mayor Ron Gonzales, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, local and state-wide Assembly members, Gov. Gray Davis and a host of Silicon Valley industrial, environmental and neighborhood groups.

Including also as importantly: the San Jose Mercury News, self-described as “The Newspaper of Silicon Valley,” and its parent company, Knight Ridder.

The newspaper came out June 8 and 13, 1999, both especially early and strongly for the Metcalf facility in North Coyote Valley, just southwest of where Highways 101 and 85 intersect, next to Cisco’s long-planned massive new campus.

The Mercury’s and others’ endorsements are not the focus here. Nor are the San Jose City Council and Cisco oppositions, the concern is how those of us on the Peninsula are supposed to judge the plant’s merits and demerits without full and consistent news coverage?

Even to this date, after more than a year and a half of ongoing study by this columnist, a lot of Mercury coverage about Metcalf has simply often not been printed or only briefly summarized, even almost hidden, on the Peninsula.

Our area’s edition is “zoned” slightly to quite different news and emphasis from what San Jose readers get and is found on the Mercury’s Web site.

The Mercury’s opinion pages, however, are the same for most of its Bay Area editions. So we are often being told what to think without being exposed more fully where these conclusions come from or what they are based on.

Any newspaper has to attempt to provide as much balanced and fair information as possible first, or at least concurrently, before editorials and other opinions make much sense or are worth much credence. While the Town Crier is not expected to be telling this Metcalf plant story, the Mercury is, for anyone in Silicon Valley.

More power plants are coming, but obviously any plant could affect many of us pro-con.

The largest Valley paper must be expected to contribute to our better understanding, sensible assessing of especially area energy stories. The Mercury, instead, has too often been treating us as distant, even disinterested, neighbors precisely during these important times when we are not or should not be.

David L. Grey, Ph.D., of Mountain View, is professor emeritus of journalism at San Jose State University , where he taught and researched on media law and ethics. He can be reached at: greyline@pacbell.net