Posted on 10/06/2003 9:30:06 AM PDT by Hal1950
LA Times Covers Up Davis Violence on Female Staff
Paper Put Two Hit Teams on Arnold, Zero Hit Team on Davis
~ By Jill Stewart
I couldn't have been more shocked to see the lurid stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger and the things several women allege he uttered or did to them. But it wasn't over the allegations, which I had read much of in a magazine before. I was most shocked at the Los Angeles Times.
Some politicos dub the Thursday before a big election "Dirty Tricks Thursday." That's the best day for an opponent to unload his bag of filth against another candidate, getting maximum headlines, while giving his stunned opponent no time to credibly investigate or respond to the charges.
It creates a Black Friday, where the candidate spends a precious business day right before the election desperately investigating the accusations, before facing a weekend in which reporters only care about further accusations that invariably spill out of the woodwork.
Dirty Tricks Thursday is not used by the media to sink a campaign.
Yet the Times managed to give every appearance of trying to do so. It's nothing short of journalistic malpractice when a paper mounts a last-minute attack that can make or break one of the most important elections in California history. The Times looked even more biased by giving two different reasons for publishing its gruesome article at the last minute.
Now, there's no time left before the election to separate fact from fiction regarding incidents that happened as long as 20 and 30 years ago.
I should disclose here that I know one of Schwarzenegger's accusers. She is a friendly acquaintance. I have no idea whether she was actually man-handled.
Is it possible that my acquaintance told friends a tall tale, after meeting Schwarzenegger, because back then it made a young woman terribly exotic if one of the hottest beefcakes in the world wouldn't keep his paws off you?
I have no idea.
Or, could she be telling the truth?
I have no idea.
And neither does the Los Angeles Times.
If the Times were a tabloid, this would hardly matter. But the newspaper is influential at times, and claims it has high standards. In this case, the paper gave in to its bias against Schwarzenegger:
Here's my proof:
Since at least 1997, the Times has been sitting on information that Gov. Gray Davis is an "office batterer" who has attacked female members of his staff, thrown objects at subservients, and launched into red-faced fits, screaming the f-word until staffers cower.
I published a lengthy article on Davis and his bizarre dual personality at the now-defunct New Times Los Angeles on Nov. 27, 1997, as well as several articles with similar information later on.
The Times was onto the story, too, and we crossed paths. My article, headlined "Closet Wacko Vs. Mega Fibber," detailed how Davis flew into a rage one day because female staffers had rearranged framed artwork on the walls of his office.
He so violently shoved his loyal, 62-year-old secretary out of a doorway that she suffered a breakdown, and refused to ever work in the same room with him. She worked at home, in an arrangement with state officials, then worked in a separate area where she was promised Davis would not go. She finally transferred to another job, desperate to avoid him.
He left a message on her phone machine. Not an apology. Just a request that she resume work, with the comment, "You know how I am."
Another woman, a policy analyst, had the unhappy chore in the mid-1990s of informing Davis that a fundraising source had dried up. When she told Davis, she recounted, Davis began screaming the f-word at the top of his lungs.
The woman stood to demand that he stop speaking that way, and, she says, Davis grabbed her by her shoulders and "shook me until my teeth rattled. I was so stunned I said, 'Good God Gray! Stop and look at what you are doing. Think what you are doing to me!'"
After my story ran, I waited for the Times to publish its story. It never did. When I spoke to a reporter involved, he said editors at the Times were against attacking a major political figure using anonymous sources.
Just what they did last week to Schwarzenegger.
Weeks ago, Times editors sent two teams of reporters to dig dirt on Schwarzenegger, one on his admitted use of steroids as a bodybuilder, one on the old charges of groping women from Premiere Magazine.
Who did the editors assign, weeks ago, to investigate Davis' violence against women who work for him?
Nobody.
The paper's protection of Davis is proof, on its face, of the gross bias within the paper. If Schwarzenegger is elected governor, it should be no surprise if Times reporters judge him far more harshly than they ever judged Davis. Jill's original story on Gray Davis' violence against female staffers is at www.windsofchange.net, scroll to Closet Wacko Vs. Mega-Fibber.
Or mail checks to or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com |
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Funny, I just saw this after posting to you on the other thread. Posting the links to related threads again.
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LA Weekly| October 6, 2003 | Bill Bradley
"Interestingly enough, in its Sunday story alleging sexually obnoxious behavior by Schwarzenegger, the (LA) Times has quietly dropped its claim that his political opponents werent pushing the story on the paper."
Even the NYT has tried to come clean with its retraction of the George Butler "I admire Hitler" story.
Why do freepers suddenly lend so much credibility to the NY and LA Times?
But they seem more than happy to run with unamed sources against Arnold. Didn't the LA Times also run stories without a named source about Bush's alleged cocaine use back during the election? Meanwhile- there were actual named sources about Clinton's cocaine use.
"Yes" on Recall, "No" on the L.A. Times [Hugh Hewitt]
Weekly Standard ^ | 10/06/2003 | Hugh Hewitt
Posted on 10/06/2003 6:25 AM PDT by veronica
The Los Angeles Times is no longer just part of the story on recall, they're now part of the election.
SUDDENLY Tuesday's election is more than a recall. It has also become a referendum on the Los Angeles Times.
In an astonishing story from page A34 of Sunday's Times, Readers Angry at The Times for Schwarzenegger Stories, the paper struggles to report the damage done to its reputation over the past three days while at the same time offering a lengthy apologia from editor John Carroll. Andrew Sullivan has described the Times as a "Smear Machine," columnist and former Times reporter Jill Stewart labeled their recent stories on Schwarzenegger as "hit pieces" and the Times' recent actions as "journalistic malpractice," and Susan Estrich used space on Friday's op-ed page to berate the paper for doing damage to women with legitimate charges of abuse. On my radio program Friday, Morton Kondracke expressed surprise and disapproval of Carroll's decisions in the run-up to Tuesday's campaign (Carroll used to be Kondracke's White House correspondent).
What surprises me is these people's surprise. The Times has been an ally of Gray Davis for five years and an undeclared combatant in the recall wars. That the paper doubled-down with Gray behind and fading is no shock. The transparency of their cheerleading has been evident in their lineup of in-house recall columnists, all four of whom have been outspoken critics of Arnold from the day he announced his campaign. And the paper's news coverage has been as unbalanced as its commentary.
THE PUBLIC has come to grips with the Times as an organ of the Democratic party, an incredible waste of its near-monopoly status in Southern California.
What is different about the paper's naked and increasingly wild coverage of anti-Arnold charges is the reaction among even long-suffering Times watchers. A thousand readers actually cancelled subscriptions after Thursday's report on Arnold (that's the number released by the Times; who knows what the real total is). The outrage and anger of readers can be heard on any talk-radio station. So loud is the din that the Times was obliged to cover it.
Yet the Times has its story, and is sticking to it, even to the extent of retailing on the front page new allegation as they turn up. Davis may be hurt if the paper gives moderates a reason strike back at institutionalized bias on Tuesday, and Arnold might be buoyed if disgusted Republicans switch from McClintock to the Terminator as a way of voting against the Times.
Consider the verdict that will be rendered by a win for recall: Except for the absentees, few if any voters will approach the polls ignorant of the Times' allegations.
It seems likely that a solid majority will reject the Times as untrustworthy. The paper may console itself that the electorate doesn't care about the charges, but that would be more self-delusion.
California doesn't trust its major newspaper. Not in the least. Now that's a story worth covering.
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
And why focus on the groping allegations when Lockyer (didn't he have an illegitimate child or ran around on his wife), Clinton, and Rev. Jesse J., among others in Davis's entourage, have faced allegations raning from extortion to rape?
Huh? Jill Stewart's picture (from her website):
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