Damon Bruce and Oakland A’s President Dave Kaval are not going to be having any kind of public interaction. Friday on 95.7 The Game, Bruce revealed that he is not agreeing to the terms that Kaval and the franchise are mandating in order for them to have the interview the two discussed on Twitter last week.
Kaval publicly questioned why the Bay Area media was not covering the poor attendance for the Giants the way they are for the A’s. Bruce fired back that the poor attendance in Oakland is about the way the team is treating its fans. After some back and forth, Bruce said he would show up to the Colesium in Oakland for a live-streamed debate if Kaval and the A’s would pay a $5000 appearance fee, which would go to a local food bank.
On Friday, in revealing that Kaval did not want to participate, Bruce also revealed that he has never charged anyone for him to show up to an event before.
“There is no $5000 appearance fee,” he said. “It just shows you how bad of a research department they have over there, not engaging actual media in what it costs to do business.”
Dave Kaval will reportedly still donate $5000 to a food bank. Bruce says the A’s President deserves credit for that, but he wants listeners to know that it was clear to him that Kaval and his staff never had any intention of going through with the agreed-upon conversation.
Bruce says the A’s wanted an agreement in place about what topics will be covered. They wanted a conference call to review what would be said. The team also wanted the format of the conversation switched from an interview to a debate moderated by A’s studio host Brodie Brazil, who Bruce says he likes, but would certainly create bias.
“Whatever lowercase journalistic integrity I have, I know it’s this. You do not let your interview subject set the terms of that interview,” Bruce said. “So I’m not doing it. I’m not going to give that guy a platform for propaganda and a shot clock which he can run out before we change the topic.”
The A’s have been in the middle of a standoff with the city of Oakland about a new stadium and have been publicly flirting with Las Vegas as a potential new home for the team. Bruce’s partner, Ray Ratto, said that those are topics the team doesn’t want to talk about. It’s why he never believed the agreement on Twitter would amount to anything.
Damon Bruce thought it was funny that Dave Kaval wanted to turn a discussion about how the franchise is treating fans right now into a debate.
“What would the debate have been?” he asked. “I’m anti-treating your fans like crap and he’s pro-treating your fans like crap?”
