I have been investigating the AAN because they awarded the rotten Pasadena Weekly for some very dubious articles, one recently.

I wrote an open letter to Richard Karpel, Executive Director of AAN here: http://pasadenanewprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/05/open-letter-to-richard-karpel-executive.html

Yes, the Pasadena Weekly is rotten, but you don’t hear too much about it. They have been sourcing right-wing extremists for years and pick up dubious National news too.

They attack public education and fan the flames of fear of Northwest Pasadena. They are really bad.

Virginia

My identity is no secret #38, unlike yours. Neither is my agenda; Jack Weiss may claim to represent liberal/progressive interests, but my experience of Weiss as my councilmember was that he was fairly uniformly unrepresentative of anyone but developers and their interests.

Your response to my point that the articles written about Jack Weiss were not ‘hit pieces,’ was simply to say “David Berger wrote that.” You did not deny that the articles were factual, truthful and relevant.

Of course they are actual, truthful and relevant. One of the reasons Jack Weiss failed to win was his inability to answer the serious questions about his troubled 8 years in office. His response was never to deal with the issue, it was always to attack and deflect attention. As a strategy, it failed.

As it is clear that you have conceded the substance of the matter, I wonder if you could explain a couple of points.

1) You said that I lost – meaning the primary election. Had you done your research more fully, you would have discovered that my candidacy and subsequent support for Trutanich was all about stopping Jack Weiss. So perhaps you would agree I won that battle?

2) You conclude with “So OF COURSE he’s delighted with the outcome, however it happened.” What does “however it happened”mean?

Last time I looked, the term ‘hit piece’ was applied to something that was either 1) untrue, 2) irrelevant but embarrassing or 3) slanted unfairly against the ‘victim.’ I do not believe a ‘hit piece’ is a fair characterization of the reporting of the truth, even if it is inconvenient for the ‘victim.’

So which of the categories do the ‘hit pieces’ fall into? As I recall, there were 3 topics that were less than favorable to Jack Weiss in the last week of the run up to the election.

First, Maeve Reston wrote about Jack Weiss’s on-going refusal to pay to the City Treasurer the illegal money-laundered campaign contributions that he received from an executive and associates of Alan Casden’s development corporation. Trutanich had challenged Weiss over this at the televised debate at the Westside Jewish Center. Weiss had remarked to the effect that Trutanich was distorting facts and that the “matter was settled years ago.” Why should we accept Weiss’s word? Reston, as a reporter had a duty to investigate, especially as Weiss’s claim of “years ago” seemed false in the light of the Fair Political Practices Committee’s 2007 demand to Weiss to pay the money as required. I think Reston concluded that Weiss faced several procedural obstacles in actually paying the money. So, the article was not 1) untrue, 2) irrelevant because ethics is perhaps more important for the City Attorney’s post, nor 3) slanted, because Reston reported on Weiss’s difficulties in paying the City Treasurer.

Next came Dave Zahniser’s story on Weiss’s illegal fundraiser held on April 27, 2009, in Beverly Hills. City Pensions Commissioner Kelly Candaelle co-hosted the event and did so in direct violation of the law – LA Municipal Code 49.7.8, which prohibits city appointees from engaging in fundraising for city elections. Jack Weiss attended the fundraiser, and doubtless saw Candaelle there. It must have occurred to Jack Weiss that the fundraiser was unlawful as Weiss not only voted to pass 49.7.8, but Jack Weiss also voted to appoint Candaelle. Zahniser did not state the obvious; that Jack Weiss openly allowed the law to be broken in his presence and to his advantage, instead reporting that when he (Zahniser) contacted the Mayor’s office the following day, the Mayor’s response was to deliver the resignation of Candaelle within 4 hours. Zahniser’s article was neither 1) untrue, 2) irrelevant, as Weiss is running for the post of chief law enforcement officer, so his tendency to misapply the law, or be ignorant of it, is highly relevant, and 3) it was not slanted as the focus was on Candaelle rather than Weiss.

The third alleged ‘hit piece’ occurred when FOX 11 news reported on a May 3, 2009 Hancock Park fundraiser that Weiss attended hosted by a person who had been convicted of several fraud and theft related felonies surrounding the operation of medical facilities. The story was not 1) untrue, and it was 2) relevant to the character of and choices made by Jack Weiss. Remember, Weiss had made the issue of associations with criminals a central theme in his negative ad against Trutanich for being a defense attorney. Of course 3) the slant of the report focused on Weiss, but then again, there really was no other logical focus; it was Weiss who made the decision to attend the fundraiser. Weiss compounded the poor choices he made in attending this event when he pretended that he was hearing of the gaffe for the first time from the Fox 11 reporter. In fact the Weiss campaign had known about the gaffe for 5 days prior to the Fox 11 interview, and had undertaken to return all donations.

All three ‘hit pieces’ fail to make the definition of a hit piece. They are, at best, fair and truthful reports of poor choices made the candidate for City Attorney, and at worst, worrisome with regard to the way Jack Weiss considers the way that laws either apply or do not apply to him.

Voters had every right to make informed choices particularly when Weiss had raised the issue of character in his bizarre denigration of the ethics of the legal profession. In the end the media saw at least three relevant, newsworthy and truthful red flags to Jack Weiss’s candidacy, and to fail to report them would have been the equivalent of a ‘hit piece’ on the electorate.

On a personal level, I delighted that Jack Weiss failed to win the election. The LA Times really got it right when they described Weiss as “Unfit” for the post. And after reading the above, does anyone truly believe Weiss had the morals and ethics for the job? It’s a sad day for Los Angeles politics that when you Google the phrase “Jack Weiss felon” you come up with some very inconvenient truths about Jack Weiss.

Notably Dennis Zine, who got to rant just on his feelings and unfounded jealousies about Weiss (like “I’m just as supportive of the Chief as him, no fair!” — except of course for dissing him on SO40 and promoting his own pointless “motion” all over talk radio, with PPL’s head Paul Weber, arguing with Bratton over the need for a self-named “paparazzi law,” and just a few other big things).

Zine was often quoted as he has been for years, just venting his personal dislike for Weiss, who was apparently too civilized ever to return the favor. (He avoided confronting all the negativity against him until the primary, probably to his detriment; when his campaign did retaliate the Times chose to slam him nastily with “he did it first and worst” ignoring the mailings of Weiss as a lapdog and nasty rhymes and worse (utterly irresponsibly putting this falsehood “out there” to be picked up). The Daily News has given Zine’s Weiss-bashing a lot of space too.

Plus they both ran feature articles about constituents going to Council as a group to criticize him: but without noting that they were sent by Trutanich in an orchestrated campaign stunt.

Last week when they ran a feature on Parks’ enormous police pension that he’s collecting simultaneously with his salary, they did NOT mention their new BFF/main source for hit pieces Dennis Zine’s own $80,000 pension. That was just plain irresponsible.

They did however laud him in another article for being “the only one” offering to take a 10% salary cut, grandstanding to look superior is more like it, without mentioning his pension advantage there either. The examples go on and on.

When he says that the “money can be better used for other city services that the public, especially the poor will need,” he’s showing that it’s this personal opinion that he’s trying to “prove.”

Many believe that public safety like cops and fire are THE number one issue, that if those guys don’t come when you call them the city is unlivable. Yes same thing when a pipe bursts in your street or your car keeps rutting from potholes (many streets haven’t been paved in decades, even though the economy was “good” so long), but especially in this economy they must prioritize. As it is LAPD doesn’t have enough cops to keep enough stationed in many areas, because they’re focused where they’re needed most. And opposing Bratton’s insistence on the cops promised from the trash fee hikes and Prop S (which he personally was recruited to campaign for, so he’s get a stake) is just keeping a commitment to the taxpayers/ homeowners.

Yet the Weekly keeps lionizing the very Budget Committee members (Parks, Smith and now also Rosendahl) who are betraying that trust and now saying that promise was never meant to be kept, that the money was always going to misc. places with just some to cops. Why? Because they like to depict as “heroes” anyone who defies the Mayor, who along with Weiss made supporting Bratton a keystone of policy.

I appreciate and respect that fact that you came over to comment regarding my post on your piece. Thank you for your courage in doing so. Many people wouldn’t.

Yet all that said, I think if you read carefully through the post you’ll see that I gave you credit for flagging the chief’s use of the 1956 comparison and that I agree with you on that point.

However, as Jill had already done a column talking about that same issue two months prior I questioned why you were redoing it with all of the same sources (plus some others, I realize), only at far, far far greater length.

Yet, as I read on in the piece, I saw your two other points:

You felt that the chief was taking credit for a drop in crime that was really more the result of widespread trends. But instead of exploring that issue, you simply attempted to prove it by showing only one side of a very complex issue about which there is much disagreement among criminal justice experts. Having reported on crime and law enforcement for nearly 20 years, I know the multiple sides of that argument, and it is very much a discussion worth having. But you didn’t have it. Instead you seemed intent only in slamming Bad Bill.

However the truly egregious thing for me—and the material that solidified your feature as a hit piece—was your entirely fact-free insinuation that Bratton was actively cooking the figures.

Spinning them is one thing, falsifying them is another. You accused him pressuring people to misreport. As I said above, we can all agree that Bratton spun the numbers to suit his PR needs. To argue otherwise is preposterous. But, again, this was a point that Jill had already covered in her column of Feb. 25. So why it the world would you go back to that well and reinterview the same list of people she had quoted—namely Mac Klien, George Tita and Gary Nanson, in order to say the same thing all over again, thus undercutting your contention that “We had no idea what we were going to find, but the 1956 stat seemed fishy so we started looking into it.”

Right.

Andrew Karman was source Jill had not mentioned, I’ll give you that. But he’s been making a career out of bashing Bratton for nearly two decades thus is everybody’s favorite go-to guy if they want a legitimate academic to criticize Bill Bratton. Karmen, with his crime trend analysis, has one piece of the puzzle that is worth factoring in, but it doesn’t come close to being the whole of the matter. AND it’s old news. Karmen’s been spouting this same line since Bratton was the NY Police commissioner. Been there, done that. Fell asleep.

Look, Patrick, I took the time to read some of your other work and you seem like a smart guy and a writer with talent who could make a genuine contribution.

Matters of gangs, law-enforcement and crime are terribly serious issues in our city. We have thousands of school kids in our most gang-ridden urban areas who display higher levels of PTSD than soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. And there is much about the mayor’s approach to gangs and gang crime reduction that very much deserves criticism. But to get to the really pressing issues (as opposed to rehashed stories about “The Chief said our crime level is the same as it was when people were watching “Leave it To Beaver” OMG!”) requires that one put aside political agendas and ask real questions. Forgive me, but I don’t believe you did that.

As for, “I’m afraid certain people who call themselves liberals are only interested in “hitting” the Weekly for whatever reason rather than defending and speaking up for the very people they always seemed so concerned about.”

You’re kidding, right? Well before you say that to me, you might want to do a teensy bit of checking into my past writing. I’m very Googleable. Hell, you can limit yourself to the Weekly’s archives if you like.

Yours,

Celeste

PS: Patrick, just so there is no misunderstanding, my criticism is limited to this single piece. Other things I read of yours struck me as passionate. skilled and honorable.

To me, the piece was investigative journalism that takes on the chief and how uses crime stats to fit his needs or the needs of politicians. We had no idea what we were going to find, but the 1956 stat seemed fishy so we started looking into it.

Right away, crime experts told us that the 1956 statistic was meaningless and explained why. I’ve since had feedback from cops, even Daryl Gates, who say the piece was right on the money.

I’m surprised people don’t have problems with the chief using these stats to prove what a great job he’s doing so he can justify spending more money on the police force. That money could be used for better city services that the public, especially the poor, will need during these difficult economic times.

I’m afraid certain people who call themselves liberals are only interested in “hitting” the Weekly for whatever reason rather than defending and speaking up for the very people they always seemed so concerned about.

Take care,
Patrick Range McDonald