The Last Straw at the Los Angeles Times--The worst so-called "journalism."

For years, I've been a working member of the press. There was a time when I looked with pride at my life's accomplishments. Of course, those were the days when such men as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow were the role models. In recent years, I've become increasingly alarmed with the trend that I've seen among those who consider themselves 'reporters,' as well as those talking heads on the television's nightly news programs. We listen to dumbed-down, usually attractive, post-puberty 'experts' who can only speak in sound bites before they're interrupted by their co-anchor in the box. They talk about the Middle-East, but I'll bet if you put a map in front of them and asked them where that is, they wouldn't have a clue.

The CEOs of these companies wonder why their newspapers are going out of business. It's simple: it's the same as with the airlines. Lack of service.

I've held on to my subscription only because I am a columnist.

When the newspapers began to invent the news instead of reporting the news, the public had nowhere to go but to the call in to talk radio stations, where there was, at least, a chance of hearing the truth.

The worst so-called "journalism," I believe, is practiced by the Los Angeles Times. For years, I've held on to my subscription only because I am a columnist and felt that reading the morning paper was the only way to keep up with what was happening in the world, so that I might give my opinion on it; which is what a columnist does.

A recent edition of the Los Angeles Times was the last straw. That Sunday's front page was covered with a picture of Jerusalem entitled, "The Struggle for Jerusalem." I'm surprised that they didn't use their resident anti -Semite, Tracy Wilkerson, to write the biased column against the Jewish state; nevertheless, it was pretty awful.

I'm not surprised when I see that the sympathetic slant of their series is for "the plight of the poor Palestinians." After all, that's what they do best. Everything, in my opinion, that they write has always been against Israel. For example, the Times reporter writes that Arab families are being "cut off for good from their city of birth" because of the "barrier," which Israel "insists" is aimed at keeping out suicide bombers. The concept that suicide bombers are homicidal mass murderers is foreign to the Times.

Their dumbing-down the issue is working. Israel was forced to build a fence to keep out the murderers that constantly came into Israeli cities to bomb their schools, pizza restaurants, buses and neighborhood markets at will. Prior to the barricade, we were reading in that same biased paper about how many Jews were being killed on an almost daily basis. Of course, why should I be surprised? This is the same paper that doesn't write about how the open borders with Mexico have turned California into Mexifornia and our cities into places resembling Third World countries. This same paper was also writing multi-page series about how the poor illegal immigrant families are being separated and forced to live in poverty. I wish our government had the foresight that Israel is now showing before our country got so out of hand.

Meanwhile, the LA Times reporters sat in their safe comfortable office, sipped lattes, and wrote about Jews and Arabs living bitterly apart. They wrote about how, "Their schism is one of the key obstacles to peace," and how the Palestinians have been "hemmed in by Israeli rule over their East Jerusalem neighborhoods."

Well gol-ly, this pampered bunch of so-called journalists write that "the status of Jerusalem remains one of the biggest obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement," and the issue was "a major stumbling block at the Camp David talks of 2000." I wonder how they might feel if any of the wonderful illegal aliens who have come across our border from Mexico were to build a shack without permits next door to their Starbucks. Would they write a column about how unfairly Gonzalez and his eight children were being treated when forced to tear it down? Actually, with the leftist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitude that I've learned to expect from this bunch, they would probably write the same treasonous trash.

In addition to relating to poor Kamil Saou and his five children, they elaborated on how "scores of Israeli police officers converged on a bluff in East Jerusalem, surrounded his modest home and escorted a bulldozer to the door." They went on to lament that since Kamil had neglected to get a permit, "that gave the government the legal right to demolish the home." As well it should! Try that in Beverly Hills and see how fast the bulldozers come.

I wonder if, while the Los Angeles Times was publishing this four-day, three-page spread, they noticed that virtually every other page in their paper was filled with the violence and terror caused by Islamic terrorists elsewhere. Or is it just the "question" of Jerusalem that is causing the problems from Iraq to Dakar? The Islamist culture doesn't give a damn about living in peace, side-by-side, as the uninformed columnists write. I wonder if, in the effort to be fair and balanced, the LA Times reporters have spoken to non-Muslims from areas now controlled by the same Islamic fundamentalists who want to control Jerusalem.

I'm sure that they don't remember, but I'd like to remind the Times reporters that the town of Bethlehem was once about 86% Christian. That was until pressure from front page

I'd like to remind the Times reporters that the town of Bethlehem was once about 86% Christian.

stories and an incompetent State Department caused that city to be turned over to Arab control. Since then, the city has become a wasteland of roaming terrorists who have brutalized, murdered and mutilated the Christians who had been living there for generations. They've done such a good job that Bethlehem's Christian population is now less than 5%. The LA reporters might want to pay more attention to the promise that once the Muslims are finished with the Saturday people, they will implement their plans for the Sunday people.

Call me silly. Call me a tad old-fashioned, but I take offense that this beacon of understanding, the Los Angeles Times, writes to the masses, "In the absence of peace, Israel and the Palestinians jostle for advantage, reshaping the holy city and further diminishing changes for an agreement." I do want to tell them, though, that the Jews maintaining control of the Jewish State, for which the deed was given to them 3,500 years ago, is not the reason for discord. It's because we are dealing with a barbaric mind-set intent on killing all who are not them.

The Times doesn't get it. None of the liberal press seems to get it. But giving these savages a hug or more land isn't going to bring peace. They understand death and destruction, and they want a martyr's death. I'm all for giving it to them.

Jerusalem: Bitterly divided

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Balancing the Divide: LA Times' Jerusalem Feature

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem, the Los Angeles Times' features an online multimedia three-part series on the holy city and its many divisions. By and large, it is balanced.

The first article "A Holy City Still Divided," contains several important facts about Jerusalem often neglected by the mainstream media. For instance:

Heavy immigration had made Jews a majority in the city decades [before 1948], and by 1948 they accounted for 60% of its population.

Frequently the media diminishes the importance of the Temple Mount in Judaism by wrongly stating the Western Wall is the holiest site in Judaism. LA Times reporters Ken Ellingwood and Richard Boudreaux get it right:

Once again [after the war Israelis] had access to the holiest Jewish site: the plateau that Jews revere as the Temple Mount, which abuts the Western Wall and lies atop the ruins of the ancient Jewish temples.

And, unlike the New York Times, the LA Times makes clear that Palestinians building in eastern Jerusalem is on a massive scale, both legal and illegal.

It also allows the Jerusalem mayor to comment on the issue of disparity in infrastructure between eastern and western parts of the city:

[Mayor Uri Lupolianski] said East Jerusalem lagged because it was not developed under Jordanian rule, then grew so fast that Israeli officials couldn't keep up.
"The problem between East and West is a give," Lupolianski said. "We have to remember that we did not invent this situation. In 1967, a large part of East Jerusalem didn't have infrastructure such as running water and electricity."

Again, unlike the New York Times, the LA Times states clearly that east Jerusalem Arabs are entitled to receive Israeli citizenship:

Israel offered citizenship to Palestinians in East Jerusalem after the war, but few accepted.

The video for part 2 is also balanced, spelling out the inconveniences and difficulties for Arabs in eastern Jerusalem and the surrounding area due to the construction of Israel's security barrier, as well as discussing the context of Palestinian terror attacks against Jerusalem citizens and pointing to the dramatic reduction in these attacks thanks to the barrier.

The barrier proves to be an incovenience for many Arabs and a literal lifesaver for Israelis

In an interesting bonus, the LA Times provides pdf's of the front pages of the June 5-11, 1967 editions.

But there the multi-part feature has problems, too.

Most glaringly, no mention is made about the city under Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967, when the longstanding Jewish population was entirely expelled and synagogues and tombs were systematically destroyed and desecrated.

Also, at least twice in the videos, the reporters allow false Arab claims to go unchallenged. First, in "One City, Two Worlds," Wadi Joz neighborhood activist Moaz Zatari parrots the false canard:

It's impossible to get permission and if you build without permission, they'll fine you 300,000, 400,000 shekels and they'll destroy it anyway.

Similarly, in the video "Building Divisions," an Arab resident justifies his community's hostile rejection of their isolated Jewish neighbors by asking rhetorically:

If I go and buy a house on the Israeli side you think they will let me live there?

The answer is yes, although Ellingwood and Boudreaux don't say so there. They do report, however, in the article for part 2 that:

Rents [in eastern Jerusalem] have shot up, prompting some families to move into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods.

The last section of the series will be published tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Anyone with illusions that “journalists”, that is, reporters, were and are anything more than whiskey soaked, ink stained wretches, should read the writings of perhaps America’s greatest ever reporter, H.L. Mencken.

And though giving them college degrees in journalism, and employing them in the corporate “info-tainment” oligopoly, might on the surface seem to elevate them, at least to the level of reality show scriptwriters or car wash employees, in truth, it has made them even worse.

Because now they are of a single mind that there is, and can be, no better way of generating what passes for news to the public. Their “journalism” teachers told them so.

In truth, we are in an extended stagnant period of “journalism”, which will only end when someone creates a newspaper without the institutional alzheimers that afflicts them today. It will need a publisher who just publishes, an editor with no experience in newspaper editing, and reporters with no credentials, only an ability to write, and a willingness to seek out and find news stories themselves.

It will use no wire service news. Most likely, its international and national news will come from original Internet sources, and will be bylined as such.

And even its writing style will be abbreviated to just the critical facts and minimal puffery. It will also be heavy with local news.

But to tell this to a reporter today, and he will choke on his free sports bar hot wings. He will become outraged, say that it cannot, that it must not, be done, that it is sacrilege, profane and probably illegal.

Which is why he will soon be out of a job. He and his peers just got too big for their britches.

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