Posted on 10/06/2003 2:25:02 PM PDT by archy
Columnist: Davis attacked female workers Accuses L.A. Times of bias after last-minute dish on Schwarzenegger
Posted: October 6, 2003
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Accusing the Los Angeles Times of tabloid tactics by publishing unsubstantiated allegations about Arnold Schwarzenegger on the eve of the California recall election, a columnist said the paper has been sitting on information Gov. Gray Davis is an "office batterer."
Los Angeles-based political commentator Jill Stewart, a Democrat, said Davis "has attacked female members of his staff, thrown objects at subservients and launched into red-faced fits, screaming the f-word until staffers cower."
Weeks ago, the syndicated columnist wrote, Times editors dispatched two teams of reporters to dig up dirt on Schwarzenegger but did nothing to investigate Davis' "violence" against women who work for him.
"The paper's protection of Davis is proof, on its face, of the gross bias within the paper," Stewart said. "If Schwarzenegger is elected governor, it should be no surprise if Times reporters judge him far more harshly than they ever judged Davis."
California voters will decide tomorrow whether to recall Davis and replace him with Schwarzenegger or another candidate.
Angry readers
The Times said in its Sunday edition about 1,000 readers had canceled subscriptions and some 400 phone callers had criticized its stories about anonymous women who accuse Schwarzenegger of groping and verbal harrassment during encounters dating to the early 1970s and as recently as 2000.
Many of the callers were angry and some were profane, said the paper, which published an initial front-page article Thursday with the stories of six women.
Defending the timing of the stories, Times Editor John Carrol pointed to the compressed schedule of the recall campaign, noting the paper had been pursuing the allegations for seven weeks.
Carrol, who insisted he received no tips from Schwarzenegger opponents, also pointed out the newspaper's critical coverage of both Davis and independent candidate Arianna Huffington.
However, in an interview today with talk-radio host Sean Hannity, Stewart claimed L.A. Times reporters have told her the paper held the story, despite warnings from lawyers it would hurt the L.A. Times more than it hurts Schwarzenegger.
At least one of Schwarzenegger's accusers was coached to come forward by a Democratic operative, she said.
Davis has called for a probe of the allegations against the Austrian-born actor.
'Dirty Tricks Thursday'
Stewart said she was shocked about the "lurid" stories the Times published about Schwarzenegger, but not over the allegations, which she had read before, in a magazine.
"I was most shocked at the Los Angeles Times," she wrote.
The commentator explained the Thursday before a big election is dubbed by politicos as "Dirty Tricks Thursday, which allows an opponent to unload dirt on a candidate with the maximum publicity and the minimum amount of time to credibly investigate or respond to the charges.
"It creates a Black Friday," Stewart wrote, "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."
She said "Dirty Tricks Thursday" is not used by the media to sink a campaign, but asserted 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," she said. "The Times looked even more biased by giving two different reasons for publishing its gruesome article at the last minute."
Stewart disclosed she is a "friendly acquaintance" of one of Schwarzenegger's accusers and has no idea whether her allegations are true.
But "neither does the Times," she argued.
If the Times were a tabloid, this would hardly matter," she said. "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."
Allegations against Davis
As proof of the Times' bias, she said, the paper has been sitting on accusations brought out in her Nov. 27, 1997, story in the now-defunct New Times and several other articles later with similar information.
Stewart's article, headlined "Closet Wacko Vs. Mega Fibber," detailed two incidents when Davis allegedly flew into a violent rage against female staffers.
In an incident in the mid-1990s, Davis began screaming the f-word at a policy analyst who informed him a key fundraising source had dried up, Stewart wrote.
The analyst said when she demanded Davis stop speaking that way, the governor 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!'"
In another incident, Stewart said, Davis "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."
An arrangement later was worked out by state officials for her to work at home, then in a separate area where Davis promised he would not go. Finally, Stewart said, the secretary transferred to another job, "desperate to avoid him."
Davis left his former assistant a phone message, Stewart said, but it was not an apology. The governor asked her to come back to work, commenting, "You know how I am."
Stewart said during her investigation of the Davis allegations she found out the Times also was pursuing the story, but the paper never published it.
"When I spoke to a reporter involved, he said editors at the Times were against attacking a major political figure using anonymous sources," she said.
"Just what they did last week to Schwarzenegger."
That oughta do it....
-archy-/-
However..........WHEN A BOSS SHOVES OR USES ABUSIVE LANGUAGE COUPLED WITH PHYSICAL CONTACT..........THAT IS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT BALL OF WAX! Or smut. Whatever.
Abuse combined with POWER to crush via monetary method is especially loathesome. Tends to cowar the bravest of the brave.
No, it's not just you. And those on a Hollywood movie set are likely going to a lot more tolerant of such behaviour than those at a ministerial association, or at a newspaper dinner party, which fits in somewhere in between. It depends a lot on the circumstances, and even more on the persoinalities involved.
Since breaking in summer interns and cub reporters was among the not always real pleasant tasks I was stuck with on one newspaper where I worked, I really went out of my way not to offer any comments or actions that might be misunderstood. And had no particular problems with the policy, save at one Christmas party when one of our teenage *summer* crew who'd overstayed her training period bid us her farewell, and our boss asked her if she had any regrets about the half-year she'd spent with us.
Just one, she said, there had been something she had always wanted to do but never had, and this was her last chance to go for it. And she grabbed me with both arms and planted a very serious kiss on me, surprising me sufficiently that I forgot to complain or resist for most of the half-minute or so she eliminated her lingering regret. Nobody said a thing about it to me afterward. -archy-/-
I likely remember better than you. And I remember too the Arkansas state police investigation into the murder of the Little Rock UPI Statehouse Bureau reporter, Judy Danielak, a few months after the Broadderick rape. Judy Danielak worked in the perfect location to learn many of the flaws and failings of Arkansas' then Attorney-General, but it was just after Clinton took the reins of Governor that she was shot in the head *by a sniper* while driving home from work. The police initially investigated leads related to her newsgathering activities, until the new governor's public statement regarding the tragic death of the young woman *at the hands of a random shot from a crazed sniper.* And all the cops knew what the real deal was then.
There were a few other *random shootings,* that followed though noone was injured in any of them, and different weapons were used; in the Danielak slaying, a large-caliber .357 magnum revolver was the murder weapon, an odd choice for a *sniper,* but common enough in the area, since they were then the issue weapon for the Arkansas State Police and Highway Patrol. Why, it's as if a car pulled up alongside her, and....
-archy-/-
I was sort of linking how extra terrible it is to be abused, verbally as well as physically by someone who holds a power grip over your head attached to your livlihood.
But your referance to the woman reporter cut down by a sniper (oh sure) is another awful footnote I now have to tuck away somewhere regarding the klinton rise to power and reign of terror. Thanks a lot, I think. :^(
I don't remember ever discussing this particular odd homicide.
Was this reporter, who was close enough to know the MO of billy boy as he served as AG in Arkansas, involved with helping Juanita?
Of the original 6 women cited in the LA Times last Thursday, 4 were anonymous. That means that over the past three decades, two women have come forward to identify themselves, and to say they were treated inappropriately. Two women in three decades....That's one episode of confirmed cases of inappropriate behavior every decade and a half.
The others you refer to, who are they? Bill Clinton's abuse of women had been researched for months and years. These charges against Arnold came out with no time to verify or reject the charges, with only a couple of days left in the campaign. We don't know whether these women are headcases who have neurotic fantasies about Arnold, or are looking for 15 minutes of fame.
As for the Davis "Office Batterer" story, the point of Jill Stewart's resurrecting this story isn't so much to go after Davis, but to point out the hypocracy of the LA Times.
Well, the hypocrisy of Davis supporters in general. Now even if he survives the recall election, which is most doubtful, he'll still be crippled politically and won't ever be a factor in an elective office again. That's at least a good start.
-archy-/-
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.