LA Times fires Ted Rall for criticizing LAPD after saying he lied about them; turns out LAPD lied [View all]

[villager]

Ted Rall-LAPD Scandal: Rall Vindicated; LAPD, LA Times Under Fire


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In the column Rall recounted his own 2001 arrest for jaywalking on LA’s Melrose Avenue. Rall wrote that the arresting officer shoved him, cuffed him and tossed his driver’s license into the gutter, as a crowd of protesting onlookers gathered around.

After the column was published, the pressure on the columnist began. The LAPD approached the LA Times complaining about the column. They accused the columnist of being a liar. The LAPD furnished the Times with a 14-year-old tape of the incident. The LAPD claimed the tape proved Rall was lying about the stop, the officer’s poor treatment of him, even the crowd that protested.

The LAPD maintained the officer remained polite and professional throughout the incident and that Rall was never mistreated and that nobody rushed to his defense.

LA Times-editor-Nick-Goldberg-believed-the-cops-over-rall-in-the-ted-rall-lapd-la-times-scandalThe audio, which was of poor quality and hard to hear clearly, did include some polite conversation. But there was, on this tape, only 20 seconds of talk and fully 6 minutes of static and unintelligible noise.

But the editors of the LA Times agreed with the LAPD and accepted this flimsy evidence on face value. The Times fired its columnist. Then the Times went a step further and went public with its firing, questioning Rall’s integrity in a formal published note for all to read, and severing all ties with him.

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It took only three days for Rall to get the tape examined and discover it had been altered. Any journalist could have found an audio engineer and conducted such basic fact-checking.

Before making such a serious accusation against a journalist, neither the LAPD nor the LAT took the time to examine the evidence with thorough science.

The enhanced tape, released by Rall and aNewDomain Friday, provides a more complete picture of what happened that day on Melrose Avenue. Listen here.

A little over three minutes in, an onlooker can clearly be heard loudly asking Officer Durr to “take off the handcuffs” — twice.

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http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/01/ted-rall-lapd-la-firing-scandal-rall-vindicated-lapd-under-fire-exclusive/