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PERSPECTIVE - News mogul Rupert Murdoch’s scrappy, iconoclastic California Post has arrived in Los Angeles with a new brand of journalism—and it didn’t tiptoe in. It burst onto the scene. Call it a breath of fresh air. Or a hurricane.
Just days after launching its California edition, the Post published a blistering description of the LAPD’s most virulent and noisy critics. Three days later the Los Angeles Times published a story about a controversy surrounding one of those same critics. The result: a tale of two newspapers - divergent in tone, priorities, and ultimately, in what they choose to show their readers.
In its Jan. 28 edition, the Post’s famously playful or sensational front-page carried a photograph of one of its reporters at a Police Commission meeting being harassed by an agitator sporting a mask and the kayiffeh scarf popular with leftists. The headline: “LAWLESS. California Post reporter attacked by mob of protestors – at L.A. Police Commission!”
Post reporters Jamie Paige and Chris Nesi went on to reveal the disruptive - but routine – antics of LAPD critics at that commission meeting. “One after another, speakers cursed at commissioners and police, repeatedly yelling f—k the police,” calling officers “pigs” and branding the department as a “murdering organization,” the reporters wrote.
Relentlessly, the Post story continued: “A large number of the disrupters were familiar faces who make a living sabotaging public meetings in service of their chaos-sowing agenda, shouting down officials and stifling any public discourse that doesn’t comport to their warped worldviews.” Wow! These reporters don’t mince words. Nor do they hide their sharp-tongued opinions.
A prominent “resistance” leader at the commission was LAPD nemesis Jason Reedy, 38. Reedy confronted Paige as she videotaped the three-dozen agitators. “You are afraid of me, aren’t you,” Reedy snarled at Paige as his colleague agitators tried to interfere with the reporter’s attempt to videotape them.
To back up its story, the Post published a slew of photos and videos of a meeting that chronicled something like a pack of rabid dogs, foaming at the mouth and howling obscenities at the moon.
Asked about the meeting, the Board of Directors of the LA Police Protective League (the officers’ union) said: “The same anti-democratic, vulgar and vile individuals have been disrupting police commission meetings for years now.” Nothing new here. Just par for the course.
Meanwhile, a Jan. 31 Times a story featuring Reedy did not put the leftist rabblerouser on a pedestal, but the paper largely covered up his warts, in glaring contrast to the Post’s scathing description of Reedy and his comrades.
For starters, the Times described Reedy as one of those “outspoken police critics and social justice advocates” who have criticized the LAPD. “His [Reedy’s] tactics,” the Times mildly continued, “reflect a new, more confrontational dynamic between public officials and activists who seek to capture encounters that will resonate on social media.”
Let’s be real. The Times’ description of Reedy being an “outspoken” critic of the LAPD does not do justice to Reedy’s antics. In fact, he’s a flame-throwing LAPD-hater who routinely takes the podium at the Police Commission to call the police pigs, murderers, liars and, more recently, “child molesters” while occasionally dropping the f-bombs that are so fashionable among many “outspoken police critics and social justice advocates.”
The Times further identified Reedy as “an organizer with the grassroots collective the People’s City Council.” And, no, that “grassroots collective” is not, as some might surmise, a group of aging hippies who grow organic kale in their community garden. Instead, the People’s City Council self-identifies as an “abolitionist, anti-capitalist & anti-imperialist collective.”
Reedy is also an amateur filmmaker/stalker, who can be found chasing LAPD brass with his phone camera while shouting obscenities at them. The Times’ euphemism for this: Reedy engages in “confrontational dynamic” tactics. Several years ago, Reedy got his first legacy media headlines by getting into a “dynamic” fistfight with then-LA councilman Kevin de Leon when he confronted the lawmaker at a children’s Christmas party.
Reedy has a reputation for his rhetorical theatrics, aka hyperbole. For example, at a LA Police Commission meeting Reedy declared the LAPD is the “most murderous police department in the nation.” The key word being “murderous.” The facts are these: there were 47 LAPD Officer Involved Shooting (OIS) incidents in 2025, almost twice as many as the 24 OIS events in 2024. Not good. But murderous? Hold your horses, Reedy.
To be clear, 15 of the 47 LAPD shootings resulted in a fatality; 23 resulted in a “suspect” being injured. Nine of the shootings were “no-hit” events. Notably, the LA District Attorney’s review of 16 OIS LAPD cases (that were cleared in 2025) found that in every case the officers justifiably shot to defend themselves or the public, a finding that contradicts Reedy’s allegation that the LAPD was “murdering” citizens.
As for the drum-beat of claims by Reedy and his comrades that the Police Commission systematically whitewashed police misconduct? Well, that isn’t correct either. In fact, just recently the commission concluded the LAPD shooting death of Linda Becerra Moran, a troubled, knife-wielding transgender woman, was an “out of policy” event. In other words, shooting Moran was a big mistake.
Given his record of fact-twisting exhibitionism, the Times should have been wary when Reedy alleged LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton called him a “child molester” during an encounter between the two men at the Jan. 19 Martin Luther King parade.
Still, the paper devoted 852 words to Reedy’s arguably flimsy allegation of abuse and victimization that was, at best, a mountain made out of a molehill while also sanitizing Reedy’s public track-record and giving Reedy a bully pulpit to advertise his anti-cop agenda and messaging before an audience of tens of thousands of Times’ readers.
The best facts about the encounter between Reedy and Hamilton rest in Reedy’s own videotape.
Reedy’s one-minute-six-second video showed Hamilton, outdoors, a fence and parking lot behind him, telling a videographer he (Hamilton) was trying “to make sure the kids don’t get molested.”
Reedy’s come back was to shout: “You’re pigs! You’re pigs! Your pigs molest children! Your pigs molest children!”
The edited video ended with Hamilton climbing into an LAPD panel truck as Reedy called out to the deputy chief: “Go f—k yourself, Hamilton.” To which Hamilton replied: “Stop molesting....” Reedy’s reply: “Molesting kids? That’s crazy!”
The Times’ recap of this incident left out the “pigs” and f-bomb remarks but quoted Hamilton’s vague comment about “kids” being “molested.”
Times police reporter Libor Jany determined that the video showed “Hamilton was heard suggesting that Reedy had ‘molested’ children.” Suggesting isn’t the same as saying. Still, Jany’s conclusion gave credence to Reedy’s complaint.
Hamilton had a different story of what happened; he told Jany the “kids” he was protecting from being “molested” were young Black police officers who Reedy had been verbally bothering. “I said, ‘Stop molesting them...it’s unfair,’” Hamilton told the Times.
Reedy’s own video shows at least one youthful Black female officer behind Hamilton during the pair’s encounter; and when Hamilton walked away from Reedy at least three young female Black officers joined him as passengers in the LAPD panel truck. That video segment and Hamilton’s record of mentoring and training young officers add plausibility to the Deputy Chief’s explanation. But Jany did not bring these factors into his reporting.
Bottom-line: Jany did not determine Hamilton actually said Reedy was a child molester but he went out on a thin limb to conclude Hamilton suggested or insinuated Reedy “had ‘molested’ children.” That judgement was ill-founded.
My takeaway: Reedy distorted his encounter with Hamilton to fabricate his “child molester” complaint, advertised his dubious grievance on social media platforms (the Times said Reedy’s video “racked up tens of thousands of views”), and then the Times gave Reedy an undeserved platform to further amplify his imagined grievance tale while also sanitizing his biography. Ask yourself why the Times gave kid-glove treatment to Reedy. Could it be the newspaper has a soft-spot for political southpaws?
The Post version of Reedy and his comrades-in-arms was raw and graphic, its point of view transparently opinionated. But the tabloid did a public service by alerting LA residents and taxpayers how their public forums are being hijacked by foul-mouthed, intimidating agitators. It’s possible the Post’s controversial, sensational and conservative presence may bring refreshing balance and adrenaline to LA’s largely monotheistic media landscape. And that might ultimately benefit – and entertain - the city’s residents.
The lesson here: arm yourself with several news media outlets. In the morass you might get lucky and find the truth – whatever the hell that is!
(John Schwada was a politics and government affairs reporter for the LA Herald Examiner, the LA Times and Fox 11 News. He was twice named Distinguished Journalist of the Year (1989 and 2008) by SPJ/LA, and received the Joseph M. Quinn Lifetime Achievement Award from the LA Press Club in 2011. He is an unpaid advocate for opponents of the Armory project and wrote a petition urging the Board of Supervisors to reject its misguided and illegal homeless project.)
