04.29.06
The LAT Cozies Up to Pellicano
Seems like Chuck Philips, Anthony Pellicano’s old beat reporting friend at the Los Angeles Times, is working on a special piece about the incarcerated P.I. Consistent with Philips’ cozy relationship with Tony, he wants to do more of an up close and personal profile to really show the true man. Philips must also be getting a little desperate lately for something to write about. He hasn’t gotten any real scoops since 2002, when his favorite anonymous source was sent off to prison. Philips and the LAT feel that the rest of the media has just been too hard on poor old Tony as they try to help recreate the gumshoe’s halcyon glories.
Philips is busy contacting many of Pellicano’s former co-workers and clients to obtain some warm and fuzzy anecdotage about the gumshoe’s quirky traits. In one of these conversations, Philips derided that recent threat Pellicano had made against journalist John Connolly’s safety when the explosive Vanity Fair article premiered.
According to Philips, both he and his newspaper don’t believe that Pellicano would physically threaten journalists as had occurred with John Connolly, Anita Busch and Ned Zelman. In fact, he added, at the LAT they never believed “any of it” and that’s why they haven’t given “anything like that” real coverage. Philips wouldn’t leave well enough alone in singing Tony’s praises (which really isn’t the wisest thing to do, Chuck old boy, when trying to get information out of sources who might disagree with you right now). Philips opined that Tony could never/would never do such terrible things to people. Philips and the LAT had worked with Tony for years and they both respected and admired the man and his work.
Well, duh, so there’s the explanation for the LAT’s peculiarly positive bias and soft coverage of the Pellicano case in a nutshell. Does anyone else wonder if some of that newspaper’s staff has been called yet to testify before the Grand Jury? Let’s all be patient and the New York Times will tell us.
