I’ve been in hospital over the last few days for a long-planned operation. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to the Los Angeles Times for its part in my recovery. After my op, for a while my blood pressure was worryingly low. The doctors and nurses, bless ’em, think that it was a blood transfusion that got my blood pressure back up again. Nope. It was all down to fact that America’s fifth largest newspaper, founded in 1881, is but the skin of its former self inhabited by creatures reminiscent of the ichneumon wasp, a parasite that devours its host from the inside.
As Megan Fox writes at P J Media:
Under the headline “LAPD is investigating altercation involving Larry Elder at Venice Homeless Encampment,” the Times ran a photo (seen below) that makes it look like Elder is slapping a woman. This is a complete fabrication and not at all what really happened. Instead, it was a white woman in a gorilla mask hurling an egg at Elder. This photo that the Times used is of Elder greeting a woman in the crowd. The woman actually commented on the Times tweet to hold the paper accountable for this hideous lie. “Are you kidding me?” wrote Soledad Ursua. “You use this picture to make it look like [Larry Elder] is slapping me? He was attacked by a white female wearing a Gorilla Mask. Are you covering for racists? Disgusting.”
Whatever the LAT might have been a few decades ago ( a very so-so paper in my opinion) its now just a billionaires vanity project that employs mostly “social activist journalists” refugees from LA Weekly and other freesheets and a few old school journalists with union contacts working out their years to get their pension. Thats it.
Although the LAT print circulation has not collapsed as completely as the SF Chron (the other serious Cal newspaper) the LAT online readership and resulting subscription revenue has been the worst of any major regional newspaper.
Once the billionaire loses interest and cuts his losses the LAT is gone. At least as any kind of recognizable traditional newspaper. Much like the Oregonian in Portland reduced to little more than a pathetic badly written amateurish freesheet.
Any real journalism in the Southlands is being done by the TV newsroom reporters. They covered the Larry Elders monkey mask attack. But outside SocCal none of the other statewide TV stations did. At least the Bay Area ones did not.
Get well soon.
It was the predictable next step in this whole project of ‘being racist to be anti-racist’. The mask is coming off (which is an odd thing to find myself writing about a woman who put on a gorilla mask to mock the humbly-born black rival of a wealthy white liberal 🙂 ).
It is the nature of ideological power projects to empty their ideology of all objective content. (For example, Hitler ordered during WWII that the word ‘German’ be replaced everywhere with the word ‘Aryan’ in the Third Reich’s legal code.) IIRC, it was said in the LA Times (and not just there) that Newsom was the ‘black’ candidate and Elder the ‘white supremacist’ one. As Joe Biden said a year ago, if you don’t vote Democrat then “you ain’t black”. Identity politics is coming for your skin colour, not just your gender – or do I mean, for your eyesight, not just your mouth?
I am glad you are feeling better Natalie. Recover fully – and soon.
The bizarre situation of the West – vast Corporations and individual rich “capitalists” backing Marxists (for Frankfurt School “Woke” Marxism is still a form of Marxism) in the media, and the education system, and everywhere else.
It is like the late Roman Empire (East and West – with a few exceptions such as Emperor Majorian) insisting that the citizens remain unarmed – in the face of invasions, for fear that the citizens would use arms against the government. The “capitalist” establishment in the west is destroying the foundations of “capitalism” – perhaps in the hope that the obsession with race-gender-sexuality will distract attention from all the funny money they get from the Federal Reserve (News Flash richlings – it will NOT work).
As for the LA Times – it sat on (and has most likely now destroyed) recordings of what a certain Barack Obama said at a party for a pro terrorist back in the day. It did not want a “scoop” (no more than the FBI wants justice) – because an even more important task of the “mainstream” media than spreading lies, is COVERING UP THE TRUTH.
Meanwhile – remember all those people on Samizdata who pointed out that President Trump “could not” get rid of various officials? That has not stopped Mr Biden (or whoever is controlling him) – there is a massive purge under way, essentially any official who is not a leftist is being shown the door – and kicked out of the door.
It appears that “Civil Service rules” only operate one way – they prevent conservatives removing leftists, they do NOT prevent leftists removing conservatives.
“…an even more important task of the mainstream media …”
The only task of the propagandist is to promote and advance the agenda. Spreading lies is as virtuous as exposing lies relative to advancing the agenda.
Pravda by any other name (LA Times, NYT, etc) still smells as rank.
A Soviet’s freedom of speech was “guaranteed by law” as long as it was “in conformity with the interests of the working people” as determined by the Supreme Soviet.
C’est la tyrannie.
Naw, Biden’s on top of this! HR 7640, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, (a bill currently being argued in US Congress) will provide funds galore for “local” media companies – and the definition of “local” seems to mostly include the LAT, the NYT, the Wash Post, etc.
I can’t imagine that any such funds will be directed to non-woke media companies. The old joke was that fascism keeps rearing its head in the US and then lands in Europe, but I think it’s finally going to land here.
@bobby b
The NYT has its trust fund. The WaPo has the Bezos billions. The LAT guy will not keep pumping money into it no matter how much taxpayers money they get. HC 7640 wont change that.
They tried those kind of subsidies in France many decades ago and the national majors still lost circulation to such a degree that France had the lowest per capita readership in the western world. So the biggest circulation French newspapers was a regional newspaper (which did not get subsidies) and a sports paper. Government subsides kill circulation just as efficiently as craigslist.
All that something like HR 7640 would achieve is the accelerated destruction of what remains of major US newspapers. Just going through the western US newspapers that once did quality reporting we have LAT (freesheet drivel), SF Chron (almost gone), Sac Bee (hung in longest, now in death spiral), SF Merc (bizarre implosion), The Oregonean (stinking carcass), Seattle Times (last legs), Denver Post (freesheet drivel) etc etc.