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POCC Minister of Information JR's critique of the Anti Bakery Project
A recent article by the Anti Bakery Project or the so called Chauncey Bailey Project attacked a very respected journalist JR Valrey who is the Minister of Information for the POCC(Prisoners of Consciousness Committee). If you dont know about them like the Anti Bakery Project doesnt educate yourself on who they are. JR has shown his dedication to the fight for social justice, free speech through media and has consistently covered events locally and nationally which few others do. The allegations made in the article that JR was involved somehow in the killing of Chauncey is absurd and needed to be responded to. This is JR's analysis of the anti bakery project and sets the record straight on his relationship with Chauncey.
A journalistic critique of the Chauncey Bailey Project
by Minister of Information JR
The Chauncey Bailey Project is a collaboration of almost two dozen mostly mainstream media institutions located in the Bay Area.
Ever since its inception, it was never about honoring and continuing the work of the late journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr. and answering questions regarding his death, as it claims on its website. The project and the Oakland police seem to have more of a lynch mob mentality in their investigation. They seem to be trying to ensure that their reporting will result in some young Black male or a group of them paying for the murder of Chauncey, even if they are innocent.
I was recently mentioned and wrongly implicated in one of the CBP stories and want to set the record straight with the public.
The CBP, according to its website, was modeled after the Arizona Project, which in ‘76 brought journalists from all over the country to Phoenix to finish the work of reporter Don Bolles, who was blown up by a car bomb while he was investigating the mafia.
The CBP has been writing stories weekly that are distributed by the project’s many partners to millions of readers. The problem is that many of their stories contain an outrageous number of errors and outright lies, which have made many people outside of the self-congratulating walls of the journalism industry question its credibility, professionalism and sincerity in finding out what happened to the late Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey.
A major concern from the community is that the CBP relies heavily on information from police sources and anonymous police sources while investigating the murder of a journalist who was investigating the police, among other subjects, when he was murdered.
The Chauncey Bailey Project is not the first journalistic collaborative in American history where the lines between police work, intelligence work and journalistic work have been blurred. In 1973, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson revealed that Seymour Freidin, head of the Hearst Bureau in London, was a CIA agent. And as late as last year, the Maynard Institute, one of the partners in the Chauncey Bailey Project, featured a story on its website titled “CIA, FBI recruiting journalists of color.”
Last Sunday, the Oakland Tribune released an article from the Chauncey Bailey Project called “Evidence Ignored,” which passed off misleading information as facts and omitted relevant information, in apparent attempts at character assassinations.
Over four paragraphs in the article discussed a series of phone calls between Yusuf Bey IV and myself preceding the murder of Chauncey Bailey. During the phone calls we talked about 15-year-old Laronte Studesville, an innocent Black youth who had been shot by police a month earlier in East Oakland. I was inviting Bey to a community meeting that the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and the boy’s father were hosting in downtown Oakland the following day, Aug. 2.
Due to the late notice, Bey told me that he would not be able to attend, but he wanted to be updated on activities that we were planning so that Your Black Muslim Bakery, the business and organization he headed, could support work that was being done towards acquiring justice for Laronte and his family. In our conversations, Chauncey Bailey was never discussed. And Laronte’s father actually videotaped the meeting that was held the day Chauncey was killed.
Bob Butler, president of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association and one of the reporters with the Chauncey Bailey Project who wrote “Evidence Ignored,” was upset approximately two weeks ago when he called me and I refused to talk to him about this conversation. He used my refusal to be interviewed as a reason to add my name to some kind of conspiracy that the state Attorney General’s office is now being asked to investigate.
I am totally innocent. I refused to be interviewed by Butler, the Chauncey Bailey Project and the police because I do not believe that they have the best interests of me, the Black community or Chauncey Bailey at heart.
When I have anything to say, I broadcast it on the Block Report Radio segment on KPFA and www. blockreportradio. com or through the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, www. sfbayview. com.
Those are the credible news providers in my community.
When my refusal to be interviewed was quoted in the article, the CBP omitted my saying that it was a front of embedded journalists who are more intent on building a case against certain individuals than truly finding out what happened to Chauncey. This is a common sentiment in the Black community in regard to the Chauncey Bailey Project.
The article, where my name appeared into bold print, was called “Evidence Ignored.” Yet the Chauncey Bailey Project to this day has ignored evidence it could easily have obtained by interviewing the former owner of a downtown Oakland cultural center named Cafe Axe. She was one of the last people Chauncey Bailey interviewed as a journalist. She told me that she talked to him about the Oakland police’s history of extorting her center and Black clubs in downtown Oakland.
She is very important to the case, because not only was she associated with Chauncey, Yusef Bey IV and the Bakery worked security for her. Interestingly, there is no Chauncey Bailey Project story documenting this twist, which contradicts what the Chauncey Bailey Project and the police want us to assume about Bey IV and Bailey. I personally know about this story because I was also working on it, separate from Chauncey though. After his murder, I interviewed the owner about her relationship with Chauncey and members of the Bakery.
In addition to failing to look into that story, the CBP never pursued one of the biggest stories in this tragedy, that being the one where Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb accused the police of a coverup in an interview with me on the Block Report Radio show.
A transcription can be read at www. sfbayview. com.
Cobb said, “I told the officer that I thought that the most prominent story that Chauncey Bailey was working on I thought that could cause some concern was that he was working on an investigation into allegations of some shady behavior by some of the police officers. And the officer did not write that down, did not seem interested.
”
“Evidence Ignored” used my legal last name, Valrey, and described me as “a blogger and activist then reporting for the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, where Bailey sometimes contributed news items.” There are three lies in this one sentence. For one, I have never been a blogger. Secondly, I am the associate editor of the Bay View as well as a reporter and have supported my family for years as a journalist. Two prominent members of the Chauncey Bailey Project, Dori Maynard and Sandy Close, are largely responsible for training me to be a journalist. I assume that not referring to me as a journalist was a pot-shot at my journalistic credibility, although it is too late for that; since the early 2000s I have been winning awards from my peers for my work, including a 2006 New America Media Award.
The third lie is that Chauncey sometimes submitted news to the SF Bay View. According to the publisher and editor, Willie and Mary Ratcliff, this is totally false. He wrote for the Post, Sun Reporter and Oakland Tribune primarily, not for the Bay View. And one more crazy fact about this scenario is that Bailey was fired from the Tribune, the paper that is leading the charge to find out who murdered him. When the Trib fired Chauncey, they did not care how he was going to supplement his income to feed his family.
Now that he is dead, they are concerned?
The CBP, in “Evidence Ignored,” also failed to disclose that it offered to pay me 30 times the most money I have ever been paid for an article to write one with the project’s name under mine. I did not accept the offer. And as I am writing this, I am told that the offer still stands. Although the CBP refuses to call me a journalist, it sure wants credit for what it is that I have to say.
Some in the journalism community believe that my refusal to take what they are calling a bribe is the reason my name was the only one identified out of the 4,000 calls “Evidence Ignored” reported were received by Bey’s cell phone during the month prior to Bailey’s murder.
Was this an attempt to smear me because of my refusal to be bribed and because of reporting I have done that rips the CBP’s stories to shreds and exposes its agenda-driven sloppy creative writing passed off as journalism?
Another misleading fact in “Evidence Ignored” is that it said I knew Bailey for a decade. That is not true. We only became acquainted when Chauncey Bailey used to see me delivering the SF Bay View newspaper and commented that we were the best distributed Black newspaper he had ever seen. We first met and had this discussion in 2004, about four years ago.
With all of these inaccuracies in this one article, I hope to show the people that these “journalists,” if you want to call them that, who make up the Chauncey Bailey Project are not credible. Their track record proves it. We should stop disrespecting Chauncey Bailey’s memory by using his name to refer to this project.
Minister of Information JR can be reached at blockreportradio [at] gmail.com.
His stories published in the San Francisco Bay View covering the murder of Chauncey Bailey can be read at www. sfbayview. com.
For more of his work, including many Block Reports broadcast on KPFA, visit www. blockreportradio. com.
by Minister of Information JR
The Chauncey Bailey Project is a collaboration of almost two dozen mostly mainstream media institutions located in the Bay Area.
Ever since its inception, it was never about honoring and continuing the work of the late journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr. and answering questions regarding his death, as it claims on its website. The project and the Oakland police seem to have more of a lynch mob mentality in their investigation. They seem to be trying to ensure that their reporting will result in some young Black male or a group of them paying for the murder of Chauncey, even if they are innocent.
I was recently mentioned and wrongly implicated in one of the CBP stories and want to set the record straight with the public.
The CBP, according to its website, was modeled after the Arizona Project, which in ‘76 brought journalists from all over the country to Phoenix to finish the work of reporter Don Bolles, who was blown up by a car bomb while he was investigating the mafia.
The CBP has been writing stories weekly that are distributed by the project’s many partners to millions of readers. The problem is that many of their stories contain an outrageous number of errors and outright lies, which have made many people outside of the self-congratulating walls of the journalism industry question its credibility, professionalism and sincerity in finding out what happened to the late Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey.
A major concern from the community is that the CBP relies heavily on information from police sources and anonymous police sources while investigating the murder of a journalist who was investigating the police, among other subjects, when he was murdered.
The Chauncey Bailey Project is not the first journalistic collaborative in American history where the lines between police work, intelligence work and journalistic work have been blurred. In 1973, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson revealed that Seymour Freidin, head of the Hearst Bureau in London, was a CIA agent. And as late as last year, the Maynard Institute, one of the partners in the Chauncey Bailey Project, featured a story on its website titled “CIA, FBI recruiting journalists of color.”
Last Sunday, the Oakland Tribune released an article from the Chauncey Bailey Project called “Evidence Ignored,” which passed off misleading information as facts and omitted relevant information, in apparent attempts at character assassinations.
Over four paragraphs in the article discussed a series of phone calls between Yusuf Bey IV and myself preceding the murder of Chauncey Bailey. During the phone calls we talked about 15-year-old Laronte Studesville, an innocent Black youth who had been shot by police a month earlier in East Oakland. I was inviting Bey to a community meeting that the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and the boy’s father were hosting in downtown Oakland the following day, Aug. 2.
Due to the late notice, Bey told me that he would not be able to attend, but he wanted to be updated on activities that we were planning so that Your Black Muslim Bakery, the business and organization he headed, could support work that was being done towards acquiring justice for Laronte and his family. In our conversations, Chauncey Bailey was never discussed. And Laronte’s father actually videotaped the meeting that was held the day Chauncey was killed.
Bob Butler, president of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association and one of the reporters with the Chauncey Bailey Project who wrote “Evidence Ignored,” was upset approximately two weeks ago when he called me and I refused to talk to him about this conversation. He used my refusal to be interviewed as a reason to add my name to some kind of conspiracy that the state Attorney General’s office is now being asked to investigate.
I am totally innocent. I refused to be interviewed by Butler, the Chauncey Bailey Project and the police because I do not believe that they have the best interests of me, the Black community or Chauncey Bailey at heart.
When I have anything to say, I broadcast it on the Block Report Radio segment on KPFA and www. blockreportradio. com or through the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, www. sfbayview. com.
Those are the credible news providers in my community.
When my refusal to be interviewed was quoted in the article, the CBP omitted my saying that it was a front of embedded journalists who are more intent on building a case against certain individuals than truly finding out what happened to Chauncey. This is a common sentiment in the Black community in regard to the Chauncey Bailey Project.
The article, where my name appeared into bold print, was called “Evidence Ignored.” Yet the Chauncey Bailey Project to this day has ignored evidence it could easily have obtained by interviewing the former owner of a downtown Oakland cultural center named Cafe Axe. She was one of the last people Chauncey Bailey interviewed as a journalist. She told me that she talked to him about the Oakland police’s history of extorting her center and Black clubs in downtown Oakland.
She is very important to the case, because not only was she associated with Chauncey, Yusef Bey IV and the Bakery worked security for her. Interestingly, there is no Chauncey Bailey Project story documenting this twist, which contradicts what the Chauncey Bailey Project and the police want us to assume about Bey IV and Bailey. I personally know about this story because I was also working on it, separate from Chauncey though. After his murder, I interviewed the owner about her relationship with Chauncey and members of the Bakery.
In addition to failing to look into that story, the CBP never pursued one of the biggest stories in this tragedy, that being the one where Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb accused the police of a coverup in an interview with me on the Block Report Radio show.
A transcription can be read at www. sfbayview. com.
Cobb said, “I told the officer that I thought that the most prominent story that Chauncey Bailey was working on I thought that could cause some concern was that he was working on an investigation into allegations of some shady behavior by some of the police officers. And the officer did not write that down, did not seem interested.
”
“Evidence Ignored” used my legal last name, Valrey, and described me as “a blogger and activist then reporting for the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, where Bailey sometimes contributed news items.” There are three lies in this one sentence. For one, I have never been a blogger. Secondly, I am the associate editor of the Bay View as well as a reporter and have supported my family for years as a journalist. Two prominent members of the Chauncey Bailey Project, Dori Maynard and Sandy Close, are largely responsible for training me to be a journalist. I assume that not referring to me as a journalist was a pot-shot at my journalistic credibility, although it is too late for that; since the early 2000s I have been winning awards from my peers for my work, including a 2006 New America Media Award.
The third lie is that Chauncey sometimes submitted news to the SF Bay View. According to the publisher and editor, Willie and Mary Ratcliff, this is totally false. He wrote for the Post, Sun Reporter and Oakland Tribune primarily, not for the Bay View. And one more crazy fact about this scenario is that Bailey was fired from the Tribune, the paper that is leading the charge to find out who murdered him. When the Trib fired Chauncey, they did not care how he was going to supplement his income to feed his family.
Now that he is dead, they are concerned?
The CBP, in “Evidence Ignored,” also failed to disclose that it offered to pay me 30 times the most money I have ever been paid for an article to write one with the project’s name under mine. I did not accept the offer. And as I am writing this, I am told that the offer still stands. Although the CBP refuses to call me a journalist, it sure wants credit for what it is that I have to say.
Some in the journalism community believe that my refusal to take what they are calling a bribe is the reason my name was the only one identified out of the 4,000 calls “Evidence Ignored” reported were received by Bey’s cell phone during the month prior to Bailey’s murder.
Was this an attempt to smear me because of my refusal to be bribed and because of reporting I have done that rips the CBP’s stories to shreds and exposes its agenda-driven sloppy creative writing passed off as journalism?
Another misleading fact in “Evidence Ignored” is that it said I knew Bailey for a decade. That is not true. We only became acquainted when Chauncey Bailey used to see me delivering the SF Bay View newspaper and commented that we were the best distributed Black newspaper he had ever seen. We first met and had this discussion in 2004, about four years ago.
With all of these inaccuracies in this one article, I hope to show the people that these “journalists,” if you want to call them that, who make up the Chauncey Bailey Project are not credible. Their track record proves it. We should stop disrespecting Chauncey Bailey’s memory by using his name to refer to this project.
Minister of Information JR can be reached at blockreportradio [at] gmail.com.
His stories published in the San Francisco Bay View covering the murder of Chauncey Bailey can be read at www. sfbayview. com.
For more of his work, including many Block Reports broadcast on KPFA, visit www. blockreportradio. com.
Add Your Comments
Comments
(Hide Comments)
J.R. Thank you for asking to me to come on your radio show on October 31 to answer your questions about why your name appeared in our story. I explained that it is now known that three people, including accused Bailey murderer Devaughndre Broussard, were sitting outside Chauncey Bailey's apartment at 12:30 AM, 7 hours before Bailey was killed. During that period of time, you made two calls to Yusuf Bey IV. I asked, as any good journalist would, what was discussed. You responded that it was "none of (my) business so that's what was printed. Had you explained that you were discussing the event to be held August 3rd, we would have printed that.
You also asked me on your show about the "...outrageous number of errors and outright lies, which have made many people outside of the self-congratulating walls of the journalism industry question its credibility, professionalism and sincerity..." I explained in great detail that everything in our story was backed by official court documents and/or numerous sources. And, yes, some of those sources include police officers who are angry at how Bailey's case has been handled and want to see whoever was responsible brought to justice. I trust your listeners will hear those explanations on your radio show.
We did get wrong that you knew Chauncey for about 10 years and we will run a correction on our website.
As for the many people questioning the project's "credibility, professionalism and sincerity," I stand by the work we have done and continue to do to find the truth about who killed Chauncey Bailey. Chauncey's family supports us and has thanked us for our efforts.
I will leave with this email we received October 29 from a reader in Oakland.
"I wanted to thank you all for your hard work and wonderful writing that you have put into the series investigating the murder of Chauncey (Bailey). Every morning it has appeared in my copy of the Oakland Tribune I have read each installment more than once. I am appalled on so many levels at the ugly truth that you have begun to expose.
In a day and age where the instant satisfaction of the internet and back seat blogging that passes itself off as true journalism, I find it ironically tragic that Chauncey Bailey's murder appears to be the result of a journalist who believed in both his community and the impact that his work could have to bring about change. I cannot think of a greater way to have honored him with what you are doing right now.
As an Oakland resident, I am all too aware of the deep seeded struggle with violent crime and law enforcement's struggles to bring about justice. It disgusts me to no end walking around with the knowledge that Sgt. Derwin Longmire has interfered with the the investigation into the role of Yusef Bay IV in the murder of Chauncey Bailey as well as two previous crimes. How can the people of Oakland look to their own police department to bring about peace and justice with the likes of Sgt. Longmire still on active duty? How can we trust them?
Lastly, I wish to ask you if you have any advice to Oakland residents to voice our anger and concern over how this investigation has been handled and to let them know the likes of Sgt. Longmire should be brought to justice."
You also asked me on your show about the "...outrageous number of errors and outright lies, which have made many people outside of the self-congratulating walls of the journalism industry question its credibility, professionalism and sincerity..." I explained in great detail that everything in our story was backed by official court documents and/or numerous sources. And, yes, some of those sources include police officers who are angry at how Bailey's case has been handled and want to see whoever was responsible brought to justice. I trust your listeners will hear those explanations on your radio show.
We did get wrong that you knew Chauncey for about 10 years and we will run a correction on our website.
As for the many people questioning the project's "credibility, professionalism and sincerity," I stand by the work we have done and continue to do to find the truth about who killed Chauncey Bailey. Chauncey's family supports us and has thanked us for our efforts.
I will leave with this email we received October 29 from a reader in Oakland.
"I wanted to thank you all for your hard work and wonderful writing that you have put into the series investigating the murder of Chauncey (Bailey). Every morning it has appeared in my copy of the Oakland Tribune I have read each installment more than once. I am appalled on so many levels at the ugly truth that you have begun to expose.
In a day and age where the instant satisfaction of the internet and back seat blogging that passes itself off as true journalism, I find it ironically tragic that Chauncey Bailey's murder appears to be the result of a journalist who believed in both his community and the impact that his work could have to bring about change. I cannot think of a greater way to have honored him with what you are doing right now.
As an Oakland resident, I am all too aware of the deep seeded struggle with violent crime and law enforcement's struggles to bring about justice. It disgusts me to no end walking around with the knowledge that Sgt. Derwin Longmire has interfered with the the investigation into the role of Yusef Bay IV in the murder of Chauncey Bailey as well as two previous crimes. How can the people of Oakland look to their own police department to bring about peace and justice with the likes of Sgt. Longmire still on active duty? How can we trust them?
Lastly, I wish to ask you if you have any advice to Oakland residents to voice our anger and concern over how this investigation has been handled and to let them know the likes of Sgt. Longmire should be brought to justice."
If the self-described "minister of information" is confident he'll be shown to be an innocent party, and if KPFA has any interest at all in the investigation of the murder of Chauncey Bailey, then they should join the CBP with the other media organizations who are contributing to this project to bring justice for Chauncey and the community. Why would KPFA and JR appear to be giving a pass to the cops, especially in light of JR's personal campaign against KPFA and Berkeley PD in order to bring do his 'social activism" on the air?
Everything about Chauncey Bailey’s life and work spoke of his devotion to the Black community. Yet the Chauncey Bailey Project, modeled after an earlier project to complete the investigation that had led to the murder of a journalist in Arizona, appears to have veered far off the course that Chauncey was taking.
“Barack Obama and Chauncey Bailey,” a Dave Newhouse column published in the Oakland Tribune Thursday, Nov. 6, cites a central theme for Chauncey and the Black community. Newhouse quotes Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb describing Chauncey’s exclusive interview with now President-elect Obama in early 2007: In his first question, Chauncey asked Obama “what would he do about ex-offenders and jobs?”
Ex-offenders and jobs are critical community concerns because of the rampant racism that locks Blacks in prison and out of the economy. The Oakland organization best known for giving jobs to ex-offenders was Your Black Muslim Bakery.
For that reason, Chauncey Bailey, while he may have been looking into the bakery’s finances, was unlikely to have been out to destroy the bakery. But due to the investigations by the police and the Chauncey Bailey Project, the bakery is now out of business – no longer able to give jobs to ex-offenders.
Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey is generally presumed to have been killed to prevent him from reporting a story he was investigating. But was it a story about the bakery that got him killed?
In an interview by Bay View Associate Editor JR Valrey, Paul Cobb said that Chauncey was investigating police corruption just prior to his murder. It’s not surprising that the police wouldn’t be eager to follow that lead, but the Chauncey Bailey Project, too, has totally ignored it.
Instead, in its epic “Evidence ignored in Chauncey Bailey case,” published by the Tribune Oct. 25, the project has seized on the cell phone records of bakery head Yusuf Bey IV as evidence of a conspiracy to kill Chauncey. Now the frenzy stirred up by the project’s conspiracy theory may bring Oakland-mayor-turned-Attorney-General Jerry Brown back to Oakland and cause some high level heads to roll at the Oakland Police Department.
The Chauncey Bailey Project’s latest story, “State probe into police handling of journalist slaying expands,” published Friday, Nov. 7, reports, “The Bailey project has reported that (police investigator) Longmire didn’t pursue obvious leads pointing to a conspiracy to kill the journalist by members of Your Black Muslim Bakery and its former leader, Yusef Bey IV.”
What conspiracy? The only evidence of the conspiracy cited by the project are cell phone records of conversations between Bey and my colleague JR Valrey the night before Chauncey’s murder. But, as JR explains in “A journalistic critique of the Chauncey Bailey Project,” those calls had nothing to do with Chauncey. Valrey was simply inviting Bey to a meeting the next day about the police shooting of a 15-year-old.
The police probably listened to the tapes of those calls and dismissed them as irrelevant. Why didn’t the eminent journalists of the Chauncey Bailey Project do likewise?
Bob Butler, one of the three writers of these Chauncey Bailey Project stories, also heads the Bay Area Black Journalists Association. That’s a post Chauncey once held. But unlike Bob Butler, whose writing displays his unfamiliarity with the work of both JR Valrey and the San Francisco Bay View, Chauncey held Black journalists and the Black press in high regard and was intimately familiar with and respectful of their work.
I am appalled by the Chauncey Bailey Project for journalism so sloppy – if not libelous – as to unquestioningly implicate a fellow journalist in its murder conspiracy theory. I am appalled too by the Tribune for its failure to fact-check the project’s stories – not to mention its firing of Chauncey, which infuriated the Black community. And finally, I am appalled by KPFA News for broadcasting the project’s conspiracy theory in an attempt to smear JR Valrey, a fellow KPFA staff member.
Chauncey Bailey was beloved for courageously defending and uplifting the Black community, but the project that bears his name seems oblivious to that legacy. Chauncey’s legacy is a tough challenge to perpetuate considering the virulent racism that is driving Blacks out of San Francisco and Oakland at a record-breaking rate. Clearly, these three media are not up to the challenge.
In attacking Valrey, a Black journalist who is undeniably carrying on Chauncey’s legacy, and the bakery, which undeniably provided jobs for ex-offenders, Chauncey’s top issue in his interview with the next president of the United States, it appears to me that all three of these major news media, with access to an audience of millions, are intentionally inflaming racial tensions and betraying the legacy of Chauncey Bailey.
“Barack Obama and Chauncey Bailey,” a Dave Newhouse column published in the Oakland Tribune Thursday, Nov. 6, cites a central theme for Chauncey and the Black community. Newhouse quotes Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb describing Chauncey’s exclusive interview with now President-elect Obama in early 2007: In his first question, Chauncey asked Obama “what would he do about ex-offenders and jobs?”
Ex-offenders and jobs are critical community concerns because of the rampant racism that locks Blacks in prison and out of the economy. The Oakland organization best known for giving jobs to ex-offenders was Your Black Muslim Bakery.
For that reason, Chauncey Bailey, while he may have been looking into the bakery’s finances, was unlikely to have been out to destroy the bakery. But due to the investigations by the police and the Chauncey Bailey Project, the bakery is now out of business – no longer able to give jobs to ex-offenders.
Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey is generally presumed to have been killed to prevent him from reporting a story he was investigating. But was it a story about the bakery that got him killed?
In an interview by Bay View Associate Editor JR Valrey, Paul Cobb said that Chauncey was investigating police corruption just prior to his murder. It’s not surprising that the police wouldn’t be eager to follow that lead, but the Chauncey Bailey Project, too, has totally ignored it.
Instead, in its epic “Evidence ignored in Chauncey Bailey case,” published by the Tribune Oct. 25, the project has seized on the cell phone records of bakery head Yusuf Bey IV as evidence of a conspiracy to kill Chauncey. Now the frenzy stirred up by the project’s conspiracy theory may bring Oakland-mayor-turned-Attorney-General Jerry Brown back to Oakland and cause some high level heads to roll at the Oakland Police Department.
The Chauncey Bailey Project’s latest story, “State probe into police handling of journalist slaying expands,” published Friday, Nov. 7, reports, “The Bailey project has reported that (police investigator) Longmire didn’t pursue obvious leads pointing to a conspiracy to kill the journalist by members of Your Black Muslim Bakery and its former leader, Yusef Bey IV.”
What conspiracy? The only evidence of the conspiracy cited by the project are cell phone records of conversations between Bey and my colleague JR Valrey the night before Chauncey’s murder. But, as JR explains in “A journalistic critique of the Chauncey Bailey Project,” those calls had nothing to do with Chauncey. Valrey was simply inviting Bey to a meeting the next day about the police shooting of a 15-year-old.
The police probably listened to the tapes of those calls and dismissed them as irrelevant. Why didn’t the eminent journalists of the Chauncey Bailey Project do likewise?
Bob Butler, one of the three writers of these Chauncey Bailey Project stories, also heads the Bay Area Black Journalists Association. That’s a post Chauncey once held. But unlike Bob Butler, whose writing displays his unfamiliarity with the work of both JR Valrey and the San Francisco Bay View, Chauncey held Black journalists and the Black press in high regard and was intimately familiar with and respectful of their work.
I am appalled by the Chauncey Bailey Project for journalism so sloppy – if not libelous – as to unquestioningly implicate a fellow journalist in its murder conspiracy theory. I am appalled too by the Tribune for its failure to fact-check the project’s stories – not to mention its firing of Chauncey, which infuriated the Black community. And finally, I am appalled by KPFA News for broadcasting the project’s conspiracy theory in an attempt to smear JR Valrey, a fellow KPFA staff member.
Chauncey Bailey was beloved for courageously defending and uplifting the Black community, but the project that bears his name seems oblivious to that legacy. Chauncey’s legacy is a tough challenge to perpetuate considering the virulent racism that is driving Blacks out of San Francisco and Oakland at a record-breaking rate. Clearly, these three media are not up to the challenge.
In attacking Valrey, a Black journalist who is undeniably carrying on Chauncey’s legacy, and the bakery, which undeniably provided jobs for ex-offenders, Chauncey’s top issue in his interview with the next president of the United States, it appears to me that all three of these major news media, with access to an audience of millions, are intentionally inflaming racial tensions and betraying the legacy of Chauncey Bailey.
For more information:
http://www.sfbayview.com/2008/betraying-th...
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