03.25.06
Anthony Pellicano and the Los Angeles Times
Nearly everyone in Los Angeles, from the beat cop to the studio executive, knew that Anthony Pellicano was used by many of the power players to do what they needed to be done with “no questions asked”. What took the “traditional media” so long to “get it”? Why haven’t the many investigative journalists in Pellicano’s hometown really looked into not only who hired him but what was common knowledge about Pellicano’s shenanigans for well over the past decade? Were they truly ignorant of Pellicano’s illegal tactics, even though at least since 1993 his victims have bitterly complained to anyone who might listen to them? One has to give a moment’s thought especially to the behavior of the Los Angeles Times in this morass. After all, they are the premiere newspaper on Pellicano’s home turf.
Initially, in their early reporting about Pellicano, they gushed like love-struck school girls about his daring feats and deeds of wonder from Delorean to Judas Priest to Michael Jackson fame. They were the first and often the only news organization to always report the incarcerated P.I.’s viewpoint. Everytime Pellicano said, “I wasn’t there” (when he was spotted outside Nicole Simpson’s house the night she and Ron Goldman were brutally murdered), “I didn’t sanitize anything” (when the coroner said that Don Simpson’s death scene had been altered) and down to “I’ll never snitch on my clients” (right before Pellicano went to federal prison in 2003) the LA Times was thoroughly Johnny On The Spot.
One of the Time’s staff reporters , Chuck Philips, who was the lucky one to get the gumshoe’s “I’ll never snitch” swan song, often bragged that he had a very “special” relationship with Pellicano. Again, it gives one pause to wonder exactly what sort of objective journalism was involved in the many stories he covered for the Times since 1990 where Pellicano had been an active player. These stories included Judas Priest, Michael Jackson and Don Simpson to mention a smattering. Philips appeared to be only one of a burdgeoning crowd at the Times though.
Taking a look at what the Los Angeles Times chose to give almost no coverage to is equally arresting. They barely reported on the Jones rape case that was happening on their own doorstep. They helped demonize their own reporter, Anita Busch, when she was hounded by Pellicano and sought appropriate legal relief. They also failed to report anything of importance really on the ongoing federal investigation about Pellicano’s wiretapping and extortion for almost the past three years, unless they were forced into it by competing news agencies or blogs.
Okay, maybe the Los Angeles Times is just allowed to have had their own opinion on things in the past. Perhaps their editors, reporters and attorneys thought that Pellicano was really a nice, cuddly guy and had actually used his services themselves. What explains their continued rose-colored glasses perception of the events in the Pellicano investigation now? Everyone I’ve been talking to here in Tinseltown has been watching the New York Times mercilessly beat them on any news story really worth reporting on rather than just lift off the Associated Press wire.
The media is finally becoming excellent again in reporting on multiple levels of political and financial corruption. What happens though, when they themselves are one of the corrupt entitites in an emerging news story. Whose job is it then to do honest investigative journalism on that ugly can of worms?
