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Three Weeks Later (!), the LA Times Responds to Charges They Fired Me as a Favor to the LAPD

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Ted Rall

It only took a couple zillion tweets, emails, demand letters and calls from investigative reporters to get someone from The Los Angeles “No One at the Times Will Talk About This” Times to answer the many questions raised by the paper’s firing me as its political cartoonist on July 28th.

In a “Readers’ Representative Journal” post, “readers representative” Deirdre Edgar throws down a blizzard of misdirection, trivialities and distractions meant to convince us, somehow, that (a) there’s nothing weird about the police still having a secret audiotape of a jaywalking arrest from 14 years ago, (b) it’s totally normal for the police to walk said tape over to a newspaper in an attempt to get a cartoonist known for not liking cops fired, (c) said newspaper has no reason to question the veracity or motivation of the cops against said cop-disliking cartoonist, and (d) said newspaper shouldn’t get said tape checked out by audio experts.

Fortunately, readers are smarter than the people who came up with the Times’ statement.

Actual slogan! “A conversation on newsroom ethics and standards.” At the LA Times, evidently, a “conversation” is where they talk and you listen. Or when they turn off the comments. Or delete them.

Seriously, Ms. Edgar? How the heck did you graduate from ombudsman school? You didn’t even call me for comment. I know that’s the Times’ way, but as an ombudsman, you’re supposed to sort of pretend to be kind of independent.

I’ll spare you the line-by-line dissection of this ridiculous exercise in corporate media bluster. But it would be a shame, after waiting three weeks (!) for the newspaper to finally explain themselves, not to respond to a few — well, 15 — things:

I’d like to thank the Times for finally hiring a pair of “forensic audio experts” to analyze the recording. Better late — after firing someone — than never, I always say.

  1. Unfortunately, the Times still hasn’t offered the independent investigation demanded by journalistic ethics and by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. This? Just more spin.
  2. Sadly, Ms. Edgar writes: “The experts engaged by The Times, in separate assessments, said they could not hear any mention of handcuffs.” Why couldn’t Ed Primeau, a media guy who does audio forensics on the side, hear the woman demanding that Officer Will Durr “Take off his handcuffs!”? Catalin Grigoras has some impressive credentials, but having a PhD doesn’t make you correct. The Times is asking everyone who heard that woman on the enhanced tape to believe them — not your lying ears.
  3. Notice something? Neither of the Times’ experts disputes the presence of other people at the scene — only that they can’t hear the word “handcuffs.”
  4. The burden of proof in this he said/he said story ought to be on the LA Times/LAPD (gotta love that they’re on the same team!) to prove that my account was a lie. After all, they accused me, and they provided a tape, and that tape is garbage. But this is the LA Times/LAPD, where you’re guilty until proven innocent. Whatever, I’m having my own audio forensics expert analyze it…not someone who does this work on the side, either.
  5. Edgar writes: “Rall has written repeatedly that the LAPD ignored his original complaint. Department records show that investigators looked into his allegations, questioned the officer who ticketed Rall, listened to the recording and tried repeatedly to reach Rall. Then-Police Chief Bernard C. Parks sent Rall a letter informing him that an investigation had determined his allegations were unfounded.” How could they “look into the allegations” without talking to me? I never got a message from them. When I called, they told me nothing. No communications, followed by a rejection letter? That’s called ignoring your complaint. Which, as most Angelenos who complain to the cops know, is almost always what they do.
  6. Edgar cites numerous examples of me talking about my bad experiences with police, with the unsurprising result that I don’t much care for them. So? As I wrote, I have my reasons.
  7. Edgar: “A conversation between Durr and Rall is audible, and it is civil. Durr is not heard being rude, ‘belligerent,’ ‘hostile’ or ‘ill-tempered,’ as Rall has asserted. The officer is heard calmly answering Rall’s questions.” True…sort of. You do hear him whistling into the mic when the angry crowd appeared, in what is apparently his attempt to drown out their complaints and taunts. (Compare the LAPD-provided WAV file to the one I had professionally enhanced here, which reveals the angry shouts and the “take off his handcuffs” line, and others.) But as you know if you’ve watched Alex singing “Singing in the Rain” in “A Clockwork Orange,” audio doesn’t even tell half the story…especially not audio that’s 95% static.
  8. The cop knew he was being taped. He acted accordingly. Sarcastically polite on audio, pushing me around and handcuffing me in the nonexistent video we’ll never see. How can you work at a newspaper and not understand this simple playing-to-the-tape idea?
  9. The Times still hasn’t tried to have the tape enhanced. Or they did, and they’re not sharing the results. How come? Because all that stuff — the angry crowd, the handcuffs, etc. ­— is on that tape. All you have to do is clean up the static.
  10. “Nor does Rall express any complaints about how is he being treated.” I just love this part. I wrote that I was compliant and polite. If I had been heard complaining about my treatment on tape, then I would have been lying. Pretzel logic!
  11. In a 2009 essay for another publication, I misremembered the cop as chucking my wallet (in which I carry my license), not just the license. Got me! I suppose I’m lucky Nick Goldberg didn’t have me executed…even though I got this very important right in the piece I wrote for, you know, him.
  12. Officer Will Durr “in his entire career, he said, he had never handcuffed anyone for jaywalking.” But he has handcuffed someone for a less serious offense than jaywalking, in an article in the Times!
  13. “Durr’s then-supervisor, Sgt. Russell Kilby, who investigated the allegations” — does the Times even know how that sounds? — “described Durr as ‘a non-problem officer,’ ‘a nice guy’ and ‘a hard worker.’” Well, he would say that. Nice, except for snottily making fun of the suspect in that Times piece about “aggressive driving.”
  14. The LAPD, Edgar says, “analyzed the tape.” Their own tape. Shockingly, it checked out!

As before, this latest communiqué raises more questions.

Who gave my file and audiotape to the Times: the LAPD, or the LAPPL police union?

Who received it at the Times?

Is the version Dropboxed to me a dub of something the LAPD gave the Times, or the same?

We know that the editorial board, typically the decision-makers in the firing of a cartoonist, was left out of the loop. So who decided to fire me in such a public, humiliating way?

What did the LAPD or LAPPL tell their contact at The Times that they wanted — what was their purpose in providing this information?

What will a highly-qualified independent audio forensics expert say about those suspicious clicks?

Why is the required ID information missing from the recording (location, ID of suspect, time, day)? Why is the tape so short?

What does the Times have to say about the angry people on the enhanced version?

Why didn’t the Times investigate the provenance of the tape before it fired me?

Why do they still refuse to let me tell my side of the story to the editorial board — and to allow an independent investigation?

Cut the crap, Timesmen. Do the right thing.

Retract your defamatory “A Note to Readers” from July 28, 2015.

Issue an apology.

Be transparent. Tell your readers exactly how this tape made its way to you, from whom and to whom, and why.

And put my drawings back in the paper. Especially the ones that give the cops a hard time for beating and killing people.

Why the Ted Rall LA Times Scandal Matters So Much

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Ted Rall

Over at ANewDomain.net, which you should support because I would never have had a forum with which to try to clear my name post-LA Times smear without them, and also because they post interesting stuff, and because they pay me, and support SkewedNews.net, Tom Ewing has published legal analysis on my case.

It’s titled “Why the Ted Rall LA Times Scandal Matters So Much.” Some outtakes:

But the bottom line is this: If any of this could happen to Rall — and it did — it could happen to you.

Whether you’re a fan of Rall’s controversial political cartoons and essays is irrelevant.

Even if you believe, as many of his detractors do, that Rall is little more than a caustic, leftist/libertarian asshole, what happened to him at the hands of the Times is still alarming. And wrong.

So, the Times decided to trash this journalist’s reputation on the basis on a nearly inaudible tape — rather than opt for a quieter response.

We now know that an enhanced version of the audio recording fully supports Ted’s version of events. Listen to it here.

Now, what message does this episode send other journalists?

The message: If you write critical articles about the police and the police don’t care for the criticism, you will lose your job.

Do we really not want the media to ask no questions about the deaths of Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Samuel DuBose and Sandra Bland?

You see, in the absence of any real evidence whatsoever and by the Times own description of what happened, here’s the only possible conclusion: The LAPD simply asked the Times to fire Ted.

If Rall and aNewDomain had not enhanced the faulty LAPD evidence theTimes said it relied on to (so publicly) fire him, Rall’s future as a journalist, commentator or political cartoonist would’ve been destroyed. It actually still looks pretty much destroyed.

This is because neither the Times nor the LAPD have acknowledged the new evidence in their public denouncements of Rall, nor have they moved to independently investigate or authenticate the new evidence.

 

No one but the police or the involved officers could have known the police tape that recorded Rall’s 2001 jaywalking stop even existed. What other tapes does it or other police agencies have that Americans don’t know about and could use to defend themselves?

How many other recordings does the LAPD have in its files who revelation might cause a revision of long-settled court cases?

This sounds like the makings for an interesting class action lawsuit, does it not?

 

 

PC Magazine Book Review: “Snowden”

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Ted Rall

Just received my first copies of my graphic novel-format biography of Edward Snowden. Full color!

SnowdenCoverBookSnowdenBookInside

AND I just saw the first book review. It’s in PC Magazine:

…darkly funny look at our ongoing surveillance nightmare.

…for every sobering, dystopic example of privacy invasion, there’s an absurd comic punchline like NSA workers gawking at naked couples through hacked web cameras. It’s in moments like that where Rall’s unflattering, political cartoon art style shines.

With its succinct prose and pictures on every page, Rall’s Snowden reads like a children’s book for adults. But it’s also an entertaining, exhaustive, and approachable look at an incredibly important and relevant topic, because information security affects everyone whether you like it or not. Snowden by Ted Rall hits bookshelves on August 25.

Mainstream Media Takes Notice of @LATimesLAPDGate

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Ted Rall

More than two weeks after it became clear that the LA Times fired me as a favor to the LAPD, a major daily newspaper is reporting about it.

A British newspaper.

Sam Thielman of The Guardian writes “Fired Los Angeles Times cartoonist hits back at newspaper for siding with LAPD” for today’s editions:

Pringle did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Nicholas Goldberg, the editor of the opinion page who wrote the note appended to Rall’s May column, said he was not authorized to comment on the story.

The Times press office has been contacted for comment.

The LAPD did not respond to a request for comment, but the department’s union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said they “applaud the L.A. Times firing of cartoonist Ted Rall” in a blog post (since removed, but also issued as a press release here) describing how, “[s]ince [Rall’s] blog post, the LAPD has approached the Times and provided reports and records of the incident, including an audiotape of the encounter”.

Read the whole thing here.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Hillary Doesn’t Care That Much About Abortion Rights

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Ted Rall

Hillary Clinton’s recent attack on fellow presidential hopeful Marco Rubio (R-FL) over abortion (“offensive,” “outrageous” and “troubling,” she said) reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to wonder aloud for some time:

Why doesn’t the Democratic Party call for a federal law legalizing abortion?

Thanks to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, abortion is legal. Given the 5-4 balance of the Supreme Court barely in favor of that 1973 decision, however, federal abortion rights could vanish following the next vacancy on the high bench, especially if it happens under a Republican president. (Abortion would remain legal in liberal states.)

Four decades of legal limbo is enough.

If Hillary, Bernie Sanders and Congressional Democrats really believe in a woman’s right to control her own body — for the record, I think they do — they should jointly endorse a bill legalizing abortion throughout the land.

It is true, of course, that full-throated support for reproductive freedom carries political risks.

With only 50% in support of abortion rights and 35% against, Democrats would risk losing some of the conservatives we used to call Reagan Democrats, or just swing voters, especially Catholics. Incredibly, you’re more likely to poke someone who likes gay marriage than abortion when you shake a stick.

Of even greater concern to Democratic strategists is losing leverage over their progressive wing. Following decades of marginalization and watching their political views overlooked in favor of Clintonite “Third Way” centrists, the left is disgruntled, voting and giving donations in smaller numbers. One thing that still motivates these liberals to turn out for Democrats is the prospect of a Republican-controlled Supreme Court, followed by the overturning of Roe v. Wade — a threat many social-issue liberal Democrats find appalling.

If Congress legalizes abortion, this motivation goes away — and leaves a party that went along with the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, passed welfare reform, and enthusiastically pushed through a spate of free trade agreements viewed by economic populists as corporate giveaways that kill American jobs.

This is almost certainly why Hillary Clinton talks a good game on abortion — and that’s where it ends. She just doesn’t care enough to take a chance.

Despite the downsides, Clinton, Sanders and the party ought to press for a federal bill. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama played to the polls, the latter endorsing gay marriage, saying his views had “evolved” only after surveys told him it was safe. Voters are starving for leadership, for politicians who point the way forward, telling us where we should go before we form a national consensus.

Certainly, such a move would solidify support for the party among women by signaling that it is willing to take risks. The bill could go down to defeat. But legislative defeat could become a moral victory, as in Ellen Pao’s unsuccessful sex discrimination lawsuit.

It would also put Congressional Republicans on the spot, forcing them to go on the record as voting against abortion rights — which most American women support. This tactic, forcing opponents to vote “nay” so you can beat them up with attack ads later, is rarely used by Democrats. I don’t understand why. Is the SCOTUS threat really so powerful that it justifies the real possibility that tens of millions of women and girls in conservative Southern states will lose abortion as an option? Aren’t strategists worried that, at some point, liberal women in particular will get wise, and ask the same question I’m posing here: why don’t Dems even try for a federal abortion-rights bill?

If nothing else, it would be nice to see an end to the 42-year-old ritual of protests outside the Supreme Court in Washington, attended by pro-choice and pro-life factions yelling insults at each other.

It’s time for American political culture to get real and grow up about abortion. It’s silly and weird and unproductive for a major nation to remain so paralyzed so long over such a major issue. Women deserve to be able rely upon more than a flimsy court decision.

There ought to be a law — and Democrats should lead the charge.

(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower, to be published August 25th. Want to support independent journalism? You can subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)

COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

I Wrote to Nick Goldberg Today

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Ted Rall

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

SYNDICATED COLUMN: 14 Years Ago, a Woman Vindicated Me Now

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Ted Rall

A woman walking down the street in West Hollywood saw a police officer roughing up and handcuffing a man, whom he accused of jaywalking. Appalled, she challenged the officer. “Take off his handcuffs!” she demanded.

Noticing the commotion, more passersby approached. Soon a small crowd of people had gathered around. Some people shouted at the officer to stop. Others mocked his aggressiveness, sarcastically suggesting that his unfulfilled sexual desires explained his behavior. Surrounded by pissed-off citizens, the cop replied with a smirk: “I’m SO scared.” Others stood and watched, witnessing.

This happened 14 years ago. The man was me.

None of us knew that the cop, Officer Will Durr, was secretly capturing the audio of my arrest on a tape recorder — some of it, anyway.

Last week, a LAPD dub of Durr’s tape savaged my career in journalism, which can never be the same. But then that woman’s angry voice — “Take off his handcuffs!” — vindicated me. It was a kind of time travel. This woman, yelling on Melrose Boulevard on October 3, 2001, changed my life on July 30, 2015.

I wish I could go back in time so I could kiss her.

Or do her laundry. Whatever she wants.

About two weeks ago, someone at the LAPD and/or LAPPL (the LAPD police union) gave the dub of Durr’s tape to some unknown person at The Los Angeles Times. Despite obvious gaps in their credibility and logic, the Times used the tape as its justification, not to merely fire me, but to internationally shame me with a “Note to Readers,” signed by editorial page editor Nick Goldberg, that accused me of having lied about the cop’s actions during my 2001 jaywalking bust. In journalism, that’s a career death sentence, and Goldberg knew it.

What Goldberg didn’t know was that the real liars were the LAPD. And what Goldberg didn’t learn was one of the first rules of journalism: check it out.

If I brought a tape to any editor worth a damn, she’d say: have it analyzed and checked for signs of tampering. Not Goldberg, or Times reporter Paul Pringle, who was assigned to investigate me. They “authenticated” the tape by — get this — asking the cops whether their own tape was legit.

The answer to that question turned out to be: Not so much.

Thank god for technology. Despite Officer Durr’s apparent attempts to cover up those unpleasant remarks from the angry crowd by whistling into his mic, and covering it up, audio technicians were able to clean it up enough to reveal the truth.

“Take off his handcuffs!” That line, and many others, proved that I’d been cuffed, and that there had been an angry crowd — two crucial bones of contention. In the court of public opinion, I’d been vindicated.

The truth: which I’d been telling. The truth: which the cops did not. The truth: which the LA Times doesn’t care about — I’m still fired. The now-discredited “Note to Readers” is still up, with no mention of the secrets revealed by the enhanced audio tape.

But the truth is out. I have a fight ahead of me, sure. But I couldn’t defend myself without it.

There’s no way that woman could have known, or knows now, that her declarative statement — “Take off his handcuffs!” — was or ever would do any good. She, and the other witnesses, probably felt angry and impotent and helpless in the face of obvious injustice by an agent of the state.

If the woman on Melrose, whom I would kiss if I could, remembers this incident, it’s likely as just another time where she got involved but accomplished nothing.

But she’d be wrong.

My case serves as yet another example of the importance of stepping forward to witness, document and interfere with unfairness and state violence whenever you can. If, for example, you see a cop hassling someone, document the stop with your cellphone camera (don’t comment or talk because it blocks other sounds). If you dare, speak truth to power by demanding the officer’s badge information and name, and asking that he stop what he’s doing. Even if you just stand and watch, you greatly reduce the chances of another brutal police killing or maiming.

As a white man, I’m lucky. I suffer only a small fraction of the disgusting greed and brutality of corrupt police officers experienced by black and other people of color every day. I’m grateful.

One small way I can show my appreciation for my privileged status in American society is to speak out, like here, about my own experiences with bad cops. Because if it’s happening to white guys like me, you know it’s even worse for people of color.

In this case, however, I couldn’t have done it without that voice from the past, that beautiful angry ghost from 2001. So: witness. Document. Fight back.

It really does count.

(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for The Los Angeles Times, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower, to be published August 25th. Want to support independent journalism? You can subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)

COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Tuesday’s LA Times – LAPD Scandal Media Roundup

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Ted Rall

Yesterday, I sent an email to several right-wing blogs asking them to retract their previous repetitions of the LA Times Editor’s Note about me. Right Wing News, which has frequently attacked my politics and my work in the past, writes that, after listening to the new enhanced audiotape of my 2001 jaywalking arrest, it is difficult to determine what happened, and that there is significant doubt that the LA Times should have fired me, as opposed to airing the police’s disagreement with my account:
Right Wing News: Was The LA Times Right To Fire Ted Rall For Supposedly Lying About A 2001 Encounter With The Police?

The New York Observer has published a followup to their initial report:
New York Observer: Former LA Times Cartoonist Mulls Lawsuit

I was vindicated. So why is the LA Times still lying about my journalistic integrity?

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Ted Rall

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

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