It gave Nate Adams the benefit of evidence, but not council member Charlene Wang. Its previous school board profile gave it to Jennifer Brouhard. The DSA and teachers union back Adams and Brouhard.
It’s been exceedingly clear that Oaklandside is propaganda and not a nonprofit. They deserve to lose their tax status.
They also secretly communicate with city officials to run coordinated smear pieces (hit jobs) on any opposition to their preferred radical left DSA candidates.
Thanks Alex and Oakland report. Yes, one sided reporting must stop. I myself have experienced this from Oaklandside and had to push back against it. I also saw this at the recent Oakland City Council hearings on the Moratorium on data centers. There were nasty comments against Charlene Wang by a member of the council and audience. I do not agree with Charlene Wang on many things, but what is being done against her by the radical left DSA must stop. We need more dialogue and conversations to arrive at what is best for Oakland. Mindy Pechenuk, candidate for Oakland Mayor 2026
Good article. It is the height of hypocrisy for DSA types to complain about corporate influence, yet refuse to spell out the facts about what the public employee unions do to elect the people who are supposed to negotiate against them.
Excellent, fair explanation of how reporting can be corrupted.
But it is also clear that once religious fervor replaces calm, political viewpoints, Machiavelli takes over and might makes right. At that point, we were supposed to have educated our citizens to recognize when their intelligence is being disrespected and the appeal is to their laziness. There are real, serious problems in our society and our democratic process needs to be reformed, upgraded and corrected. But manipulating public opinion is not ok, from either extreme.
I’m Tasneem Raja, editor-in-chief of The Oaklandside. I have repeatedly raised the below concerns about this story with Oakland Report since it was published, and asked that they be corrected in the piece itself. No corrections have been issued, and no one has explained why not. I’m posting them here so readers of this story can see them.
We welcome feedback on our stories, and we correct course when it’s warranted. We expect other local news outlets to treat correction requests the same way: a timely, professional response, in the piece itself.
I have also asked Oakland Report to publish a letter to the editor from me, rebutting its claims about our reporting. It hasn’t.
The Oaklandside does not favor or disfavor candidates in local races. Every election story involves choices about what to include, shaped by length, what we’ve already reported, what readers already know, and what the candidates themselves emphasized in interviews. People can argue that a different detail should have made the cut. Jumping to “bias” is unfair and unwarranted.
Errors and misleading claims in this story:
Oakland Report claims a volunteer effort our reporter observed “appears to have been arranged” by Nate Adams’ campaign, at doors it “likely selected,” suggesting that the Adams' campaign stage-managed our reporting. That is a guess, and it’s wrong. We’ve alerted you that the volunteers were guided by a canvassing app that lists registered voters across the district; in fact, our story makes this clear, too. One question to Natalie Orenstein would have settled it, but you never reached out. This should be corrected in your story.
Oakland Report claims our profile linked to an Instagram post without describing it. We did describe it: the post “featured the councilmember’s image and claimed she wants to criminalize sex work.” Your own counterpoints concede that the paraphrase is “defensible.”
Oakland Report claims we reported that both campaigns raised “a decent amount of money” without specifics. Your story quotes only half of our sentence. The rest says Wang “has still far outraised and outspent Adams.” This should be noted in your story.
Oakland Report faults us for not writing a standard two-candidate profile, which we never claimed to offer. Natalie’s story is an analytical feature on whether the national wave of DSA victories might carry into an Oakland council race. The headline, subheading, and opening paragraphs make that clear.
Your conclusion calls our profile accurate on the facts it includes. Your counterpoints say the crime statistics we included and the caveat we mentioned — that new Flock safeguards may be unenforceable — check out. They also note that Wang got more space in our story than Adams, despite claims by Oakland Report that our story somehow favored Adams. Yet you ran this story under the label “Media Bias.” Is that fair?
Problems with your approach — and who is Alex Montana?
No one at Oakland Report contacted Natalie Orenstein or anyone at Oaklandside before publishing a story questioning our work. Standard practice is to give the subjects of criticism a chance to respond. Why didn’t Alex Montana?
In fact, Oakland Report’s website lists no bio, photo, or background for Alex Montana, and this piece has no author note. We’ve tried to find any personal or professional information on this person, and came up empty. We’re frankly not sure they exist. This person could work for a campaign, a political group, or have an interest in business before the council, and readers have no way of knowing.
Natalie Orenstein’s name, bio, and email are on every story she writes, and she has reported in the East Bay for more than a decade. If you’re going to challenge her integrity with a lengthy critique attributed to a mysterious author, we should all know more about who is behind it.
Dear Tasneem - Thank you for your comment, but it doesn't address the substance of our analyses. As you know, we encouraged you to publish your response in your pages so your readers can hear them directly from the source. It seemed appropriate that your publication should break the news first. We offered to republish your cover letter in Oakland Report and link to your published response, if one is published, with no remarks from us attached to it aside from one sentence stating that we had your permission to republish it.
So far, you haven't done that, nearly two weeks after you first wrote to us. It seems like you don't want your readers to hear your concerns, which to be clear, we believe are neither supported by the evidence we presented nor by the tone and approach of our analyses. We also note that Oaklandside doesn't allow comments on its website.
One point of clarification: our analyses do not say that Oaklandside is biased. Our analyses point out relevant facts that were left out of Oaklandside's candidate profiles, supply those missing facts, and provide evidence suggesting an apparent pattern where the same interests or "side" seem to benefit from Oaklandside's profiles. Our analyses present these facts so readers can consider them and decide for themselves what to think.
Thank you again for your comment, and for reading Oakland Report. We wish you well.
It’s been exceedingly clear that Oaklandside is propaganda and not a nonprofit. They deserve to lose their tax status.
They also secretly communicate with city officials to run coordinated smear pieces (hit jobs) on any opposition to their preferred radical left DSA candidates.
Thanks Alex and Oakland report. Yes, one sided reporting must stop. I myself have experienced this from Oaklandside and had to push back against it. I also saw this at the recent Oakland City Council hearings on the Moratorium on data centers. There were nasty comments against Charlene Wang by a member of the council and audience. I do not agree with Charlene Wang on many things, but what is being done against her by the radical left DSA must stop. We need more dialogue and conversations to arrive at what is best for Oakland. Mindy Pechenuk, candidate for Oakland Mayor 2026
Good article. It is the height of hypocrisy for DSA types to complain about corporate influence, yet refuse to spell out the facts about what the public employee unions do to elect the people who are supposed to negotiate against them.
Excellent, fair explanation of how reporting can be corrupted.
But it is also clear that once religious fervor replaces calm, political viewpoints, Machiavelli takes over and might makes right. At that point, we were supposed to have educated our citizens to recognize when their intelligence is being disrespected and the appeal is to their laziness. There are real, serious problems in our society and our democratic process needs to be reformed, upgraded and corrected. But manipulating public opinion is not ok, from either extreme.
I’m Tasneem Raja, editor-in-chief of The Oaklandside. I have repeatedly raised the below concerns about this story with Oakland Report since it was published, and asked that they be corrected in the piece itself. No corrections have been issued, and no one has explained why not. I’m posting them here so readers of this story can see them.
We welcome feedback on our stories, and we correct course when it’s warranted. We expect other local news outlets to treat correction requests the same way: a timely, professional response, in the piece itself.
I have also asked Oakland Report to publish a letter to the editor from me, rebutting its claims about our reporting. It hasn’t.
The Oaklandside does not favor or disfavor candidates in local races. Every election story involves choices about what to include, shaped by length, what we’ve already reported, what readers already know, and what the candidates themselves emphasized in interviews. People can argue that a different detail should have made the cut. Jumping to “bias” is unfair and unwarranted.
Errors and misleading claims in this story:
Oakland Report claims a volunteer effort our reporter observed “appears to have been arranged” by Nate Adams’ campaign, at doors it “likely selected,” suggesting that the Adams' campaign stage-managed our reporting. That is a guess, and it’s wrong. We’ve alerted you that the volunteers were guided by a canvassing app that lists registered voters across the district; in fact, our story makes this clear, too. One question to Natalie Orenstein would have settled it, but you never reached out. This should be corrected in your story.
Oakland Report claims our profile linked to an Instagram post without describing it. We did describe it: the post “featured the councilmember’s image and claimed she wants to criminalize sex work.” Your own counterpoints concede that the paraphrase is “defensible.”
Oakland Report claims we reported that both campaigns raised “a decent amount of money” without specifics. Your story quotes only half of our sentence. The rest says Wang “has still far outraised and outspent Adams.” This should be noted in your story.
Oakland Report faults us for not writing a standard two-candidate profile, which we never claimed to offer. Natalie’s story is an analytical feature on whether the national wave of DSA victories might carry into an Oakland council race. The headline, subheading, and opening paragraphs make that clear.
Your conclusion calls our profile accurate on the facts it includes. Your counterpoints say the crime statistics we included and the caveat we mentioned — that new Flock safeguards may be unenforceable — check out. They also note that Wang got more space in our story than Adams, despite claims by Oakland Report that our story somehow favored Adams. Yet you ran this story under the label “Media Bias.” Is that fair?
Problems with your approach — and who is Alex Montana?
No one at Oakland Report contacted Natalie Orenstein or anyone at Oaklandside before publishing a story questioning our work. Standard practice is to give the subjects of criticism a chance to respond. Why didn’t Alex Montana?
In fact, Oakland Report’s website lists no bio, photo, or background for Alex Montana, and this piece has no author note. We’ve tried to find any personal or professional information on this person, and came up empty. We’re frankly not sure they exist. This person could work for a campaign, a political group, or have an interest in business before the council, and readers have no way of knowing.
Natalie Orenstein’s name, bio, and email are on every story she writes, and she has reported in the East Bay for more than a decade. If you’re going to challenge her integrity with a lengthy critique attributed to a mysterious author, we should all know more about who is behind it.
Dear Tasneem - Thank you for your comment, but it doesn't address the substance of our analyses. As you know, we encouraged you to publish your response in your pages so your readers can hear them directly from the source. It seemed appropriate that your publication should break the news first. We offered to republish your cover letter in Oakland Report and link to your published response, if one is published, with no remarks from us attached to it aside from one sentence stating that we had your permission to republish it.
So far, you haven't done that, nearly two weeks after you first wrote to us. It seems like you don't want your readers to hear your concerns, which to be clear, we believe are neither supported by the evidence we presented nor by the tone and approach of our analyses. We also note that Oaklandside doesn't allow comments on its website.
One point of clarification: our analyses do not say that Oaklandside is biased. Our analyses point out relevant facts that were left out of Oaklandside's candidate profiles, supply those missing facts, and provide evidence suggesting an apparent pattern where the same interests or "side" seem to benefit from Oaklandside's profiles. Our analyses present these facts so readers can consider them and decide for themselves what to think.
Thank you again for your comment, and for reading Oakland Report. We wish you well.