Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-Truth and page count are as thin at the LA Timesthese days as the broth at the local soup kitchen.
While it may have a new owner, the well-intentioned billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, it is still infected with a master and servant mindset when it comes to protecting local politicians from their troubles and failures.
For a more precise diagnosis, let’s turn to economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell:
“Journalists cannot serve two masters. To the extent that they take on the task of suppressing information or biting their tongue for the sake of some political agenda, they are betraying the trust of the public and corrupting their own profession.”
To prove Sowell’s point, dial back to my most recent column about the ongoing personal financial troubles of Southern California’s most influential lawmaker, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson, and his wife Fabian, to see when and how The Times– eventually – covered it.
Delay Reporting the Story
Two years ago, when I broke the story about the Wessons' repeated mortgage defaults despite a gross household income estimated to be north of $400,000 per year, Timesveteran City Hall reporter David Zahniser jumped on the story in less than two days. But last week, despite The Timesaveraging an anorexic 30+ pages in its non-Sunday print editions, Zahniser’s article didn’t appear online until four days later in a classic Friday afternoon news dump (a skeptic would say to help the story die before Monday morning drive radio can use it) and five days before appearing in the Saturday print edition, despite all story-related documents being readily available online.
Dilute the Story
Whoever writes headlines at The Timesaided the cause of watering down the Wesson story. The title of Zahniser’s Friday article online was a precise “Council President Herb Wesson confronted with new financial problems.”But by Saturday, the title morphed into a misleading “Wesson puts new money matter to rest,” despite the article content remaining identical.
Wesson’s money problems, according to court records, are very much alive, since no satisfaction of the judgment against Wesson had been filed.
Zahniser also allowed Wesson to conflate his 2016 money problems with his more recent credit card default with this doozy of an emailed quote from the lawmaker’s spokesperson:
“A few years ago our family experienced some financial challenges that have since been rectified,” he said in an emailed statement. “This bill has been paid in full.”
By “this bill,” what is it that Wesson means? The mortgage or the credit card defaults?
Zahniser also repeated Wesson’s dubious claim that he resolved his money problems by tapping into savings and retirement accounts. But if Zahniser or contributing reporter Emily Alpert-Reyes examined Wesson’s City of LA Ethics forms, they would see that Wesson never listed any such assets, meaning that they were being misled about how Wesson is handling his financial problems, or he is lying on his Ethics forms about his income and assets, as demonstrated by Wesson failing to disclose his wife’s salary as an executive with the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
Zahniser also failed to address Wesson’s lavish spending while defaulting on his mortgages and credit card, including an opulent September 2017 wedding for his son Justin to City Council aide Alexis Marin. Within hours of my column being published last week, those photos were deleted from the lifestyle blog on which they were published, though photos were aggregated by a Google ‘bot.
Lastly, Zahniser repeatedly misstated the role that the County of Los Angeles played in tracking Wesson’s defaults, suggesting it was the County that filed default and auction notices. Those things are not done by the County, but by the banks holding Wesson’s debt.
Distract from the Story with Irrelevance
To kill the bad taste of a story it would rather not report, Zahniser sprinkled irrelevant pixie dust into the article by ruminating whether Wesson’s son Justin might one day run for his father’s seat. Despite the Council president dodging Zahniser’s questions about his money problems – which was thesubject-at-hand – the reporter saved some word count to allow a completely off-topic quote from the senior Wesson about his son’s future.
Deny the Story
While there is no doubt that The Timeswas obligated to publish this article, here’s how we know they didn’t want to do it.
While LA Times reporters consistently use their Twitter accounts to trumpet their latest articles and those of their colleagues, as of Sunday morning, neither Zahniser nor Alpert-Reyes Tweeted their Wesson article to their collective 13,046 followers, begging this question:
Q: When do reporters notwant more clicks (and at least 13,000 more sets of eyes) on their articles?
A: When they are forced to write an article that they don’t want people to read.
Zahniser and Alpert-Reyes were indeed active on Twitter over the past few days on subjects personal and professional. The only thing missing is their embarrassing Wesson story.
The Times’protectionism of local politicians isn’t limited to Wesson. It especially holds true for LA’s slippery, absentee Mayor Eric Garcetti. Case in point: last week, Garcetti tried to un-ring, and then re-ring, his false claim that LA’s animal shelters (once again?) achieved “no kill” status despite a torrent of information that the shelters are at capacity and prepared to kill scores of healthy animals if not immediately adopted. But there’s not a word about this crisis from The Timesbecause, as is the case with Wesson, it hurts their favored politicians.
So, let’s wrap with a related thought from Sowell:
“Too many journalists see their work as an opportunity to promote their own pet political notions, rather than a responsibility to inform the public and let their readers and viewers decide for themselves.”
Are you hearing this, LA Times?
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Join his mailing list or offer verifiable tips and story ideas at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
