Okay, we have to confess that we haven't really been paying much attention to the plans about developing the Hunters' Point shipyard (though we did note through our usual sporting interest in housing that someone had proposed building a highrise around there). So we missed the detail that about fifty homeless people had gotten in a scuffle outside City Hall at last week's City Planning Commission hearings, claiming that they had been promised $10 apiece if they showed up to provide testimony in favor of the development project. Bad us, especially missing something as juicy as a fight, with political graft involved too!

And, well, we thought today's Matier and Ross interview with State Senator Don Perata in the Chron was kind of boring (we know, we know, we've been meaning to do one of our Political Junkie book reports about him and the kickback allegations, but honestly, we just can't muster up the energy), and since we're not writing the Blotter today, we skipped the Bay Area section entirely and went straight to Datebook. Bad us, continuing to bask in our lack of knowledge about our brothers and sisters on the other side of the Bay.

But you know what always catches our eye? That's right, a throwdown! So our attention was finally piqued when Adriel Hampton, the Examiner political correspondent, posted the following on his blog: if you scroll past Matier and Ross's tedious Don Perata interview, you'll see that they republished Hampton's scoop on the payoff fight as their own! Without credit! Ooof!

As Hampton notes, "The reporter [at the Ex] sure didn't see Phil or Andy out Thursday night." To be fair, M&R did note that when they made some follow-up calls about who might have been, oh, paying off witnesses for the project, the person on the other end of the phone claimed he had no idea what they were talking about and said, "You are the second white reporter who called me and asked about it." One scoop of vanilla, please.

j'accuse