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