Comments@TheGussReport – According to numerous sources, there is a paranoid atmosphere at the LA Times these days. It is mostly due to the fact that, as its content creators (read: reporters and editors) overwhelmingly unionized with the LAT Guild a few weeks ago, its owner, TRONC, appears to be forming a shadow entity that may wind up being staffed by non-union content creators who – let’s be honest – probably won’t serve the public any worse than the Times has for the past several decades.
If TRONC were to suddenly ax half its content staff, or create workplace changes that caused its content creators to go on strike, what hard-hitting news would LA miss?
Instead of focusing on LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s starry-eyed daffiness about his being “overqualified to be president,” where is the Times fiercely holding him, the County Supervisors or Governor Jerry Brown and the Sacramento legislators directly accountable for the worse-now-than-ever homelessness, poverty and congestion? In fact, the Times continues to excuse, supplement and directly and indirectly endorse Garcetti and other incumbents for re-election and higher office time and time again.
As they simultaneously cover Garcetti predecessor Antonio Villaraigosa’s run for governor, it appears they have completely forgotten his disastrous eight years as LA’s chief executive, during which he is remembered primarily for his verbal gaffes and extramarital affair with – wait for it – a member of the media (Mirthala Salinas) during which time she reported on him.
For decades, the Times’ content creators reliably failed to demand transparency for us by government officials who they adored rather than covered. Now they frantically demand transparency from TRONC management. That is rich. The Times has failed us by not reporting with stark accuracy on Villaraigosa, or “the Hahn kids,” former LA Mayor James Hahn and current LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn of Kenneth Hahn fame, or now on the rampant political failures and homogenized family portrait of Eric Garcetti, of former LA District Attorney Gil Garcetti infamy. Where is the Times when it comes to exposing the fraud, waste and silly antics at LA City Council where cultural celebrations (or Sock Day) always outpace problem-solving?
Do you ever wonder why New York doesn’t lack hard-hitting coverage of Garcetti’s counterpart, NY City Mayor Bill de Blasio? In a few words: good hard competition, which the LA Times doesn’t have.
Good luck with, and more to come on, that, in the coming weeks.
So if things do go further south with the LA Times, it appears ABC-7’s Eyewitness News is well-suited to take up the job of Garcetti’s press agent. A few cases in point …
Late last week, ABC-7 reporter Carlos Granda reported that “Mayors across the country, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, announced they would boycott a planned meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump Wednesday.”
Come again? No other media outlet, including the Times and Bloomberg News, or Garcetti’s Twitter accounts, or the U.S. Conference of Mayors, reported that Garcetti boycotted the White House meeting. Multiple efforts asking Granda to cite his source were not responded to, raising the question of whether Granda added the word “boycott” to his report to artificially aid Garcetti in maintaining his visibility among those, including de Blasio, who were invited and actually did boycott it? Or did Granda assume that Garcetti was invited, and it escaped the notice of everyone else at Eyewitness News?
The Times, among others, reported that Garcetti was not invited to the White House meeting at all, raising the further question of who it is that paid for Garcetti’s trip to D.C.
Similarly, last week, ABC-7’s beloved Adrienne Alpert, host of the semi-regular Sunday morning program “Ask the Mayor” Tweeted that Los Angeles Animal Services, the City’s multi-shelter animal impound, reached “No Kill” status for dogs, a dubious claim, that was not Tweeted about by Garcetti either from his official Mayor’s Twitter account or his personal Twitter account, or from those of City Council president Herb Wesson or City Councilmember Paul Koretz.
The problem is that for years, Alpert has had extensive documentation proving that Garcetti’s administration literally falsified adoption statistics for more than 8,000 homeless animals, as it dubiously shuffled scores of critters from government cage to government cage, and counted them as adoptions, only to change the stats again after I reported about it on CityWatch.
Or, for that matter, how City Controller Ron Galperin has looked the other way on extensive killing of animals, and not counting death by injection as a kill due to lack of space. Alpert, while acknowledging the sincerity of those materials (which I provided to her) said a while back that “it is a lot of material to read,” but apparently never got around to reading them in the ensuing several years before blindly claiming success on behalf of Garcetti, based on his office’s press release. Shouldn’t it have been a red flag for her that none of these Tweet-happy city officials – none of them – Tweeted about it?
So fear not, if there is a meltdown at the LA Times. In its stead, ABC-7 is properly positioned to substitute public relations in lieu of fact-based journalism.
ABC-7 News Director Rob Elmore, what say you? And is it curious that Tweets from ABC-7 President and General Manager (and its former News Director) Cheryl Fair are protected…at a network owned and operated news organization?
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.)
-cw
