It isn’t hard to imagine why the LAPD (or LAPPL police union) wasn’t crazy about me. Why didn’t it occur to the LA Times bigwigs that that audiotape supplied by the LAPD might not be everything they said it was?

 

People are asking how they can support the fight against the LA Times/LAPD, and police corruption and censorship of the press.

Thank you for asking! I can’t win without you. Here are some ways you can help.

You can sign the petition demanding my reinstatement at the LA Times.

Write a letter to the editor of the LA Times. They haven’t been publishing them, but they do read them.

Keep spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Reddit and other social media. Silence and obscurity are the big enemies; powerful institutions like the LAPD and LA Times count on people’s attention spans being short.

Write to media outlets that ought to be covering this story, but haven’t been. Don’t be like the LAPD. Be polite! Prime suspects include:

Charles M. Blow, NY Times columnist
Democracy Now with Amy Goodman
Associated Press
LA Weekly
KFI Radio Los Angeles
NPR Morning Edition
NPR All Things Considered
PBS NewsHour
NPR – On the Media
Columbia Journalism Review

Don’t feel limited by this list. These are just outlets that seem like obvious candidates.

I’ve just lost my job, and legal battles are time-consuming and expensive. If you’d like to help financially, there are several things you can do:

You can buy my new book about Edward Snowden.
Or buy one of my older books.
Or make a tax-deductible donation via the Palast Fund. (Yes, I really do get the money.)

If you’re an editor or know one, you can commission me to draw something, or write something, or speak about something for money. I do all sorts of things! And I’ll travel anywhere. I’ve designed wedding invitations, tattoos, you name it. I need work.

JE SUIS TED

I have not been surprised that the mainstream media has ignored the Ted Rall story. That was to be expected.

But I have been greatly surprised, and disappointed, by the tepid (at best) response from the so-called “Comics Community.”

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 28^th.

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.

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.