Last week, the LA Times fired me for lying in an article I wrote for them about getting arrested for jaywalking. The Los Angeles Police Department gave the LA Times an audio recording they said proved that what I wrote hadn’t happened. It was 20 seconds of talk plus six minutes of noise. Neither LA Times reporter Paul Pringle, tasked with leading the investigation into me, nor LA Times editorial page editor Nick Goldberg, bothered to authenticate the tape or to analyze it.
With my reputation on the line, I did what the LAT should have done: I hired a professional post-production company in L.A. to take a look at the LAPD audio tape. The cleaned-up version shows shows that everything I said about the incident but that the LAPD denied was, in fact, true: the LAPD officer had been rude, so much so that he attracted a crowd of angry onlookers who shouted at him repeatedly. He did handcuff me, as I wrote.
You can listen to the tape, and read a transcript, here: http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-second-enhanced-tape-reveals-all
A timeline of developments in what is being called “The Ted Rall-LA Times-LAPD Scandal,” including numerous links, is here: http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-scandal-timeline
Anyone who would like to analyze the LAPD-provided recording (.wav format) themselves is welcome to write me via the Contact form at Rall.com.
I am exonerated.
There is no doubt now. I am completely vindicated. Yet, strangely, Goldberg’s career-killing “Editor’s Note” remains on the LA Times website. The paper not only refuses to issue a retraction, it won’t apologize or give me back my job. I can only conclude that the LAT is engaged in a malicious attempt to destroy my reputation with its defamatory smear, and ginned up the ridiculous charge that I lied as an excuse.
I hope that fair-minded readers will be able to set aside their politics and other personal biases, and consider both sides of the story.
I told the truth. The LAPD lied. Without checking their story, the LAT believed the LAPD. The Times should do the right thing, and the LAPD should take appropriate action against Officer Will Durr, as well as the police officials who illegally leaked the tape to the LAT to get me fired.
Ted Rall
10 Comments.
Congratulations, Ted!
Would your audio magicians be interested in examining the Trayvon Martin tape?
Ted, you are well aware that I began as a skeptic, leaning toward the LAPD version and trusting in the judgment of the LAT.
By now, hopefully you are also aware that your diligence and that of your associates, by providing enhanced versions of the audiotape, have totally persuaded me that you have been attacked and wrongfully accused by those venomous entities.
I’m now ashamed of the fact that it is a gross miscarriage of the American Way that an accused is subjected to a “guilty-until-proved-innocent” mentality.
I wish for you continued success in this endeavor and just recompense.
Nowadays? It’s not even construed as “Guilty until proven innocent,” now it just guilty regardless of the evidence at hand.
DanD
Ted,
The troll editors of the L.A. Times are much more frightened of the LAPD’s gangbanging fraternal police union than they are of any comparatively pissant, superior legal position you may possess … They can casually afford the lawyers to judicially cock-block you for years better than they can alienate a shareholder block (What, you mean police unions would never think of sufficiently investing in the (dying) local dead-tree media of large metropolitan centers as a tactic of corporate-media influence [and suppression]?).
There’s also a whole lot of not-too-covertly evil “progressives” and “conservatives” who want to see you get crushed. And then? Like Gary Webb and the rest of his assassinated journalist brethren, you’ll get depressed and shoot yourself in the head a couple of times. How new is your car Ted? Got Onstar? You could also be new-age assassinated like Michael Hastings.
So, with the CA Superior Court system as clogged up as it perpetually is, the punk editor who fired you will simply look down upon your balding head, smile and say “Go ahead cartoon-boy, let’s see if you can live long enough to collect anything.” Meanwhile, at the local PD target range they’re going to start using your own self-portrait for target practice.
They will try to make you feel like dead meat.
DanD
He fell down an elevator shaft, face-first onto a half-dozen bullets. Nothing to see here, move along.
That may very well happen. Again and again, to journalists and anyone else brave enough to stand up against corruption and the lying liars that let it fester. But guess what? There are WAY TOO MANY of us for anyone to kill all of us without putting the entire planet at jeopardy and since we already know that’s the plan, then don’t expect any of us to go quietly. So I wish anyone who wishes Ted or any of us harm a LOVELY day and keep plotting your little plots and committing your little crimes, we see you as much as you see us, and we’ve got microphones everywhere, too. So back at ya.
Hi Ted,
I live in Washington State now and don’t read the LAT anymore but my parents live in orange county and subscribe to the LAT. My Dad always looked for your cartoons. He isn’t much of an internet guy but I’ll tell him about your firing and ask him to write a letter to the editor supporting you.
You may get what you want and deserve from the LAT but only after spending a lot on an attorney with no guarantees
You will NEVER get what you want and deserve regarding the LAPD nor the LAT/LAPD “interaction.”
I understand that the LAT was sold “recently.” Would it be correct to assume that your relationship with the LAT began before that sale?
Why are they still lying? – well gosh, the answer is simple. In today’s big world of the internet, media and more, people have learned that if you keep repeating the same lies over and over long enough, that it has a big chance of becoming the common “truth” for many people – especially people who want it to be the truth. So sadly, you either have to start suing, because if you don’t, the truth be not accruing!
Ted,
You’re only “vindicated” if there’s genuine fallout for this. If Goldberg and Pringle keep their jobs after a “gosh, gee, pencils have erasers” mea culpa, you aren’t really vindicated. Sure, you’ve introduced enough doubt to force a fair hearing, NOW, but the damage is already done to your career.