Los Angeles Times

What is up with the media pitying the pornography industry?

On July 15, CNBC aired a special highlighting the industry’s financial woes. Then the Los Angeles Times did the same Aug. 10, in the article: “Tough Times in the Porn Industry.” Ben Fritz's article described the same economic problems the industry is facing, a weak economy, online porn and piracy, but failed to include any industry critics or point out negative aspects of porn.

Instead, Fritz focused on a porn actress who is struggling financially. He said Savannah Stern used to earn $150,000 a year, but now only makes a $50,000. Stern used to drive a Mercedes, but Fritz wrote, “She’s replacing it with a used Chevy Trailblazer-from her parents.”

Stern lamented that, “The opportunities in this industry really are disappearing. It’s extremely stressful.”

WOO! HOO!

Your humble correspondent has just beaten Ruslan Chagaev in the ring to become the World Heavyweight Champion! Okay, so maybe Chagaev wasn't even in the ring with me because I was only shadow boxing. However, I can count on  Peter Nicholas  of the Los Angles Times to report my victory despite my lack of an opponent in the ring.

That is pretty much how Nicholas reported the "victory" by Linda Douglass  in his story, White House rebuts Drudge Report link. Instead of the non-existent Chagaev in the ring, there were the missing Drudge videos which appear neither via link nor quote in the Nicholas story. In fact if you watch the Linda Douglass video on the White House blog, she never once shows the videos from the Drudge Report. Instead that White House page shows recent videos of President Obama proclaiming himself to be in favor of allowing people to keep their private health insurance. Of course, no link from either Linda Douglass nor Peter Nicholas to the actual Drudge videos or what was said in them.

Here is Nicholas' glowing report on how the White House "rebuts" the Drudge Report link videos which they never show:

Don't think of it as another tax. Think of it as tough love from Uncle Sam.

That's how Melissa Healy tried to sell Los Angeles Times readers on the notion of junk food sin taxes in her July 27 entry -- "Tough love for fat people: Tax their food to pay for healthcare" -- at the paper's Booster Shots blog:

When historians look back to identify the pivotal moments in the nation's struggle against obesity, they might point to the current period as the moment when those who influenced opinion and made public policy decided it was time to take the gloves off.

 As evidence of this new "get-tough" strategy on obesity, they may well cite a study released today by the Urban Institute titled "Reducing Obesity: Policy Strategies From the Tobacco Wars."

[...]

In the L.A. Times on July 22, writer Catherine Lyons again revealed a bit of her Bush Derangement Syndrome by calling the war on terror a “so-called war on terror.” What is with these people that simply cannot accept terms of reality? It’s like this every time they use the word terrorism, or “terrorism” as the Old Media so often terms it, and the war on terror. The Old Media simply refuses to understand that terrorism exists, that it is a problem, and that we are at war with terrorists.

This usage of the “so-called” remark was doubly amusing because Lyons threw in her “so-called war on terror” comment into a story about U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s visit to a closed meeting of Muslims held in Los Angeles on July 18. Her scoffing at the war on terror seemed geared to let Muslim readers in on the fact that she didn’t believe there was terrorism or that Bush was really fighting a war on terror… wink, wink.

It's one of the few times one can wish the reporting by NBC News was right and CNBC was wrong.

A segment on the July 21 "NBC Nightly News" pointed out some of the key points of a budget deal reached between California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and leaders of the state legislature. The deal means some service cuts - but also includes the possibility of exploration and drilling for oil off the California coast.

"California is our biggest state in terms of population and it long ago ran out of money," "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams said. "They got nothing to pay the vendors they owe and now they have struck a deal for more cuts, and these are going to hurt. They're going to allow offshore drilling for the money it will bring in. The LA Times reports tens of thousands of seniors and children would lose access to health care. Prisoners will spend less time in prison. And the governor is going to sell cars and furniture and office supplies and autograph some of it, he says, to raise more money. It's an unbelievable turn of events."

Robert Kaiser, an associate editor of The Washington Post, and a former managing editor (second banana) from 1991 to 1998, bubbled over with praise in a Sunday book review for ultraliberal Rep. Henry Waxman. The headline was "Moustache of Justice."

Kaiser compared Waxman to baseball star Ted Williams and biblical hero King David, and offered his heartfelt "gratitude to the voters of Beverly Hills and nearby areas who keep returning this ornery fellow to the House to challenge entrenched special interests."

The book’s title is simply The Waxman Report, authored by Waxman and Joshua Green (the reporter who exposed Bill Bennett’s gambling habit). Kaiser began with a flourish:

Meghan Daum of the L.A. Times has had an epiphany. The story of adulterous South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is still in the news, she's decided, because America's men see themselves reflected in him. Yes, Daum apparently feels that all men are adulterers, so they sympathize with him causing the story to keep bumping along.

Daum spies some "gasp--empathy" for the governor in various corners of the Old Media and this, she has decided, must mean that there is a "tiny bit of Mark Sanford" in men across the country. One wonders if Daum spied this same lecherous "sympathy" abounding among Democrats when a certain president was wagging his finger in our faces and saying he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica"?

Betcha she didn't. As a matter of fact, I'll bet no such thing crossed her mind as the Clinton's Monica-gate raged on and on.

Conservative talk radio hosts are terrorists.

So said the Speaker of California's Assembly in an interview published at the Los Angeles Times Saturday.

As amazing as it may seem, this was Karen Bass's (D-LA) response to the question, "How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature's work?" (h/t NBer Gary Hall):

Clearly, the most important takeaway from ABC's low-rated White House forum on health care was President Barack Obama's admission that he would go outside the constraints of a nationalized system to get the "very best care" if necessary for his own family.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey noted that Obama's response should properly be seen as "a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite."

A video of the exchange is at YouTube. To the extent possible, see if you think Diane Sawyer, standing next to the inquiring doctor, looks a bit peeved as the nature of his question becomes clear.

ABC's Jake Tapper and Karen Travers understood the newsworthiness of what Obama said, and led with it in their post-forum coverage:

Last July, when news first surfaced that Democrat John Edwards was reportedly having an affair, an editor at the Los Angeles Times forcefully instructed the staff not to report the story "until further notified." (The Times finally got around to tepidly reporting the scandal weeks later.)

Now take a look at today's Times. A huge color photo plasters the top of the front page. The large headline is, "Another GOP Bombshell."

The L.A. Times is parsing math.

If you were to not read Josh Meyer’s June 17 article very carefully, you might think that 90 percent of the weapons recovered from Mexican cartel raids originated in the United States:

The report by the congressional Government Accountability Office, the first federal assessment of the issue, offered blistering conclusions that will probably influence the debate over the role of U.S.-made weaponry as violence threatens to spill across the Mexico border.

According to a draft copy of the report, which will be released today, the growing number of weapons being smuggled into Mexico comprise more than 90% of the seized firearms that can be traced by authorities there.

Pay close attention, however, to the wording.  That’s 90 percent of the seized firearms – that authorities are able to trace.  This wording actually reflects the vagueness of the GAO report’s highlights:

In light of some awful high-profile murders by sick individuals, the Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten wants the Department of Homeland Security to revisit its report from earlier this year that connects potential terrorism to "right-wing extremism." And Rutten seems especially concerned about those serving in the military. From his column:

Two months ago, the Republican National Committee and many conservative commentators went into paroxysms of rage over a report by the Department of Homeland Security drawing attention to the potential terrorist threat of resurgent right-wing extremism. The department ended up apologizing for noting the extremist underground's attempts to recruit returning military personnel. (All three of the men involved in the Oklahoma City bombing met and developed their convictions while serving in the Army.) As the body count mounts, the department may want to reconsider that apology.

Rutten appears to imply that extremist "convictions" are developed while serving in the military.

Unemployment is zooming towards ten percent. The national debt is reaching levels never thought imaginable. And Barack Obama acts more like a celebrity than President. So what's bothering progressive nitwit Marc Cooper? Newt Gingrich!

Cooper's piece in the Los Angeles Times, "Newt Gingrich, zombie politician," is a typical bitter and stale attack on the former House Speaker: He resigned as Speaker "under a cloud of dishonor, disgrace and corruption"; he's remarried and divorced; he received a book advance while still in office. Blah, blah, blah. (His angry piece is hardly different than one that his curmudgeon friend Robert Scheer wrote ten years ago.)

Yet what's even worse is that Cooper can't avoid misleading his readers and failing to present his facts honestly. For example, Cooper writes,

"Remember during the campaign when John McCain attacked [Barack] Obama for acting like a celebrity and we all laughed at the grumpy old shellshocked fool? Well, it turns out he was right ...  It's getting to where you can't turn on your TV without seeing Obama."

That's not a Republican talking. It's Obama supporter Bill Maher in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, "Enough With the Obamathon." Maher - like most clear-thinking individuals - has pretty much seen enough of the never-ending adulation and exposure being heaped on President Obama. (I must admit: I never thought I'd use the words "clear-thinking" and "Maher" in the same sentence. But Maher's op-ed proves the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day.)

From Maher's article:

While the liberal Democratic mayor of Los Angeles has a thing for news babes, it seems his hometown paper has a penchant for leaving out the mayor's party affiliation from reporting on his liaisons.

"A Los Angeles television reporter is dating Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, about two years after his extramarital affair with another local newscaster led to the breakup of his 20-year marriage," Phil Willon of the Los Angeles Times informed readers in a June 2 article devoid of the mayor's Democratic party affiliation:

KTLA-TV Channel 5 reporter Lu Parker, a former Miss U.S.A., has been dating Villaraigosa since March, station officials confirmed Monday. On Sunday, while working as a weekend anchor, Parker announced a story about the likelihood of Villaraigosa running for governor in 2010.

The LAT is no stranger to omitting Villaraigosa's party affiliation from readers, as we at NewsBusters have noted. The omissions are all the more glaring when contrasted to the paper's treatment of scandal-plagued California Republican politicians. As I noted in NewsBusters back in October 2007:

It isn’t easy to shock the jaded audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, but Danish director Lars von Trier achieved that with his new movie "Antichrist." It wasn’t really the title. It wasn’t the weird scenes with a talking fox. It was the graphically portrayed sexual mutilation.

Let’s dispense with the plot. A couple is mourning the loss of a child. They go to an isolated cabin, the mother loses her mind and goes postal on her husband, and herself. Pressed by journalists about his film, von Trier claimed his movies choose him, not the other way around. "I never have a choice," he said. "It's the hand of God, I'm afraid." He added, "I am the best film director in the world."

Journalists don’t agree. "I thought I had my head down a lavatory, frankly," said Baz Bamigboye of London's Daily Mail, one writer who demanded that von Trier attempt to justify his sick movie. The Hollywood Reporter called it "torture porn."

Since when is the media so interested in keeping America abreast of the latest news coming out of Ireland? A commission in Ireland just released a report detailing awful abuse of children who attended Catholic schools "from the 1930's to the 1990's, when the last of the institutions closed." And what's ensued is practically an all-out media frenzy.

The AP, Reuters, the New York Times, the LA Times, Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and many others are all over the story. At Google news, the story returns "about 1,531" results.

Yes, the stories of abuse are quite troubling, but it sure seems that the media is singling out the Catholic Church's misdeeds - again.

Today - not decades ago - there is egregious abuse happening with far-greater occurrence in our nation's schools. Yet where's the coverage?

The L.A. Times is reporting that CNN's star talker Anderson Cooper has seen his ratings in a steady decline all year. It's so bad that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is starting to gain on Cooper's numbers for the first time ever.

MSNBC is still at the bottom of the Cable barrel, but with Cooper's plummeting ratings, MSNBC is suddenly looking competitive.

An explosive, front-page investigation on Sunday (5/10/09) in the Los Angeles Times reported that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) "repeatedly" returned teachers and aides credibly accused of child molestation back to classrooms, and these individuals then molested children again. The jaw-dropping story, by Times staffer Jason Song, is incredibly angering, and the tales of abuse are stomach-turning. (An accompanying audio slideshow at the Times web site is quite disturbing.)

In the last several years, media outlets have endlessly ripped and tarred the Catholic Church for mishandling episodes from decades ago. Meanwhile, these episodes in LAUSD are all quite recent. One documented case dates back to just last year!

Where's the outrage from the rest of the media?

President Obama today announced $17 billion in "spending cuts" Thursday.

Here are the substantive early paragraphs of the the Associated Press's coverage of what the President had to say:

Obama sent Congress a detailed budget Thursday proposing to eliminate or trim 121 programs and save $17 billion next year — not a trifle, for sure, but only about half of one percent of the $3.4 trillion in federal spending for the fiscal year begining in October.

The size of the savings clearly was a sore subject at the White House.

"It is important ... for all of you, as you're writing up these stories, to recognize that $17 billion taken out of our discretionary, non-defense budget, as well as portions of our defense budget, are significant," Obama told reporters. "They mean something."

Still, Obama's hit list was smaller than the one President George W. Bush included in his budget last year targeting 151 programs for $34 billion in savings.

These alleged cuts mean almost nothing, according to the Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl, who cut through the misdirection earlier today at The Corner (bolds are mine):

After the hijacking of the MV Maersk Alabama, we often heard from the mainstream media about how shipping executive companies don't want to arm their civilian crews for fear of an escalation of violence from pirates, not to mention the potential legal and liability headaches presented by such a policy change.

Well, yesterday, shipping company executive Philip Shapiro threw a wrench in that meme in his testimony before a Senate subcommittee in which he called for Congress to remove the legal and regulatory obstacles to arming civilian merchant vessels.

Unfortunately the story was ignored this morning by the broadcast network morning shows. What's more, Nexis and Web site searches yielded no print stories from today's Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times  -- although there is an online article by Rebecca Cole available here -- or the New York Times. The Gray Lady also failed to report on Richard Phillips' pro-armed crew remarks last week.

To its credit, CNN, both in print and broadcast, reported the story. From a May 5 CNN.com story:

Today's Los Angeles Times has a story about freelance comedy writers who get paid for their jokes submitted to late night comics that actually make the cut and air in a monologue. Times staffers Matea Gold and Richard Verrier report that "For some late-night hosts, the laughs come cheap."

But alas, it's actually a violation of labor contracts for late night shows to pay freelancers. What's more, with Conan O'Brien acceeding to Leno's throne in June, the practice is expected to stop altogether for NBC's "Tonight Show."

O'Brien is one of the few late-night hosts to refuse freelance jokes, and East Coast guild officials used his move to privately remind their California counterparts of the prohibition.

"Conan is one of the key players in this industry, and we knew he was pure on this issue," said Lowell Peterson, executive director of the WGA, East. "This was just an opportunity to let the West know that this was a culture that was moving west. We just want to encourage that culture."

Did you hear the one about Barack Obama?

You didn't?

Well, that's because jokes about him are still forbidden to America's comedians.

As the Los Angeles Times' Greg Braxton wrote Monday, this breaks a long-standing tradition of comics jabbing at the White House resident as often as possible (h/t Big Hollywood):

As media members pressure Congress and the White House to prosecute Bush administration officials for enhanced interrogation techniques employed at the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, they present their case as if such practices began quite recently.

This is by no means surprising as the full grips of Bush Derangement Syndrome cannot be felt without either a complete revision of history or one totally ignoring everything that happened prior to January 20, 2001.

With this in mind, an op-ed published in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, which accused one of the left's most-sacred golden idols, Robert F. Kennedy, of being involved in teaching torture techniques to Brazilian police officers, is sure to raise a few eyebrows (h/t Gary Hall):

As Kathleen Sebelius was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services on April 28, the media continued its biased coverage of her controversial appointment. News outlets ignored the reason GOP senators had delayed her confirmation - her pro-abortion extremism - and focused instead on the importance of having the Secretary in place to combat swine flu.

But the media failed to note that since the creation of The Department of Homeland Security epidemic-fighting efforts are no longer headed up by HHS. Homeland Security is supposed to work with the Center for Disease Control. The CDC is led by Acting Secretary Richard E. Besser since the Obama Administration has yet to nominate anyone for the top job, something the media, with exception of CNN's Ed Henry, haven't reported.

An interview with Former Secretary of HHS Donna Shalala on "Fox and Friends" April 29 asks if having no director at the department had an impact on the swine flu crisis.  Shalala said, "If you remember we transferred the emergency powers for this kind of outbreak to the Department of Homeland Security when it was created. So that power is no longer in HHS. There is no question though that the CDC plays a lead role here and it's very important to get a CDC director as well as the Secretary sworn in."

On Sunday (4/26/09), the Los Angeles Times finally got around to looking into the issue of Planned Parenthood workers caught on hidden camera appearing to violate the law. Workers at numerous clinics around the country appear to be illegally advising girls they believe to be underage to conceal statutory rape.

The Times profiled the hero of these undercover busts, Lila Rose, a 20-year-old student at UCLA ("Antiabortion movement gets a new-media twist"). Rose's pro-life mission that has been conducting these hidden-camera operations is called Live Action.

Yet, rather than directing any real outrage at Planned Parenthood for concealing the despicable crimes of statutory rape and child abuse, the Times seemed more perturbed at the "conservative" personalities behind Rose and her efforts. From the article:

Imagine that former Vice President Dick Cheney was set to be honored next month at a Catholic university's commencement ceremony and news came down that another person to be honored at the same ceremony with a different award declined the honor, stating that she felt it inappropriate for the university to honor a man who believes in and furthered the use of torture by condoning waterboarding of enemy combatants.

The press, it's safe to say, would have a field day. But that's not the case with the news of Mary Ann Glendon -- a pro-life Catholic and Harvard professor who is displeased with Notre Dame honoring pro-choice President Barack Obama -- declining to accept the Laetare Award from Notre Dame University.

Yesterday evening NewsBusters Editor-at-Large Brent Baker noted that only NBC's "Nightly News" touched on the story, and that only briefly. This morning, not even NBC's "Today" show mentioned the development in the ongoing commencement speech controversy. Broadcast TV competitors "Good Morning America" and CBS's "The Early Show" ignored the story as well.

Say you're the editor of a major U.S. city's newspaper and that sources in the national security community have informed your reporters that waterboarding was a crucial tactic in making a terrorist detainee spill his guts with information that, when followed up by authorities, thwarted a planned terrorist attack on same major U.S. city.

You would probably run the story on the front page with a banner headline to that effect, but at the very least you'd make sure that fact was reported in your paper's coverage.

That is, of course, unless you're the ideologically leftward, politically correct editors at the Los Angeles Times. Patterico has details in an April 27 post at his blog:

News editors need to retake Journalism 101 or move to features when stories about the White House dog take precedence over a controversial veto by the President's unconfirmed appointment to Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a bill, House Substitute for SB 218, April 23 which would have placed additional restrictions on third trimester abortions and allowed more criminal charges over late-term procedures to occur.

With the exception of "Special Report with Bret Baier" that night and "Fox and Friends" the morning of April 24, the broadcast media avoided covering the controversial decision. But "Today," "The Early Show," and "Good Morning America" all had time to cover Michelle Obama talking about the first family's new dog Bo the morning of April 24.

Check out the following two stories:

1. A former Catholic priest comes forward Monday (4/20/09) to claim that another priest abused him as a teenager nearly 30 years ago. (The accused priest has no other similar public complaints and denies the allegations against him.)

2. A former school teacher was sentenced Wednesday (4/22/09) after pleading no contest to eight felony counts, including having sex with two girls under the age of 16. The man "admitted to having intercourse with the girls, performing oral sex with the teens and taking extremely explicit nude photographs of his victims -- including pictures of him with one of the girls - before sending the images over the Internet."

Now it's quiz time! To which story did the Los Angeles Times devote two generous color photos and a 640-word article? Which story did the Times totally ignore?