MVLA Board candidate Carrol Titus-Zambre allegedly threatened student, does not comment
Carrol Titus-Zambre was featured in a previous 2021 Talon article covering the protest to reopen schools during distance learning (shown above). After publication of that article, she allegedly threatened a reporter with violence and legal action.
Carrol Titus-Zambre, a candidate for the Mountain View–Los Altos (MVLA) District School Board, allegedly threatened violence and legal action against a high school student reporter and the Talon adviser after parts of an interview with her were published in a March 2021 Talon article covering a protest advocating for the reopening of schools. Titus-Zambre did not respond to repeated requests for comment by email and phone.
The dispute between Titus-Zambre and The Talon student arose the day after the initial interview, when Titus-Zambre requested that The Talon remove her name from the protest coverage. The Talon initially and mistakenly agreed, but ultimately printed her full name and some of her comments because she had previously consented to an on-the-record interview and the use of her full name in the article, and The Talon considered her comments to be newsworthy.
After the student informed Titus-Zambre that her name would remain in the article, Titus-Zambre responded with a string of text messages, claiming that she didn’t initially consent to being identified.
“I did not consent,” she said to the Talon student. “You are completely out of line. Newspapers’ standard of ethics is to vigorously defend sources’ anonymity.”
Because of the aggressive nature of the text messages, the Talon student did not respond, but opted to contact her editors and the Talon adviser about the comments. Later that evening, according to the student, Titus-Zambre called her and angrily threatened her and The Talon. In the call, she allegedly claimed that she would sue the Talon adviser and use her husband’s status in the military to send the army to the student’s house.
Following this confrontation, The Talon ultimately opted to remove all authors’ names from the article for their safety.
Titus-Zambre, who announced her candidacy earlier this year, is a businesswoman and longtime Santa Clara County resident. She graduated from Santa Clara University and working at companies like Cisco and Visa. She is president and CEO of Golden Poppy Inc., a self-described “educational media production studio” that uses augmented reality technology to support the education of young people through teaching topics like reading, science and math. Titus-Zambre also volunteered as a head coach for a Bay Area youth volleyball team, coached Los Altos High School’s boys junior varsity volleyball team and served as a Girl Scout leader.
The Board election will take place on Tuesday, November 8. Six candidates — incumbent Catherine Vonnegut, Thida Cornes, Esmeralda Ortiz, Jacquie Tanner, Eric Mark and Titus-Zambre — are running for three open seats.
The anonymous student mentioned throughout this article, who is still on The Talon, was not involved in the production of this article in any manner, except as a source.
L. Jones | Oct 10, 2022 at 12:26 pm
It’s not surprising that someone who espouses such uninformed opinions would also resort to violence. Thank you for reporting on this – so important during an election season.
Jocelyn | Oct 9, 2022 at 5:19 pm
For a high school student paper to be responding so well to issues like this is exceedingly impressive. As I am sure you are aware, the journalistic standard is not to arbitrarily hand out anonymity to any source that requests it but instead to only do so upon careful consideration and agreement before their comment or if agreed upon after the fact for materially important reasons — a source should not have editorial review and cannot retroactively move comments off the record. Of course, it is up to the editorial staff to outline the rules for anonymity, but typically this is not a decision which is up to the reporter or even a single editor alone. After all, accountability is exceedingly important and may be the most important end of journalism. Unless the situation necessitates anonymity, that is not something to be expected by a source (which they should be made aware of).
I do not mean to comment on this particular case, but this should be something all sources are made aware of and is ultimately part of why retaining transcripts and recordings of interviews which contain the source’s consent is so important. While I appreciate this article, I would urge The Talon’s entire editorial to write a statement about this matter as it is of outsized importance. But this article does a commendable job nonetheless.
Unless you are independent, I hope you are being provided with the full legal assistance of the school in defending The Talon against this matter should legal proceedings arise.