A familiar pattern, continued
Last month, Oakland Report launched a new section dedicated to examining the local media ecosystem’s coverage of civic issues and decision-making that affect Oaklanders’ lives. We began with analyses of how The Oaklandside, which has described itself as the city’s largest newsroom, presents Oakland’s candidates to voters in the current election cycle.1
For the candidate profiles, we began by checking basic facts and data: we counted the words and quotes each candidate received, checked every claim against the public record, traced which hyperlinks and fact-checks appear to support which candidates, and noted what seemingly relevant information was reported and what was not.
The underlying question we tested: does each candidate get the same treatment — the same checking of claims, the same evidence, the same disclosure of who stands behind them?
We have published three analyses so far:
Oaklandside’s September 22 school board District 2, in which incumbent Jennifer Brouhard is competing with Arielle Fleisher.2
Its September 24 profile of the city council District 2 race, where incumbent Charlene Wang faces Nate Adams.3
Its September 28 school board District 4 candidate profiles, a three-way race in which incumbent Mike Hutchinson competes with Kathryn Camp and Sylvia Williams.4
Since then, Oaklandside has published four more stories about the people on the local ballot:
An October 2 profile of the school board District 6 race, where incumbent Valarie Bachelor is competing against LeAna Powell and Alexandra Williams.5
An October 1 story on “why so few people are running” for city council and mayor.6
An October 5 questionnaire in which mayoral and city council candidates answered a fixed set of questions in their own words.7
An October 9 story on sex trafficking in District 2 and what Wang and Adams would do about it.8
This installment summarizes the findings of our three earlier analyses, applies the same examination to the school board District 6 profile, and looks at the three other stories.
What is a candidate profile?
A candidate profile typically tells a voter who the candidates are, what they have achieved or done, what they stand for, and who stands behind them, among other facts relevant to their candidacies. News organizations employ various approaches and styles for doing this.
The Oaklandside has published four such profiles this fall to date: for the three school board seats and one contested city council seat (District 2), all of which are on the November ballot.9101112
We first analyzed each one by counting words and quotes, checking facts against the record, and tracing what was reported and what was not. We also looked at the descriptive words the profiles’ authors attached to the facts reported, and how those descriptive words may affect some readers’ interpretations of those facts.
The four profiles were mostly accurate on the facts they include. However, a pattern is evident in what they left out. In all four profiles, it was the same three things:
The role of the Oakland Education Association (OEA) teachers union’s role in the race
The endorsements and money behind some candidates
The incumbent’s actual votes on issues that are mentioned or seem relevant to the profiles, or their specific explanations for those votes.
And in each of the three profiles in which OEA has endorsed a candidate, the candidate who appears to come out ahead is the one aligned with OEA and the East Bay chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — whether that candidate is the incumbent or the challenger. In the fourth, the candidate OEA opposes got the negative descriptors.
Editors’ note: Oakland Report is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization — the same IRS nonprofit category as The Oaklandside. We are not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign, and we do not offer political endorsements. We present the evidence we find — especially evidence that is overlooked, mischaracterized, or omitted elsewhere — and let our readers decide for themselves what to think about it. Learn more
Four profiles, one pattern
In each of the four profiles, the OEA teachers union’s role, the relevant political endorsements, and the political donations were incomplete or went unreported entirely — and in each case, the treatment appeared to favor the union-aligned candidate or disfavor the union-opposed one.
District 2 school board (September 22). Incumbent Jennifer Brouhard got 59 percent of the space. The profile omitted relevant details of a Stanford study and state law, both in her apparent favor. It noted the board’s recent contract settlement with OEA, but did not mention that OEA endorses, canvasses for and donates campaign funding to Brouhard. It also did not mention that she served three terms on OEA’s executive board, or that now as board president she votes on OEA’s contract concerning its members’ pay and benefits.13 These omissions are notable on their own. They arguably are more notable when compared to the details about another candidate’s charter school connections that were highlighted in the later District 6 profile (see below).
District 2 city council (September 24). In this profile, the union-backed candidate was the challenger, Nate Adams, not the incumbent Charlene Wang — and the profile’s treatment of the candidates appeared to follow that twist. The incumbent’s public safety-related visit to a shop on International Boulevard was flagged as her campaign’s choice of location and rebutted with crime data. The challenger’s profile followed his supporters on a campaign canvassing expedition, which wasn’t flagged in a similar manner, and his claims were not tested with the same level of rigor. Outside evidence links in the profile ran eight to one in his favor, and his OEA endorsement was never mentioned.14
District 4 school board (September 28). OEA endorsed no one in this race. But it opposes the incumbent, Mike Hutchinson. Every unflattering sentence in the profile was about him. Facts provided were accurate, for example about board votes he abstained from or opposed, but without including his specific stated reasons for taking the actions he did (these were generalized in the profile). A challenger’s 20 years in administration, human resources and financial services, her UC Berkeley honors degree and Goldman School master’s — all of which are relevant qualifications for a school board seat — were reduced in the headline to “parent.”15
District 6 school board (October 2). This profile asked whether a charter school teacher could serve on the board (OEA opposes charter schools). It did not ask whether the OEA-backed incumbent, Valarie Bachelor, could cast a fair and impartial vote on OEA’s contract — even though, as the profile noted, the board would decide on her opponent's employer, a charter school, four days later. (It approved the renewal on Oct. 6.) Bachelor’s vote for 400-plus layoffs was not mentioned; the harm from those layoffs was reported in the challenger’s section, despite the fact that she was not on the board and thus had no vote on the layoffs.16
The amount of space given to the various candidates in each profile was reasonably even. In District 4 and District 6, the three candidates got nearly equal words. But within those reasonably equivalent numbers of words, there were differences in which claims got checked, which records were compressed or generalized, and what relevant information was left out entirely.
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Endorsements and political donations are influencing campaigns, but a promised story about them hasn’t been published yet — a week after ballots were mailed
The first profile, published on September 22, ended with a promise: a story on “who’s funding the school board campaigns — and who’s endorsing who.”17 The District 4 profile on September 28 repeated the promise.18 The District 6 profile on October 2 dropped it.19
Alameda County mailed ballots on Oct. 5.20 As of October 11, the promised story has not been published.
Substantial political donations and endorsements have already been made, influencing all four campaigns and voters’ perceptions of the candidates — and detailed information about this is readily available online.
According to political finance disclosures, OEA's political committee had spent about $15,000 on the school board races by Sept. 19: around $5,700 in independent expenditures and $1,800 in direct contributions for each of Brouhard and Bachelor, the two incumbents OEA backs.21
Empower Oakland, the political advocacy group specifically mentioned in the profiles, gave $8,000 spread across four challengers and Hutchinson. Oakland Parents for Quality Education gave $900 each to Fleisher and Alexandra Williams.22
The county Democratic Party made no endorsement in the two races with OEA-backed incumbents, Brouhard’s and Bachelor’s, after no candidate reached its 60 percent threshold, and endorsed Kathryn Camp over the OEA-opposed Hutchinson in District 4 — this is relevant information, but the profiles did not mention it.23
Bachelor had raised $49,823 as of October 7, more than both of her challengers combined; in District 2, challenger Arielle Fleisher had raised the most of any school board candidate, $55,482, through Sept. 19. This, too, was not mentioned in the profiles.24
The closest Oaklandside came was an October 5 roundup of outside groups’ voter guides and endorsements25 and one sentence, in an October 1 story about why so few people are running for City Council and mayor: OEA “has spent thousands independently backing two of the incumbents.”26 “Thousands” is accurate, but that could be read by different readers to mean widely different actual amounts: $2,000 is very different from, say, $15,000.
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Three more stories, the same apparent direction
“Why are so few people running” (October 1). The story is sourced largely to progressive voices — Oakland Rising Action, the Wellstone club, the firefighters union — with Empower Oakland and its allies in a section headed “Groups that supported the recalls say the incumbents are all right.” It lists Empower’s donations candidate by candidate. OEA’s spending gets the one sentence above, with no number. And its lead expert on why people don’t run, Pecolia Manigo, is identified as a 2022 school board candidate. She was the OEA-backed candidate who ran against Hutchinson in that election.27
The candidate questionnaire (October 5). Candidates answered in their own words, which arguably is the fairest format in common use. The questions are another matter. On Flock Safety (the controversial automated license plate readers), the premise reads: “Across the country, both liberal and conservative leaders are terminating contracts with Flock Safety.” True — an advocacy group counted 214 jurisdictions that had dropped Flock since 2021 as of late August.28 Flock says more than 6,000 communities use it and that its new city contracts in 2026 have outpaced non-renewals roughly ten to one. No countervailing premise, such as Flock’s own figures, is offered.
The District 2 sex trafficking story. (October 9). On its own, this arguably is Oaklandside’s most balanced piece about a candidate during the current election season. It supplied what the September 24 profile left out: that the 2023 street barriers produced “night and day” results, that the activity returned after the pilot ended, and that it has largely disappeared from the blocks where the new barriers were installed. But again, it appeared to move elsewhere. It also described Wang's budget amendment funding the police vice unit.29 However, it ran four days after ballots went out, and two weeks after Oaklandside’s candidate profiles that checked Wang’s claims far more rigorously than it checked challenger Nate Adams’ claims. To date there has been no follow-up story that checks Adams’ claims with the rigor and focus that this sex trafficking piece does.
Who appears to have come out ahead
In summary:
District 2 school board profile: the OEA-backed incumbent appeared to come out ahead.
District 2 city council profile: the OEA-backed challenger appeared to come out ahead.
District 4 school board profile: the candidate OEA opposes got the negative descriptors.
District 6 school board profiles: the OEA-backed incumbent was not asked (or if asked, her response, if any, was not published) the conflict-of-interest question her opponent was asked.
The political endorsements and donations that would let a voter see these influences and judge for themselves were not meaningfully noted in the context of the profiles, and a promised follow-up article about those influences has not been published yet.
Related stories:
Other considerations and counterpoints
In fairness to The Oaklandside and the candidates, we present these without further rebuttal:
The profiles are accurate on the facts they include. We found two minor factual misstatements among the four profiles, both in the first one.
Space and quotations were roughly equal in the two three-way races, and challengers were given some warm personal descriptors.
The District 6 profile disclosed Bachelor’s labor background — the first such disclosure among the four profiles (Oaklandside’s August candidate list had also noted it).
The sex trafficking story, though late, supplied real evidence on a disputed question and included Wang’s rebuttal of her challenger.
The questionnaire gave every candidate the same questions and printed answers unedited.
A newsroom covering four races in two weeks has limits; it is implausible to include every detail someone, somewhere may deem relevant. A promised future story can be delayed or dropped for a variety of valid reasons, and it is the publication’s prerogative whether to publish a story or not.
Conclusion
We examined four profiles and found four omissions that all appear to favor the same side. None of these omissions are dramatically significant in isolation of each other: a union’s role left out here, a vote left out there, a résumé trimmed to a label, a promised story on relevant information that arrives after ballots are mailed. Taken in isolation, each one has a plausible and innocent explanation. But taken together, they appear to lead in the same direction.
Whether that apparent direction reflects a view or a habit is not for Oakland Report to decide. What our analyses do indicate is this: the facts that would let a reader judge for themselves — who the relevant backers of every candidate are, what political endorsements and donations are influencing every campaign, and how the candidates’ claims fare against rigorous fact-checks — are incomplete or absent. The ballots are out and votes are being cast. The full story is not.
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Knobel, Lance. Written testimony to the California Senate Judiciary Committee, Dec. 5, 2023 (“our newsroom of 12 editors and reporters is easily the largest in the city”). https://sjud.senate.ca.gov/sites/sjud.senate.ca.gov/files/lance_knobel_written_remarks.pdf
Price, Charlene. “Oakland’s teachers union backs Jennifer Brouhard — and her own party declined to. The Oaklandside’s profile mentions neither.” Oakland Report, Sept. 23, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/oaklands-teachers-union-jennifer-brouhard-oaklandside
Montana, Alex. “Oaklandside again checked one candidate’s claims but not the other’s — and the same side came out ahead.” Oakland Report, Sept. 25, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/oaklandside-district-2-profile-wang-adams-media-bias
Price, Charlene. “Oakland school board profiles: Oaklandside put all the negatives on one candidate — the one the teachers union opposes.” Oakland Report, Sept. 29, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/oakland-school-board-profiles-oaklandside
McBride, Ashley. “Election 2026: OUSD’s District 6 incumbent faces a charter school teacher and a ‘Mama Bear.’” The Oaklandside, Oct. 2, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/10/02/oakland-school-board-election-district-6-bachelor-powell-williams/
Wolfe, Eli, and Natalie Orenstein. “Why are so few people running for office in Oakland this year?” The Oaklandside, Oct. 1, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/10/01/why-are-so-few-people-running-for-office-in-oakland-this-year/
The Oaklandside contributors. “Where do Oakland mayor and City Council candidates stand on Flock, AI, and homelessness?” The Oaklandside, Oct. 5, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/10/05/oakland-mayor-city-council-candidates-questionnaire/
Romero, Roselyn. "Sex trafficking has victimized people in Oakland's District 2 for decades. What can the next councilmember do?" The Oaklandside, Oct. 9, 2026 (editor's note: "This story was updated after publication with more information about Wang's work to support sex trafficking survivors, secure funding for OPD, and coordinate city and county agencies' response"). https://oaklandside.org/2026/10/09/district-2-oakland-city-council-race-sex-trafficking/
McBride, Ashley. “Election 2026: An experienced incumbent meets a parent challenger in Oakland school board District 2.” The Oaklandside, Sept. 22, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/09/22/oakland-election-2026-school-board-district-2/
Orenstein, Natalie. “Democratic socialists are on a roll. Can one win a seat on Oakland City Council?” The Oaklandside, Sept. 24, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/09/24/oakland-district-2-election-wang-adams-dsa-public-safety/
McBride, Ashley. “Election 2026: A teacher and a parent line up to challenge OUSD’s District 4 incumbent.” The Oaklandside, Sept. 28, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/09/28/oakland-school-board-election-hutchinson-camp-williams/
Op. cit. (McBride, Oct. 2, 2026).
Op. cit. (Price, Sept. 23, 2026).
Op. cit. (Montana, Sept. 25, 2026).
Op. cit. (Price, Sept. 29, 2026).
Oakland Report summary analysis of The Oaklandside’s October 2 District 6 profile, using the same method as the three prior analyses; the Feb. 25, 2026 layoff vote (approved 5–2 on classified and 5–1–1 on certificated positions, Bachelor voting yes) per McBride, Ashley, “OUSD board approves 421 staff layoffs,” The Oaklandside, Feb. 26, 2026, https://oaklandside.org/2026/02/26/ousd-board-approves-421-staff-layoffs/; the Oct. 6 AIMS renewal per OUSD Office of Charter Schools, “2026-27 Renewal and Material Revisions,” https://www.ousd.org/officeofcharterschools/renewal). A full District 6 analysis is forthcoming.
Op. cit. (McBride, Sept. 22, 2026).
Op. cit. (McBride, Sept. 28, 2026).
Op. cit. (McBride, Oct. 2, 2026).
Alameda County Registrar of Voters. “November 03, 2026 — General Election” (”First Day of Mailing Vote by Mail Ballots… October 05, 2026”). https://acvote.alamedacountyca.gov/election-information/elections?id=260
Price, Charlene. “OEA teachers union rep caught posting political attack flyers outside high school’s main office.” Oakland Report, Oct. 1, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/skyline-high-campaign-flyers-teachers-union-oea
Op. cit. (Price, Oct. 1, 2026).
Tavares, Steven. “Alameda County Dems Deliver a Blow to OUSD incumbents.” East Bay Insiders, Sept. 15, 2026 (the party endorsed Kathryn Camp in District 4 and declined to endorse Brouhard or Bachelor). https://eastbayinsiders.substack.com/p/alameda-county-dems-deliver-a-blow
Open Disclosure Oakland. “School Board District 6,” updated Oct. 7, 2026 (Bachelor $49,823; Powell $18,037; A. Williams $17,732). https://www.opendisclosure.io/office/oakland/2026-11-03/school-board-district-6/
Bondgraham, Darwin et al. "A guide to Oakland voter guides for the 2026 election." The Oaklandside, Oct. 5, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/10/05/oakland-endorsements-voter-guides-list/
Op. cit. (Wolfe and Orenstein, Oct. 1, 2026).
McBride, Ashley. “From activist to OUSD president, Mike Hutchinson is learning a new game.” The Oaklandside, Jul. 24, 2023 (”the teachers union—which had supported Hutchinson in his three previous runs—decided to endorse another candidate, Pecolia Manigo, in the District 4 race”). https://oaklandside.org/2023/07/24/ousd-oakland-school-board-president-mike-hutchinson/; “The biggest donors and fundraisers in the OUSD school board races.” The Oaklandside, Nov. 2, 2022 (OEA spent $36,674 backing Manigo). https://oaklandside.org/2022/11/02/the-biggest-donors-and-fundraisers-in-the-ousd-school-board-races/
Jacobs, Skye. “Cities are dropping Flock’s surveillance cameras at a record pace.” TechSpot, Aug. 30, 2026. https://www.techspot.com/news/113668-cities-dropping-flock-surveillance-cameras-record-pace.html
Romero, Roselyn. “Sex trafficking survivors would get financial support under new Oakland proposal.” The Oaklandside, Jan. 12, 2026 (”Wang successfully amended the city budget to allocate $700,000 annually to the Oakland Police Department’s Vice/Child Exploitation Unit”). https://oaklandside.org/2026/01/12/oakland-human-trafficking-survivor-support-fund/
It pains me to read these articles about OUSD and OEA, and the lack of truth in some news media in covering the outsized influence of OEA. The flashpoint for me was over 30 years ago when my kids were in elementary school and OEA went on a month long strike, pulling parents to support them by naming the strike “Classrooms First”. The promises of smaller class sizes etc, which would have improved the learning environment for our children, ended up being cover for the usual: higher salaries and healthcare benefits. Yes, both are important for sure but a month long strike with empty promises was when I had enough. I sent a “my word” letter to the Oakland Tribune, titled “How do you Spell Doublecrossed”. The trust was gone.
Here we are today, with OEA basically running the school board. All of the teachers and administrators - former or current - need to be voted out.
The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.
Vladimir Lenin