Reprinted from us4.campaign-archive1.com
Cops gun down un-armed journalist's career
LA Times fires Ted Rall -- evidence blows up in newspaper's face
By Greg Palast | Reader Supported News
Wednesday, 5. August 2015
Ted Rall is a lying, fantasist scumbag.
Or maybe, just maybe, the LA Times, complicit with the Los Angeles police, have slandered and slimed America's toughest critic of police violence.
The story: On July 27, the LA Times fired their long-time columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall for fabricating a story of police misconduct. The LA Times' evidence? A tape recording provided by the LAPD. Problem was, the tape was muffled--possibly tampered with.
When audio experts cleaned the garbage interference on the tape--uh, oh!- the LAPD and LA Times accusations fell to pieces.
The details: On May 11, Ted Rall wrote his umpteenth column in the LA Times, LAPD's Crosswalk Crackdown: Don't Police Have Something Better to do? about gang violence: the gang is the LAPD. This was Rall's lightest jab of all, a satirical remembrance of when, 14 years earlier, a cop put him in handcuffs for a simple jaywalking ticket.
Unbeknownst to Rall, the jaywalker-stalker cop had recorded this big bust. The LAPD dropped the tape on the Times.
Ted Rall's new book-length comic, Snowden, will be released on August 25.
Pre-order it from Amazon, B&N & others and get him on the bestseller list -- or make a tax-deductible donation and get a copy signed by Ted.
100% of the proceeds will go to Rall's defense. Or lend your support by making a No Gift Donation. (Rall is a fellow of The Palast Investigative Fund)
The police source said the recording and other info proved Rall was lying. That the tape proved that Rall had never been handcuffed -- nor, as Rall wrote in his column, was there a group of onlookers complaining about the cop's over-kill.
In other words, 'they' said and the Times accepted, Rall just made up the whole handcuff-and-crowd thing to smear the LAPD. On that basis, LA Times editor Nick Goldberg printed and signed a big-splash editorial saying, in effect, Rall had committed the unpardonable sin of fabricating a story--and Rall was fired.
This, of course, would end Rall's career as a syndicated newspaper columnist and cartoonist.
And I was going to have to fire Rall too. Rall is a journalism fellow of the Palast Investigative Fund, the not-for-profit foundation that backs our work. If the charges were true, I wouldn't hesitate to fire Rall's lying ass--but only after I break his pen and cut off his fingers.
I demanded a copy of the recording for our audio experts to review -- and asked Rall to do the same.
Oh, mama! To my surprise -- and Rall's glee -- the crowd that he had allegedly fantasized about suddenly came alive -- with three women shouting, "Why'd you handcuff him?" and "Take off his handcuffs!"-- the handcuffs that were supposedly fabricated by Rall. (One woman helpfully suggested to the officer, "Don't forget to ride his ---hole!")
Listen to it yourself, or read the true transcript. Check this against the LAPD's incomplete transcript.
As an investigative reporter, I was astonished that the LA Times did not even bother to do an independent analysis of the tape. Rall told me that a Times reporter, Paul Pringle, told him the Times simply accepted the recording transcript as truthful because it came from the LAPD.
And the LAPD hates hates hates Rall.
I can't blame them, given Rall's reports and caustic drawings, the truth hurts. The LA police union wrote that it "applauds [the] LA Times firing of cartoonist Rall," whose drawings drew blood from the police force infamous for its gang-style beating of the handcuffed Rodney King.
Rall said that reporter Pringle told him that, to bolster their case against Rall, the LAPD source said that the arresting cop, Will Durr, never used handcuffs in petty violation stops. However, by coincidence, a news report about that very same cop, Durr, handcuffing a driver on a routine traffic stop appeared in" The LA Times.
Oops!
My calls to the Times' "investigative reporter" Pringle went unanswered. LA Times opinion editor Nicolas Goldberg, whom I know and have long respected, said he was not authorized not go on record to defend his paper. The smell of panic in the Times' executive suite is getting stronger.
So I called the LAPD. Did they drop the garbled tape and false transcript on their critic? Oddly, spokesman Officer Mike Lopez, who knew the story well, could not confirm the LAPD was the source. Then, was it stolen from official police files?
Would the LAPD conduct an internal affairs investigation of the theft or mis-use of confidential police files?
Ironically, the LA Times is the biggest metropolitan daily in the USA with the guts to print Rall----and even pick up a Palast story or two. Clearly, the heat from The Heat is on. I really do hope that, in light of this new information, the paper will do the right thing and retract their statement.
Whatever the original justification for the Times' printed attack, to let it stand uncorrected now, in light of the new uncontroverted evidence, would violate core standards of journalistic ethics.
As for the Palast Fund, with the evidence now in hand, we will fight this attack on our journalist.
And, if the Times won't carry Rall's reports, GregPalast.com will . Sign up here and get his reports and 'toons free of charge.
The issue: Killing, not Jaywalking
Why am I supporting Rall? Because this is not about jaywalking. This is about killing. Police killings. And the ability of journalists to report just the facts, ma'am, free of fear of retribution by the police or media executives.
LA Times fires Ted Rall -- evidence blows up in newspaper's face
By Greg Palast | Reader Supported News
Wednesday, 5. August 2015
Ted Rall is a lying, fantasist scumbag.
Or maybe, just maybe, the LA Times, complicit with the Los Angeles police, have slandered and slimed America's toughest critic of police violence.
The story: On July 27, the LA Times fired their long-time columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall for fabricating a story of police misconduct. The LA Times' evidence? A tape recording provided by the LAPD. Problem was, the tape was muffled--possibly tampered with.
When audio experts cleaned the garbage interference on the tape--uh, oh!- the LAPD and LA Times accusations fell to pieces.
The details: On May 11, Ted Rall wrote his umpteenth column in the LA Times, LAPD's Crosswalk Crackdown: Don't Police Have Something Better to do? about gang violence: the gang is the LAPD. This was Rall's lightest jab of all, a satirical remembrance of when, 14 years earlier, a cop put him in handcuffs for a simple jaywalking ticket.
Unbeknownst to Rall, the jaywalker-stalker cop had recorded this big bust. The LAPD dropped the tape on the Times.
Ted Rall's new book-length comic, Snowden, will be released on August 25.
Pre-order it from Amazon, B&N & others and get him on the bestseller list -- or make a tax-deductible donation and get a copy signed by Ted.
100% of the proceeds will go to Rall's defense. Or lend your support by making a No Gift Donation. (Rall is a fellow of The Palast Investigative Fund)
The police source said the recording and other info proved Rall was lying. That the tape proved that Rall had never been handcuffed -- nor, as Rall wrote in his column, was there a group of onlookers complaining about the cop's over-kill.
In other words, 'they' said and the Times accepted, Rall just made up the whole handcuff-and-crowd thing to smear the LAPD. On that basis, LA Times editor Nick Goldberg printed and signed a big-splash editorial saying, in effect, Rall had committed the unpardonable sin of fabricating a story--and Rall was fired.
This, of course, would end Rall's career as a syndicated newspaper columnist and cartoonist.
And I was going to have to fire Rall too. Rall is a journalism fellow of the Palast Investigative Fund, the not-for-profit foundation that backs our work. If the charges were true, I wouldn't hesitate to fire Rall's lying ass--but only after I break his pen and cut off his fingers.
I demanded a copy of the recording for our audio experts to review -- and asked Rall to do the same.
Oh, mama! To my surprise -- and Rall's glee -- the crowd that he had allegedly fantasized about suddenly came alive -- with three women shouting, "Why'd you handcuff him?" and "Take off his handcuffs!"-- the handcuffs that were supposedly fabricated by Rall. (One woman helpfully suggested to the officer, "Don't forget to ride his ---hole!")
Listen to it yourself, or read the true transcript. Check this against the LAPD's incomplete transcript.
As an investigative reporter, I was astonished that the LA Times did not even bother to do an independent analysis of the tape. Rall told me that a Times reporter, Paul Pringle, told him the Times simply accepted the recording transcript as truthful because it came from the LAPD.
And the LAPD hates hates hates Rall.
I can't blame them, given Rall's reports and caustic drawings, the truth hurts. The LA police union wrote that it "applauds [the] LA Times firing of cartoonist Rall," whose drawings drew blood from the police force infamous for its gang-style beating of the handcuffed Rodney King.
Rall said that reporter Pringle told him that, to bolster their case against Rall, the LAPD source said that the arresting cop, Will Durr, never used handcuffs in petty violation stops. However, by coincidence, a news report about that very same cop, Durr, handcuffing a driver on a routine traffic stop appeared in" The LA Times.
Oops!
My calls to the Times' "investigative reporter" Pringle went unanswered. LA Times opinion editor Nicolas Goldberg, whom I know and have long respected, said he was not authorized not go on record to defend his paper. The smell of panic in the Times' executive suite is getting stronger.
So I called the LAPD. Did they drop the garbled tape and false transcript on their critic? Oddly, spokesman Officer Mike Lopez, who knew the story well, could not confirm the LAPD was the source. Then, was it stolen from official police files?
Would the LAPD conduct an internal affairs investigation of the theft or mis-use of confidential police files?
Ironically, the LA Times is the biggest metropolitan daily in the USA with the guts to print Rall----and even pick up a Palast story or two. Clearly, the heat from The Heat is on. I really do hope that, in light of this new information, the paper will do the right thing and retract their statement.
Whatever the original justification for the Times' printed attack, to let it stand uncorrected now, in light of the new uncontroverted evidence, would violate core standards of journalistic ethics.
As for the Palast Fund, with the evidence now in hand, we will fight this attack on our journalist.
And, if the Times won't carry Rall's reports, GregPalast.com will . Sign up here and get his reports and 'toons free of charge.
The issue: Killing, not Jaywalking
Why am I supporting Rall? Because this is not about jaywalking. This is about killing. Police killings. And the ability of journalists to report just the facts, ma'am, free of fear of retribution by the police or media executives.
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