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?

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.

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

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

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

This morning, I wrote the following email to LA Times editorial page editor Nick Goldberg.

Dear Nick,

On Tuesday of last week, you published “A Note to Readers” indicating that The Times had serious doubt about the veracity of my May 11, 2015 blog post and, as a result, would no longer be publishing my work. Those doubts, you wrote and told me on the phone, were based upon an audiotape of my 2001 jaywalking arrest given to you by someone at the LAPD.

As I informed you Thursday, new information has since come to light confirming my account. As I have maintained all along, I told the truth. Will Durr, the LAPD officer who ticketed me in 2001, lied when he told Internal Affairs that he did not handcuff me, that there was no angry crowd, etc.

I asked an L.A.-based company, Post Haste Digital, to analyze the LAPD-supplied audiotape. The enhanced version of the audiotape, which you can listen to here:

http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-second-enhanced-tape-reveals-all/

proves beyond a reasonable doubt that your “doubts” were, as I told you repeatedly, completely unfounded and utterly without merit. You did not allow me to defend myself to the members of the editorial board, or to allow them to ask me questions. You treated me as though I was guilty until proven innocent, as though the burden of proof was upon me to prove that my story was true, rather than for the police to prove that my version was not. Your logic and reasoning were bizarre and incomprehensible, as when you questioned why I did not angrily protest the arrest while I was in cuffs — although I clearly stated that I had been polite and compliant in my blog and in my complaint to Internal Affairs. You believed the LAPD narrative based on a tape that appeared to be mostly noise.

You do not seem to have investigated the provenance of the tape, though it was provided by the LAPD, which has a long history of institutional violence, corruption and law-breaking. Despite the LAPD’s poor reputation for truth-telling, you did not take the basic step of having it independently analyzed for authenticity, or to see if additional data could be found on it. It fell to me, after your editorial smear, to do what you should have done yourself, with your far greater resources than I, a freelance cartoonist earning $200 per cartoon plus $100 per blog.

As a result of your poor judgement, I have been defamed in the pages of a major American newspaper and on hundreds of websites on the Internet. You have deprived me and my family of an important source of income and a prominent position in the world of journalism. You have tarnished my reputation in a way that I will never be able to fully repair.

What you have done to me is shameful. The chilling effect you have had on American journalism, sending the message that a major newspaper will fire a journalist at the request of the police, without solid proof, and to attempt to destroy his reputation, is incalculable.

In light of this new information, Nick, I hereby request that you retain, and not destroy or modify, all communications, records and information currently in your possession and control pertaining to me and my work, and that you direct all employees of The Los Angeles Times to do the same.

In light of the new information on the audiotape, I further request that you issue a full retraction of greater or equal prominence, of your July 27 “Note to Readers.” I request that you tag the original Note to indicate that it is incorrect.

In light of the new information, I request that you issue a formal apology in the pages of the Times, including your description of how you came into possession of the tape, who gave it to you or the Times, explain why you didn’t bother to check the tape, and that you ask an ombudsman or independent journalistic investigator to look into this fiasco.

In light of the new information, I request that you restore my cartoons and blog to the pages of the Los Angeles Times.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Ted Rall