WHAT A HEEL!: Just Who Is The One With The Conflict Of Interest At The Los Angeles Times?
Los Angeles Times managing editor Douglas Frantz killed a front-page article about the fight to get a floor vote on H.Res.106 because its writer, Mark Arax, is Armenian. Franz, who was a correspondent in Istanbul for both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times for several years, claims that Arax had "a conflict of interest" and a "position on the issue" so he reassigned the story to another reporter:
Washington reporter Rich Simon … turned around a decorous and somewhat routine take on Turkey’s ongoing mission to block Congress from recognizing the slaughter of more than 1 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkey during World War I, something several Western developed countries - including France and Canada - have already done. …
Arax, sounding incensed, sent an email to some of his fellow reporters, which made its way to the Weekly. …
"Colleagues, You should know that I had a Page One story killed this week by Doug Frantz. His stated rationale for killing the piece had nothing to do with any problems with the story itself. In an email to me, he cited no bias, no factual errors, no contextual mishaps, no glaring holes."
Arax then spelled out the holes he saw in Frantz’s objections … And he pushed the dispute up a notch, going so far as to suggest that the only person in the dustup who has a bias or personal stance is Frantz, who lived in Turkey for years.
Said Arax, in his email: "Because his logic is so illogical, questions must be raised about Frantz’ own objectivity, his past statements to colleagues that he personally opposes an Armenian genocide resolution and his friendship with Turkish government officials, including the consul general in Los Angeles who’s quoted in my story. Frantz is heavily involved and invested in defending the policies of Turkey."
Frantz used the pretext that Arax and five other reporters at The Times had signed a joint letter in September 2005, reminding the editors that the newspaper was not complying with its own policy of calling the Armenian Genocide, a genocide. The editors, at that time, had no problem with that letter.
On the contrary, they thanked all six reporters - five Armenian-Americans and one Jewish-American - for the reminder and pledged to comply with the paper's policy on this issue.
To make matters worse, in his e-mail, Frantz falsely referred to the above-cited letter as a "petition," and on that basis accused Arax of taking "a position" on the Armenian Genocide. He thus implied that all six letter-writers -- Mark Arax, Ralph Vartabedian, Robin Abcarian, Greg Krikorian, Chuck Philips, and Henry Weinstein -- were political activists rather than independent journalists.
By "prohibiting" Arax from writing on the genocide issue, Frantz, by implication, was also prohibiting all six journalists, among them a Pulitzer Prize winner, of ever reporting on this subject. In other words, Frantz was not just blocking one particular article and its author, but all future articles on the Armenian Genocide that may be written by any of these six journalists, thus practically issuing a gag order that silences all Armenian Americans working at the Times.
By the same logic, Frantz is implying that Latinos will be barred from writing on illegal immigrants, African American journalists from covering civil rights, Jewish-American reporters from writing about the Holocaust and Asian-Americans covering issues peculiar to their community.
Sadly, Frantz's misrepresentation of the joint letter as a "petition" initially helped convince other editors at The Times that Arax had an ethnic bias, thus gaining their support in his decision not to run his article. Only days later did these editors take the trouble to investigate the matter and discovered that they were misled by Frantz. Jim O'Shea, the top editor of the Los Angeles Times, in a meeting with this writer last week, said that the letter signed by the six journalists was not a "petition" at all, and that there was nothing improper about it. In fact, he admitted that the letter upheld existing L.A. Times policy.
Unfortunately, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times are not the only newspapers in the U.S. harboring Armenian Genocide deniers on their payrolls. The Washington Times (The Daily Blade, January 29, 2007) – a sort of farm team for The Wall Street Journal (third item, The Daily Blade, March 2, 2007) – are also among the shrillest shills for Turkey, continually pushing the myth that the 99.8 percent Muslim country is "secular" and "democratic," editorializing against adoption of the Armenian Genocide Resolution and using "scare quotes" whenever referring to the Genocide (that is, every time they state outright that it is fiction, not settled history).
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May 2, 2007
The Stiletto wrote:
Los Angeles media blog LA Observed published an open letter that Los Angeles Times staff writer Mark Arax e-mailed "to everyone on the news editing system laying out his side and demanding a public apology" from Managing Editor Doug Frantz for accusing him of bias and reassigning an article on H.Res.106 to a non-Armenian reporter. Here are excerpts: I have been accused by Doug Frantz of having an opinion on the Armenian genocide. "Are you now or have you ever been a believer in the Armenian Genocide?" Of the numerous accusations that Frantz has thrown ...
No single individual, no politician of any nationality, race or color, and specially no decent reporter who is supposed to be objective in his or her reporting has the right to decide about the Armenian Genocide. This is an issue that all recognized and objective historians who are not salaried by the Turks have already accepted it as a known fact.
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Regretfully, we see way too many words coming out of the mouth of people who think that there is a such thing as "Jewish truth". What it means is that they will do anything to support their own national interests regardless of how much they are unjust. These political organizations and private individuals are not different from the people who committed Genocide. Denying the truth is as much of a crime as killing millions of innocent people.
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The Stiletto knows many Jewish people of good conscience who are heartsick over what they consider to be an unprincipled and immoral alliance between Israel and Turkey. One of them even wrote to this blog just before Yom Kippur to ask forgiveness. Have faith that Israel will hear their anguished cries for justice.
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