Dear Nick,
So, hey, it turns out your July 28th “A Note to Readers” wasn’t true. Turns out the LAPD audiotape confirms my story, not LAPD Officer Will Durr. You know, just like I said. Over and over and over.
For whatever reason, you and Paul Pringle didn’t bother to sit down with the recording in a decent sound space, because even to the naked ear on a good system, you can hear a woman shout “Take off his handcuffs!” You know, that woman in the crowd you said didn’t exist, talking about the handcuffs you said were never on my wrists, put on there by an officer that Pringle told me he’d never used, even though he was reported using cuffs in a news story in your paper, nearly the same day as the blog you said was full of lies.
You know, the blog that turned out to be 100%, Grade A, absolute truth.
Maybe, just maybe, editing isn’t something you’re very good at.
I think it would be less than the very least you could do to remove “A Note to Readers” from your website. Because, as I learned as a mere cartoonist and mere freelancer, one of the things newspapers do when they learn that a piece contains inaccuracies is to issue a retraction.
An apology should go up. Then I’ll be happy to go back to my weekly cartoon and blog. I love working with everyone there. OK, so maybe you and I won’t quite as friendly as before. But that’s cool. Everyone else there is nice. Putting my work back into the Times is the only way you can begin to make this right.
In all seriousness, it is never too late to admit you made a mistake. If you apologize, I’ll forgive you and move on.
But it’s not OK to pretend like you didn’t do anything wrong, and to act like I don’t exist. Especially when you really hurt someone, and especially when you have the power to easily reverse the error and make everything all right. Your behavior is really disgusting, Nick.
It’s been nine days since you learned you were wrong.
Check out these links. These are blogs that reprinted your defamatory “A Note to Readers,” and have not issued retractions.
Your lies are spreading like a virus.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/07/28/left-wing-cartoonist-ted-rall-fired-by-la-times-for-lying-about-lapd/
http://pjmedia.com/blog/ted-rall-versus-the-lapd/
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/matthew-balan/2015/07/28/la-times-fires-leftist-cartoonist-false-account-about-lapd
http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2015/07/29/la-times-fires-ted-rall-on-questions-of-integrity-rall-stands-by-story/
http://www.mediaite.com/online/la-times-drops-political-cartoonist-for-lying-about-police-brutality/
http://moonbattery.com/?p=61316
http://fourcolormedmon.blogspot.com/2015/07/anti-war-cartoonist-fired-from-la-times.html
http://patterico.com/2015/07/28/ted-rall-dumped-by-l-a-times-for-dishonesty/
http://iotwreport.com/left-wing-cartoonist-fired/
http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2015/07/31/liberal-cartoonist-dropped-after-facts-fail-to-match-his-memories/
Ted
8 Comments.
Wasn’t Napoleon the one who is credited with saying that it is a mistake to interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake?
From the whole mishandling of the original event to the “wall of silence” to the shutting down of the comment section on the “note to our readers” (Does the LA Times close comment sections after a week as a regular thing?) every single “response” the LA Times makes is an error in this farce.
Goldberg dismisses Ted. What does Goldberg do then? Goes on vacation. (I’d sure like to see the paperwork that indicates when he requested the time off.)
Pringle does the initial interviews with Ted. Pringle hasn’t made a single statement on the issue. Why? Why hasn’t Pringle made a statement on the big questions: “Why didn’t you get a cleaner copy of the tape? Did you know who provided the tape? Did you question their motives? Did you think you were being used? By whom?”
The tape’s provenance still hasn’t been disclosed. The LA Times says (but wait, why should we believe them? Whenever the questions get too hot, they go on vacation, clam up or shut down the comments) the LAPD provided the tape. But the LAPD denies that they’re the source, right? (Palast reported that denial, didn’t he?).
So if the LA Times is telling the truth, I stress that IF, then their source is lying now. Why would the LAPD lie if the LAPD was being fully truthful about the events in question?
All of this weighs strongly in Ted’s favor. People who are sure they’re right don’t disappear in the middle of a dispute. Ethical journalists do not suddenly fall silent. They explain why they did what they did and they back up those actions with sound ethics. And they do it promptly. This whole thing stinks to high heaven,
*But the LAPD denies that they’re the source, right?*
.
No, actually it was not a denial. Palast writes: “Oddly, spokesman Officer Mike Lopez, who knew the story well, could not confirm the LAPD was the source.”
That isn’t exactly a denial.
Thanks. The distinction is relevant. Especially if the LAPD later does state that it denies being the source, because then, …
I was going to type “Goldberg’s and Pringle’s reputations will be shot” and realized I couldn’t construct the correct very tense.
Then I was going to type “their reputations will be even worse” but that really can’t be applicable either.
Heck, I’ll just leave it as it is.
very tense = verb tense. sorry.
Make them pay, Ted. Make them pay for what they did to Gary Webb while you’re at it. Fuck those motherfuckers.
“Je suis Ted Rall”
I just watched the movie about Gary Webb, “Kill the Messenger,” again last night.
It has a very apt portrayal of the LA Times in it. What a gutless bunch of lickspittles.
The LA Times fired Gary Webb because the CIA wouldn’t confirm the story he wrote about the CIA.
Any journalist worthy of the name would not expect the CIA, or the LA Police Dept., to admit wrongdoing until the evidence became so strong as to be undeniable. And then, not even then.
What an authoritarian mouthpiece the LA Times is.
Also, the firing of Steven Salaita by the University of Illinois has backfired on the offending school’s chancellor for an attempt at a career-ending besmirchment of one who takes the exercise of the First Amendment seriously.
Sorry.
The LA Times didn’t fire Gary Webb.
It was the San Jose Mercury News who did the deed after the big LA Times effectively whipped the tiny SJMN back into the corporate propagandist line.
Now if only the LA Times had the moral fortitude to issue a correction just as I did now.
“Je suis Ted Rall”
“Je suis Edward Snowden”
“Je suis Chelsea Manning”
“Je suis Steven Salaita”
Yo, Ted! You’re obviously gearing up for a fight – have you considered GoFundMe? It’s a way for the hoi polloi to donate money to a cause. It’s the way that killer cops fund their defense – maybe you could use it for the good guys. I know I’d chip in.
Besides, it’d be an interesting social experiment to see how many people signed on. Can good triumph over evil? It’s theoretically possible.