Tomyamaguchi’s Weblog

Was I censored by David Ellison?

Blog Apology:

First, you may have noticed it has been almost two years since I have posted to this blog. My last post was support for Joe Biden’s reelection. Since then Biden dropped out, and Kamala Harris ran, then lost to Donald Trump. I could have written a lot of “I told you so” blog posts, but I didn’t. Maybe I will soon. Until then, I post the question—

Was I censored by David Ellison?

I made the local TV news this past week. I would love to promote it, but, honestly, it would be a waste of your time. After seeing the final results of that interview, I had to ask myself, was I censored by David Ellison?

It started on Friday, March 13. Yes, it was Friday the 13th, which are ironically good days for me. As a homecare provider, I accompanied one the people I care for to a place in Oakland called ReCARES. Operating out of the underground parking garage of First Presbyterian Church in Oakland, they provide donated medical equipment to low income people who need that equipment. We arrived via BART and AC Transit’s 51A bus.

As I waited for my homecare recipient to pick up the bandages and other care products she needed, I was approached by a young man who identified himself as Kenny, a reporter for KPIX News. KPIX, Channel 5 in San Francisco, is our CBS affiliate. Since my brain gets stuck in the eighties sometimes, I identify Channel 5 as a CBS affiliate owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting Company. Kenny said he was interviewing people about the license plate reading cameras being employed by the City of Oakland to catch speeders. I told him that I was actually a Berkeley resident, but he still wanted my opinion. OK, then, i told Kenny, I would be happy to talk to you. He clipped a lavalier microphone to my jacket and pulled out his iPhone. Kenny was his own cameraman. Being still stuck in the eighties, I immediate thought of the old Max Headroom series, which was shot in San Francisco. Max’s alter ego, Edison Carter, was a TV reporter who lugged around his camera so he could do selfies as he reported. This was a time when TV news reporting was a two person job. The person holding the camera was also holding a heavy briefcase that contained the camera’s battery.Now, Kenny can hold all the technology he needs with one hand. 

With Kenny holding his iPhone horizontally in landscape mode, showing to me he is a real professional, I began to unload my thoughts about Flock camera technology and the privacy concerns we residents of Berkeley are having with the company. We are very concerned our data being gathered by Flock ends up in the hands of Trump’s ICE, who has shown to be untrustworthy with that data. I emphasize the point with the news that two US citizens were killed in Minneapolis, and a man in another city was dragged out of his house without clothes, even though he was not the man ICE was looking for.

Kenny expressed sympathy, then said that Oakland promises that it will not share its data with anyone and will destroy the video after a number of days. They have been only giving warnings since the start of the program, but intend to start giving tickets.

Well, I guess, that is OK, I replied, if they can really promise the video will not fall into the wrong hands. Using cameras to stop speeders is ok, if they don’t criminalize low income people. I would prefer community service to pay off fines. Even better is changing street infrastructure to slow down drivers. I mentioned speed tables and pedestrian bulb outs. I threw in my knowledge of Project Zero, the policy of eliminating all deaths and serious injuries from traffic violence by 2028.

Kenny appeared very happy and assured me I would be on the news at 6 pm. He got some more shots of me and my care recipient picking out her medical products. Excited, I immediately told my family and other friends I ran into that day. Not having a TV set, I watched it later on Channel 5’s web site. There, I discovered that Kenny used hardly anything from the interview. There was nothing about ICE, citizens dead in Minneapolis, or Project Zero. He did air my concern abut people being criminalized, but edited it so it looked like I was completely happy with the cameras as a solution to speeding. The kicker was the label he placed under my name in the video: Tom Yamaguchi, Driver. 

At no point, did I tell the reporter I was a driver. If he had asked, I would have told him I do have a driver’s license, but have not owned a car for several decades. I have not even driven a car in almost a year. As I revealed earlier, my recipient and I took public transit to ReCARES.

Kenny also didn’t tell me why he came to this particular location. He revealed that in his report. The church is at the intersection of Broadway and 27th Street, which reported one of the highest number of drivers going over the speed limit in Oakland. Well, duh, I would have said if he had told me that. It’s the infrastructure that’s the problem. Broadway and 27th are both very wide streets, which encourages speeding. I would have then told him about road diets, making streets more narrow to slow down drivers to save the lives of pedestrians, bicyclists, and other drivers. 73rd Avenue had the highest number of speeders, another a very wide street.

After seeing my appearance on Channel 5, I got myself unstuck from the eighties. Looking it up on Wikipedia, I found that ownership by Westinghouse is ancient history. CBS did become the owner of its CBS affiliate, which was previously affiliated with the Dumont network until it went bankrupt in 1956. CBS has since been swallowed up by Paramount. Paramount is owned by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and one of the richest men in the world. Both Ellisons are fans of Donald Trump. You may have noticed them in the news recently, as they have taken over CBS and have driven its news operation to the right. Now, they are buying Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN, after forcing Netflix out of the bidding. 

So, is that why my anti Trump rant got left on the cutting room floor, or just deleted from Kenny’s iPhone? Is this the final outcome of the consolidation of our media? The sources that we have trusted to provide our news can no longer be trusted. The media owned by he Ellisons only exist to satisfy Donald Trump, who can dole our goodies to his friends and pain to his enemies, so it is best to stay on Donald’s good side.

Was I censored by David Ellison or was KPIX just obeying in advance? I guess I will never know. One thing I know I would have done differently as a supporter of public media. I was wearing my KQED baseball cap when Kenny approached me and took the cap off to do the interview. Knowing what I know now, I would have left the cap on my head.

Kenny Choi reporting for KPIX News:

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/video/grace-period-for-oakland-speed-cameras-ending-tickets-to-follow/#x

March 16, 2026 - Posted by tomyamaguchi | Uncategorized | cbs, censorship, cnn, david-ellison, Donald Trump, flock, ice, kpix, larry-ellison, media, minneapolis, monopoly, paramount, privacy, road-diet, speed-cameras, traffic-violence, vision-zero, warner-brothers-discovery