Watch/Listen: A Shameful Performance by Bill Brown; A Shocking Vision of Mission Blockbuster; A Welcome Charge in SB

Our All-Star Panel of Top Local Journalists serves up a full helping of well-informed analysis and reported commentary about Santa Barbara's biggest news stories.

It takes a special brand of cravenness for the most powerful law enforcement officer in the county to stand in public and attack by name a young journalist whose tough reporting on the immigration beat seems to have gotten under his skin.

That was the spectacle on display at the Board of Supervisors this week, as Sheriff Bill Brown dodged, deflected and denied questions about his department’s wink-wink-nudge-nudge collaboration with federal immigration authorities by repeatedly maligning News-Press reporter Lillian Perlmutter, whose investigative journalism revealed a routine pattern of underreporting of arrests made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in and around the county jail.

On this week’s episode of Newsmakers TV, News-Press Editor Josh Molina pushes back with some journalistic perspective on Brown’s shabby, shoot-the-messenger performance, while the Independent’s Ryan P. Cruz revisits the latest incursion by masked ICE agents into a Santa Barbara neighborhood — this time a fearless Father’s Day assault on mariachi musicians.

Housing reporter Sofia Wallace joins the gang with the latest on the controversy over a secretive developer’s efforts to build an eight-story blockbuster apartment house next to the Mission — including a jaw-dropping rendering of the project by prominent local architect Fred Sweeney — and also recaps her story about a new, low-profile electric car charging station that has just opened downtown.

Plus: the fiscal sleight-of-hand that’s yielded the city’s “balanced” budget; another “Builder’s Remedy” monstrosity in Carp; and the untold story of how the genial host saved a struggling newspaper from financial ruin by firing himself.

All this and more, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV.

Check out the latest episode via YouTube below or by clicking this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on SoundCloud. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 5 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on weekends.

Image: Architectural rendering, created from local architect and SAGE SB vice-president Fred Sweeney’s measurements and expertise, demonstrates the size and scope of the proposed project near the Mission (Fred Sweeney via The Santa Barbara News-Press).