Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment of our new Media bias section, we look at The Oaklandside’s September 24 profile of the two candidates for Oakland City Council District 2.
A familiar pattern, again
On September 24, local media outlet The Oaklandside published a profile of the candidates in the District 2 city council race, which features two candidates: incumbent Charlene Wang and challenger Nate Adams.
The article’s headline was, “Democratic socialists are on a roll. Can one win a seat on Oakland city council?”1
The headline made no reference to the incumbent Wang, instead announcing the profile with a clear reference to Adams and the Democratic Socialists of America of which he is a member (“on a roll” and “can one win a seat...?”).
The hero image that accompanied the article depicts Adams canvassers standing outside the rusted steel gate of an Oakland house, one wearing a red shirt bearing a DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) logo and the word “socialism!”
“Crime is troubling, but if you can stay out of the fray, ‘you’re good,’ [a resident speaking with Adams canvassers] says. The cost of living is the most pressing concern, especially for younger people. For the older generation, he continues, ‘our concern is the streets — the streets got holes. The city has done so much to clean Oakland, but yet it stays the way it is.’
“[The canvasser] Rachel nods. The man doesn’t know it, but he’s recited the exact platform she’s there to promote. Affordability. Busted roads. Unfilled city jobs — some 1,000, the vast majority of them already budgeted for, which Adams has made it his priority to fill.”
— The Oaklandside, Sept. 24, 2026
The first 267 words of the article followed the two Adams volunteers door-knocking in the San Antonio neighborhood. The last sentence of the profile also was given to Adams.
In between, Wang got more ink than her challenger. That’s consistent with what we found in our analysis of The Oaklandside’s September 22 profile of school board candidates Jennifer Brouhard (incumbent) and Arielle Fleisher (challenger), which also gave more ink to the incumbent.23
Related story:
One notable difference is that The Oaklandside’s school board profile presented the incumbent Brouhard first. In its city council profile, it presented the challenger Adams first.
That difference could be plausibly attributed to the differing writing styles of the two authors of those articles.
But aside from minor stylistic differences, there are several similarities between the two Oaklandside articles that are perhaps more consequential.
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 what to think about it. Learn more
Oaklandside fact-checked Wang’s framing, but not Adams’
Wang, the incumbent, took the reporter to International Boulevard’s “Blade” — an area notorious for open-air sex trafficking — where a convenience store worker described being struck in the face during a group robbery and a bakery owner said she sometimes fears she won’t get home at night.
The profile then stepped back and editorialized in the author’s voice: “But it’s worth noting that Wang took us to one of Oakland’s most dangerous areas.” It followed this by citing citywide statistics, such as that homicides are at a historic low and violent crime is down 25%. The author also observed, without offering evidence, that much of District 2 “almost never” experiences the kind of incidents Wang describes having occurred on the Blade.
The cited citywide statistics are accurate.4 However, two relevant things are missing.
The Adams canvassing the reporter joined also appears to have been arranged by his campaign, in neighborhoods and at doors the campaign likely selected, yet the profile didn’t say it is “worth noting.”
When city leaders announced the 2025 crime decline, they credited “local violence prevention programs, police surveillance technology and frequent interagency coordination.” The surveillance technology prominently includes the Flock Safety camera program, which Wang voted for and Adams says he opposes. The profile used the crime decline to discount Wang’s framing without reporting what the city says produced it.
The profile’s treatment of Flock aligns with The Oaklandside’s own coverage of the company, which has been consistently critical.
Oakland Report reviewed eight Oaklandside stories about Flock published since March 2024. (There may be other articles that mention it.) All eight of the articles we found in our initial search cited examples of the company’s data being misused elsewhere, yet none reported OPD’s 2025 arrest results. Additionally, five of the articles tested a Flock proponent’s claim in the reporter’s voice, yet none tested an opponent’s. 56789101112
The Oaklandside’s September 24 profile flatly stated that “Adams opposes Flock” — followed by “it’s not only people on the left who agree with him” and four links to the company’s controversies. It also flatly stated that “Wang voted to approve,” followed by police statistics attributed to “Oakland police say.” In the context of The Oaklandside’s substantial body of past coverage on this issue, some readers could read this as less a comparison of the two candidates’ positions than an extension of that coverage.
Editors’ note: This analysis does not take a political position on Flock Safety, nor does Oakland Report. Our interest in the matter here, as with the other topics we discuss in our pages, is focused on evidence and accountability around the issues that affect Oaklanders’ lives — especially when the evidence presented elsewhere is incomplete or mischaracterized, and accountability is lacking.]
The safeguards Wang authored when the council approved the contract 7–1 on December 16 — a hard-coded ban on Flock’s “national lookup” feature, up to $200,000 in liquidated damages, quarterly certifications signed under penalty of perjury, and four city auditor compliance audits — are summarized in the profile as “a bunch of limitations.” Two concrete examples are given: a ban on out-of-state and federal access, and a bar on use against reproductive care. The rest were omitted.13
The profile then noted that “it’s unclear if these safeguards are enforceable, in part because Oakland hasn’t finalized its contract with the company.”
That caveat was accurate — The Oaklandside’s own September 22 story (“Flock’s Oakland cameras are tracking millions of trips. Are safeguards enforceable?”) established with the city attorney’s office that the contract remains unsigned. But it is the only one of Wang’s policy actions in the profile that received 35 words of description and 19 of doubt.
The same one-way treatment is evident in the profile’s characterizations of Wang’s street barriers on the “Blade,” an effort to disrupt open-air sex trafficking in that area. The profile gave Adams the last word on the matter (the barriers “will just relocate the activity”) and supplied no evidence either way.
However, the record of those barriers’ effectiveness is more nuanced, by Oaklandside’s own account. For example, its July reporting quoted a San Antonio nonprofit director calling the 2023 East 15th Street barriers “a night-and-day transformation.”14
The record also shows the activity moved to the avenues now being closed — a displacement Wang herself acknowledged at the July hearing.1516
Readers of the profile were provided neither fact — only Adams’ assertion that the street barriers, one of Wang’s signature achievements in office, will prove ineffective.
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Oaklandside provided more evidence to support Adams’ claims — and none against them
Oakland Report reviewed the profile’s 38 hyperlinks and assessed which of the candidates’ claims they support or refute.
On the disputed policy questions — Flock, street safety, and the Blade — seven links provided supporting evidence for Adams’ positions, and one supplied evidence contradicting Wang’s framing. Only one supplied evidence supporting Wang’s claims: the police department’s arrest statistics, and that was attributed to “Oakland police say.” Wang’s remaining claims are linked mostly to her own materials.
By comparison, Adams’ claims were either stated in the author’s voice or linked to supporting reporting — and none drew a rebuttal from the profile’s author.
The profile characterized Adams as “fond of pointing out” how much Oakland pays in trip-and-fall lawsuits (“dollars that could instead go to fixing sidewalks”). It linked The Oaklandside’s August investigation of $55 million in road and sidewalk settlements to confirm that claim. That investigation attributed $31.9 million of the total to potholes and street holes, and noted that sidewalk lawsuits accounted for nearly $9 million over 16 years — about $560,000 per year.17 The profile itself provided neither figure.
The profile stated, in the author’s voice, that Adams promises to fill “some 1,000” unfilled city jobs, “the vast majority of them already budgeted for.”
The city’s most recent staffing report counted 839 vacant, unfrozen positions. The city’s human resources staff told the council that roughly half of them had no hiring activity because departments had not submitted paperwork.18 The “unfilled” figure cited in the profile is the high end of the available numbers — total vacancies including frozen positions — rather than the 839 the city is currently authorized to fill.
Meanwhile, the harder problem behind it went unmentioned; and the profile didn’t report how the challenger proposes to fill them if he is elected.
The profile left out who backs the challenger
Wang’s endorsements were named in detail and characterized as “established leaders and groups.” By comparison, Adams’ base was described only as “rooted deeply in the dynamic and surging DSA.”
His campaign website lists more detail than that: Oakland Education Association (OEA), the teachers union also supports Adams, as do Oakland Unified school board president Jennifer Brouhard, two Richmond councilmembers, and the Green Party of Alameda County.1920
The profile mentioned Brouhard only as a DSA-endorsed candidate, not as an Adams endorser.
The profile also reported that both campaigns raised “a decent amount of money,” but provided no concrete dollar amounts. (Adams reported a little over $43,000; Wang more than $115,000 in the first half of the year alone.)21
Notably, Oaklandside’s previous school board profile promised to publish a follow-up article on funding and endorsements in that race, but the present article on the city council District 2 race makes no such promise.
Accusation of a “smear campaign” against Wang was highlighted
The profile noted that a Wang constituent accused DSA of a “smear campaign,” citing an Instagram post that “claimed she wants to criminalize sex work.” The profile linked to the post but did not describe it.
The Instagram post was published on East Bay DSA’s official account — the same chapter whose co-chair, Dori Goldberg was quoted for 117 words in the Oaklandside profile.
The post’s headline was, “Criminalizing sex work is not public safety,” and included a screenshot of The Oaklandside’s July 8 story on the street closures.22 The DSA post opposed the street closures but not the fines ordinance, saying that the closures would “criminalize sex workers & trafficking survivors.” It also claimed that “if OPD and the carceral state are involved, there will be more harm than good.”
The Oaklandside profile’s own description of Wang’s ordinance — fines on “pimps and johns,” with revenue set aside for sex trafficking survivors — is the fact needed to test that claim. The reporter didn’t connect them, nor did the profile report asking Goldberg about it.
Instead, it quotes Goldberg saying, “Goldberg, though, is adamant Adams will win, and the [DSA] chapter has endorsed 10 other local candidates as well, including Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor for Oakland school board.”
Class markers for Adams, and a credential for Wang
The profile’s biographical language appears to lean in the same direction.
The author described Adams as having “developed his political chops during early COVID, after graduating from UC Berkeley, which he transferred to from community college.” They add that he “was actually raised conservative, by his single, Japanese-American mother, in Sacramento.” Both of those sentences emulated phrasing from Adams’ campaign website, which says he “transferred from community college to UC Berkeley” and was raised by “a single mom in a low-income neighborhood.”
The mention of “community college,” attached to the elite UC Berkeley degree, is the campaign’s own softening of it. The profile adopted it as the author’s narration.
Wang was introduced as “a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government” who “held jobs dealing with homelessness and healthcare policy on the East Coast” and “worked for the Biden administration on reconnecting communities.”
Wang’s own account on her campaign website and LinkedIn page is different, and is not emulated in the profile. Wang says she served as a political appointee of President Joe Biden, special advisor to the Department of Transportation’s assistant secretary for policy under Pete Buttigieg, and director of the Reconnecting Communities program, which she says she launched and describes as a $3 billion to $4 billion federal initiative. Wang says she later served as a special advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency.23
The Oaklandside profile led Wang’s professional experience with the credential that reads as elite, and compressed the portion of her record that some readers would take as markers of notable professional achievement to simply, “held jobs” and “worked for.”
Neither passage in the profile is technically wrong. But the choices the author made — the challenger’s class origins foregrounded in his campaign’s own words, the incumbent’s substantive federal program experience condensed and paraphrased — seem to align with the profile’s overall framing of a “working class” community organizer against an “established” incumbent.
Adams’ campaign platform is relayed almost verbatim; Wang’s is sampled and condensed
Oakland Report compared the Oaklandside profile with each campaign’s website to test how much of each campaign’s wording was relayed verbatim or near-verbatim.
Adams’ platform page lists 18 planks. The profile relayed eight of them, several nearly word for word:
The campaign’s headline, “Slash the Rent, Fix the Streets, 1000 City Jobs” became the profile’s “Affordability. Busted roads. Unfilled city jobs — some 1,000.”
The campaign’s “spending more on trip and fall lawsuits than we do on repairing our sidewalks” became “he’s fond of pointing out how much money Oakland spends on trip-and-fall lawsuits — dollars that could instead go to fixing sidewalks.”
The campaign’s list of violence prevention, ambassador, MACRO, dispatcher and naloxone commitments was reproduced item for item.
The ten planks left out of the Adams portion of the profile include arguably the most contestable ones:
Raising payroll taxes and license fees on large companies
Raising real estate transfer fees
Commercial rent stabilization
Establishing an East Bay public bank
A Port of Oakland arms embargo
Also absent from the profile:
The platform’s opening line naming advocacy organization Empower Oakland among the things elected officials are “too scared of”
The platform’s description of Flock’s license plate readers as “facial recognition cameras” — a capability the cameras do not have, according to Flock and to every Oaklandside story we reviewed that describes them.
By comparison, Wang’s “Delivering for Oakland” page lists 62 items. The profile relayed five of them:
Writing Measure FF (closing a transfer-tax exemption for foreclosures)
Working to bring a Grocery Outlet to the district
Voting to support state legislation challenging PG&E’s monopoly
Creating the state’s first municipal sex trafficking survivor fund
Installing street barriers to disrupt sex trafficking on the “Blade.”
Left out of the Wang portion of the profile were items that most directly answer DSA’s critique of her:
Wrote Oakland’s sanctuary city ordinance
Launched a violence prevention academy for the Ceasefire strategy
Reversed cuts to shelters
Funded tenant legal aid
Funded 180 affordable homes.
The profile also credited Adams with a plan to “expand the Department of Violence Prevention” without noting Wang’s claimed record on the same program.
Note: these are campaign claims, and Oakland Report has not verified them. The point is that the Oaklandside profile did not report them either.
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Other considerations and counterpoints
In fairness to The Oaklandside and both candidates, we present these counterpoints, largely without rebuttal:
The Blade accounts were extensive and sympathetic, and Wang’s personal disclosure about childhood abuse was handled with care.
Wang’s credentials were listed at length, and her PG&E vote was presented as defying a corporate lobbyist — a direct answer to DSA’s framing of her.
A self-described leftist constituent, quoted at length, called DSA’s tactics a smear and said Wang’s constituents agree with her.
Disclosing that Wang chose the tour location was sound practice. Our objection is that it was applied to one campaign only.
DSA’s volunteer and membership figures were properly attributed, and the profile noted that the DSA won “only a small fraction” of primaries.
The convenience store robbery, the crime statistics, and the vacancy figure all check out against other reporting.
The profile’s caveat that Wang’s Flock safeguards may be unenforceable is accurate in that the contract is unsigned.
The Instagram post’s headline did say “criminalizing sex work,” so the constituent’s paraphrase, as the profile relayed it, is defensible.
The profile attributed Wang’s website claims as claims (“she puts in this bucket,” “She believes,” “She also notes”) and stated Adams’ platform as description (“He wants,” “He supports”). An incumbent’s claimed achievements warranted attribution in a way a challenger’s proposals did not, so some of this asymmetry is proper practice.
The profile gave Wang her own class and identity markers — “the child of Chinese immigrants,” and “Both say they experienced economic insecurity growing up” — and the community college and single mother details were Adams’ own account of his life, not the reporter’s invention.
The Oaklandside’s Flock coverage quoted proponents in most stories, including homeowner groups, Oakland police, and the NAACP’s “force multiplier” argument. Our finding concerns which claims were checked by the author — not whether both sides appear.
Conclusion
The Oaklandside profile was accurate on the facts it included, but what it tested and what it omitted are perhaps more significant. Our analysis found the profile to be subtly but consistently asymmetrical in favor of the DSA- and OEA-backed Adams.
Wang’s framing was rebutted with data, while Adams’ claims were left to stand unexamined. Outside evidence links ran eight to one in favor of Adams’ claims.
Key aspects of Adams’ political backing — including the teachers union and its chosen candidate who drives the school district’s finances and that same union’s members’ compensation — was left out.
Adams’ platform was relayed nearly item for item, but omitted its tax increases; Wang’s record was reduced to five items of 62.
Two of Oaklandside’s candidate profiles, published two days apart by different authors, appear to follow similar tracks. In each, the candidate aligned with DSA and OEA received the favorable handling of evidence, whether incumbent or challenger, and OEA’s role went unreported.
Whether that reflects a settled editorial view or two independent editorial choices is not something two articles alone can settle. But it is enough to warrant watching the profiles that come next.
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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/
Price, Charlene. "Oakland's teachers union backs Jennifer Brouhard — and her own party doesn't. Oaklandside's profile mentions neither." Oakland Report, Sept. 23, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/oaklands-teachers-union-jennifer-brouhard-oaklandside
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/
KQED. “Oakland’s violent crime dropped significantly in 2025, police data shows. Here’s what happened.” KQED, Jan. 2026. https://www.kqed.org/news/12068975/oaklands-violent-crime-dropped-significantly-in-2025-police-data-shows-what-happened
Wolfe, Eli. "Oakland HOAs are quietly installing surveillance cameras to watch public roads." Mar. 27, 2024. https://oaklandside.org/2024/03/27/oakland-homeowner-groups-powerful-surveillance-network/
Wolfe, Eli. "Flock license plate scanner contract postponed by Alameda County leaders." Feb. 11, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/02/11/flock-contract-alameda-county-ice-federal/
Wolfe, Eli. "Who is paint bombing Oakland's Flock cameras?" Apr. 24, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/04/24/who-is-paint-bombing-oaklands-flock-cameras/
Romero, Roselyn. "Flock is quietly training Bay Area police to sway city leaders to buy surveillance tech." May 28, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/05/28/flock-training-police-city-councils-webinar/
Wolfe, Eli. "Flock cameras captured over 600 million license plates in Oakland last year." Jun. 5, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/06/05/flock-cameras-oakland-600-million-license-plate-reader/
Wolfe, Eli. "$2.4 million surveillance contract with Flock approved by Alameda County." Jul. 1, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/07/01/2-4-million-surveillance-contract-with-flock-approved-by-alameda-county/
Romero, Roselyn. "Flock's pitch to police: Be like Oakland and Richmond." Aug. 14, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/08/14/flock-safety-oakland-richmond-police-training/
Wolfe, Eli. "Flock's Oakland cameras are tracking millions of trips. Are safeguards enforceable?" Sept. 22, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/09/22/oakland-flock-safety-contract-delay-data-safeguards/
City of Oakland. “OPD community safety cameras policy and Flock agreement.” Oakland city council meeting minutes, item 9, Dec. 16, 2025. https://oakland.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=M&ID=1365438&GUID=2679DDC8-6B81-4ACC-91CE-40157C86CD19
Romero, Roselyn. “To deter sex trafficking, Oakland will close streets along International Boulevard.” The Oaklandside, Jul. 8, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/07/08/sex-trafficking-street-closures-oakland/
Reinhart, Sean S. “Oakland proposes closing streets to stop prostitution on ‘The Blade.’ But past barricades just moved the problem.” Oakland Report, Jul. 7, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/20260706-oakland-street-closures-international-blvd
Jones, Velena. "Oakland considers side street closures to disrupt sex trafficking." NBC Bay Area, Jul. 8, 2026. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/oakland-considers-street-closures-to-disrupt-sex-trafficking/4110376/
Fermoso, Jose. “Degraded roads and sidewalks have cost Oakland $55 million.” The Oaklandside, Aug. 13, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/08/13/oakland-sidewalks-roads-lawsuits-settlements-55-million-dollars/
Nguyen, Candace. "Oakland staffing report shows nearly 1,000 city jobs vacant." NBC Bay Area, Mar. 26, 2026. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/oakland-staffing-report-city-jobs-vacant/4058811/
Nate Adams for Oakland City Council District 2. “Endorsements.” Campaign website, accessed Sept. 24, 2026. https://www.nateforoakland.com/
Russell, Kiley. “Oakland councilmember Wang faces challenger Adams in November election.” Local News Matters, Sept. 24, 2026. https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/09/24/oakland-district-2-city-council-election-wang-adams/
Ibid. Figures from the candidates’ Public Ethics Commission filings as reported; Adams’ filing dated Sept. 22, 2026, Wang’s Sept. 12, 2026.
East Bay DSA. “Criminalizing sex work is not public safety: Stop Cop Nation’s opposition to closing International Blvd.” Instagram @eastbaydsa, Aug. 27, 2026. https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcjgq82jR5l/
Re-elect Charlene Wang Oakland District 2. "Meet Charlene." Campaign website, accessed Sept. 24, 2026. https://www.charleneforoakland.com/meet-charlene
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