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MIGRANTS - On Friday, I noticed a tweet of an LA Times article (by somebody I follow) entitled “Anchorage [ALASKA] Mayor Proposes Sending Homeless People To Los Angeles This Winter” by Ruben Vives. It came out at 9:37 AM PT in the CA section online. It was hard to find on the front page of the LA Times website. You had to scroll down. It came out too late for people to read before work on Friday. Unlikely they would read it after work, because it's the end of the workweek and start of the weekend. It's a HUGE story, quite SCANDALOUS. It's as if the LA Times was hiding a HUGE story that would get TONS of clicks. But why?
The story appeared in the physical LA Times on Saturday, but NOT on the Front Page, NOT even below the fold, NOT even in the little box at the bottom right that tells you what's inside the paper. It did NOT EVEN appear anywhere on the front page of the CALIFORNIA section. So where did it appear? It was BURIED on page B3. Now we all know that the LA Times has an Agenda to advance the Homeless Industrial Complex, but this is a bit much.
But it gets worse! It was an OLD story. The LA Times SAT ON IT. The New York Post released the (AP version of the) story MORE THAN TWO DAYS BEFORE, VERY EARLY Wednesday. It was a “wire story.” It came from the Associated Press (or the AP), the biggest wire service, whose stories all the big players in the press/media have access to...which means the LA Times could have run the AP story on WEDNESDAY...but they chose NOT to...but why? The AP story came out on TUESDAY.
If your goal is to be a popular newspaper, you don't hold back hot stories. That can lead to layoffs. Unless you have an AGENDA. It appears that the Nika Soon-Shiong mindset is still running things at the LA Times. Los Angeles Magazine wrote at least 3 articles about the Young Activist Daughter of the LA Times Owner and her influence at the paper in April, August, and September of 2022. Politico wrote her up on September 18, 2022. Wehoville.com wrote NUMEROUS articles about Nika's negative impact on WeHo (the City of West Hollywood) and her connection to former WeHo Council Member and Current LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath (Horvath also sits on the LA Metro Board...if you like those green-shirted Ambassadors, you can thank her), a connection that the LA Times Editorial Board did NOT disclose in its endorsement of Horvath for the seat...SO Unethical ! Of particular concern was Nika's influence on the LA Times endorsements for local races, with dangerous candidates like Eunisses Hernandez, Katy Yaroslavsky, and Hugo Soto-Martinez winning LA City Council seats (a Mike Bonin clone that Nika supported luckily lost in the beyond fed-up Venice Council District) and Kenny Mejia winning City Controller (jury's still out on him) and Kelly Gonez (who is in favor of defunding school police and represents Sun Valley Middle School, where a new 14 year old female student just got beaten in front of a teacher by 2 other students) getting reelected to the LAUSD Board.
Interesting things I noticed in the Times ALASKA TO LA article: It says that Anchorage ALASKA did one-way flights LAST YEAR TOO. I do NOT remember EVER hearing about that...do you? Also, Public Comments are NOT allowed following the article. So, not only is the Times burying the story; they don't want us to discuss it ! Yahoo News republishes a lot of Times content and they republished that story and allowed comments on it. In the early comments (I haven't looked since), I noticed 2 interesting ones...maybe you readers can fact-check them. One comment was “Anchorage bought a nice functional 32 unit one & two bedroom motel, kept it vacant for years, and then bull-dozed it.” Another comment was “Hawaii has the same plan. Just send the homeless to the mainland...It's unfair to make your problems their problems.”
Why did the LA Times release the story online on Friday when they did??
It reminded me of The West Wing, a great TV show which I haven't seen in a LONG time. I had to google to find the episode I was thinking of and then I watched it on Max (formerly HBOmax)...it originally ran on NBC (Peacock), but was produced by Warner Bros (Max). The 13th Episode of Season 1 is entitled “Take Out The Trash Day”, written by the great Aaron Sorkin.
And while we're talking about screenwriters, I'm gonna go off on a tangent, since some of my readers are on strike right now. The actors were working while the WGA, Writers Guild of America, was on strike. The actors were close to a deal, as evidenced by Fran Drescher, the head of SAG-AFTRA, hanging out in Italy right before they went on strike. She got a lot of negative energy from that, but she turned it around to positive energy in record time by trashing Bob Iger upon her return. I wondered if what led to the the actors going on strike for a better deal was the July 11 Deadline article about the Hollywood Studios planning to “Let Writers Go Broke Before Resuming Talks in Fall” with this quote: “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until [writers] start losing their apartments and losing their houses”. SAG-AFTRA is benefiting from WGA already being on strike. But what happens when
SAG-AFTRA cuts a deal with the Studios/Streamers and WGA is still on the picket line? I really think that WGA needs to MERGE with SAG-AFTRA for additional leverage going forward. One thing that concerns me is the SHARING OF CONTENT. Before, the streamers were trying to destroy each other and making their content exclusive after sharing deals with the likes of Netflix expired. Netflix was in the worst position because they would lose all their non-Netflix produced content eventually. NOW, the Studios/Streamers are reversing course and licensing content to each other...also a good way for them to raise cash. Given that there is too much content after the Era of “Peak TV”, they can wait out the strikes by licensing content to each other. All the more reason for WGA and SAG-AFTRA to MERGE !
Getting back to that West Wing episode, it was about the President's Team INTENTIONALLY releasing CONTROVERSIAL news to the Press on Friday, the so-called “Friday News Dump”, so that it gets FAR LESS attention...as Josh says in the episode, “Because no one reads the paper on Saturday”. It's a strategy used by the White House. OK, that makes sense. But why would a MAJOR NEWSPAPER do that?? Because that paper has an AGENDA and doesn't want to show us news that conflicts with their false or misleading narrative about homelessness. The LA Times has been a HUGE backer of the Homeless Industrial Complex here in Los Angeles...it's a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry at this point funded by Our Tax Dollars. Most of our politicians (which have been endorsed in the past by the Times) have been along for the ride, their developer buddies and not-for-profit buddies have benefited, rent controlled housing units have been torn down by luxury developers in the name of increasing housing supply, the Times' Liam Dillon has gotten excited by the densification of our single family zoning, etc, etc.
Two of my previous columns mentioned the Times NOT writing up back-to-back suicides AND Anti- Semitism at the most prestigious high school in Los Angeles (from which I graduated), likely because the Owner of the Times has a prior connection to the school...his son graduated from there.
I remember a February 2020 LA Times Editorial Board piece entitled “Yes, Homeless People Have a Right to Park on Malibu's Coast. But Not for Weeks At a Time” which supported a proposal by the City of Malibu to prevent Overnight Parking of RV's by Homeless People with the line “These parking restrictions seem reasonable”. While I agree with the sentiment, it seemed so out of touch with the general Pro-Homeless Messaging by the Times. But then I remembered the Dirt dot com article, which has now been scrubbed from the Internet, entitled “Patrick Soon-Shiong: Profile of a Real Estate.
Baller” from June 21, 2016 and a follow-up on November 3 entitled “LA's Richest Man Drops 16M on his Third Laguna Beach...”. First article mentions he and his wife bought THIRTEEN parcels in Brentwood for over 56M in land cost alone for a Brentwood compound, 2 properties in Laguna Beach for 14M+ and 45M, and, finally, THREE properties in MALIBU for 17.5M, almost 9M, and 18.5M, and then spent more on construction and renovation. Did he still own any of the Malibu properties at the time of that strange LA Times editorial? If so, why was it not disclosed?
I also remember when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. China was threatening with planes and ships, the US was protecting her with planes and ships. There was a strong chance of war breaking. I was flipping through news websites while she was traveling into Taiwan...every major US news website had it as their LIVE TOP STORY...except the LA Times. The LA Times also defended TikTok according to Mediaite.com (March 24 article): “LA Times Editorial Board Defends TikTok...” regarding the LA Times Editorial Board's March 24 “Congress is Scapegoating TikTok...” As another pro-TikTok Times editorial, “I'm 63 and I Don't Want to Lose My TikTok” (April 16) explained: “Members of Congress are concerned that China-based ByteDance, which owns TikTok, could be pressured by the Chinese Government to turn over the private data of TikTok's 150M active US users. And could feed them misinformation.” I also found a March 22, 2023 editorial entitled “Why the US Will Probably Never Ban TikTok”, which is a REALLY interesting read, because it includes facts that make a REALLY strong case for banning TikTok and goes on to dismiss them. It felt like All TikTok, All The Time over at the LA Times.
And then there was Times California Section Columnist George Skelton's August 18, 2022 Column against Prop 30 (it was defeated) entitled “California Had a Nearly 100B Surplus This Year. We Don't Need to Raise Taxes with Prop 30” railing against an income tax increase that would ONLY be imposed on the Very Richest of Californians, the Top 0.2% of Tax Filers, ONLY for people MAKING MORE THAN TWO MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR, in order to help the rest of us pay for electric cars...and 20% of the money would go to “preventing and fighting wild fires”. Skelton's Big Boss musta been very happy with this column (and ANOTHER Anti-Prop 30 Column by Skelton on September 29, 2022) that was written despite the Bush and Trump Federal Tax Cuts for The Super Rich. The LA Times Editorial Board ALSO told readers to vote NO on Prop 30 on September 20.
Soon-Shiong's other paper (he just sold it), the San Diego Union-Tribune, on October 7, told readers/voters to vote “NO” too! Let's all cry for the Uber Rich. The reason this position sticks out like a sore thumb is that the LA Times is VERY Liberal, so the only way this position makes sense to me is that it financially protects the Big Boss (and likely a few of his buddies, business associates, and a few people who can book big advertising spends).
As you can see, these things add up...and once your readers are worried that you (and your family) have agendas and you're using your paper to advance them, well, they just don't trust your newspaper anymore.
I would recommend that Dr Soon-Shiong sell the paper like he just sold his San Diego Paper. Because it's a disgrace and it has done tremendous damage to Los Angeles.
(“An Angry Angeleno” is the nom de plume of Yuval Kremer, a former ballot candidate for both LA County Supervisor and LA Mayor and a regular contributor to CityWatchLA.com.)
