Wag the Dog

Deck: 

Pack journalists feed off PG&E letter.

Fortnightly Magazine - March 15 2002
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Was Pacific Gas and Electric's recent customer mailing of a dog-bite letter and meter-reading schedule a selfless attempt to protect its employees from vicious canines? Or was the notice to dog owners a catty move to get the California press off the scent of Pacific Gas and Electric's bankruptcy proceedings?

Nosy minds want to know.

Ken Lay certainly hoped to muzzle some of the negative press about him when his wife, Linda, wept on NBC's Today Show in late January about how distraught she was over Enron's bankruptcy and the downturn in her husband's financial prospects.

In California, officials from bankrupt Pacific Gas and Electric may have hoped public sympathy for its rank-and-file meter readers, who had been attacked by dogs more than 800 times over the past 10 years, would trickle up the corporate ladder.

"Personally, I wish I fully understood why PG&E is investing all this energy in this," says Alan LoFaso, chief of staff for California State Assemblywoman Carole Migden, author of last year's legislation expanding dog-bite liability. "Maybe they want their name in the newspaper on things other than articles about bankruptcy."

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