“LA Times Now Struggles With In-House Hypocrisy and the Definition of Racism” by Daniel Guss
It’s the last thing that the Los Angeles Times needs.
The troubled media outlet (I strain to see it as a trustworthy news outlet anymore) keeps telling us that we need it to “preserve democracy,” but continues struggling to find its own equilibrium.
If you google the phrase “dirty debutantes” today, you will see as many results linking to porn websites as you do to stories about the latest Times’ scandal. The former being a long-running “audition porn” series by Mark Arnold Krinsky, aka porn king Ed Powers, and the latter about Times’ sports columnist Ben Bolch.
Strange bedfellows, indeed.
Bolch, yesterday, apologized for a story he wrote a few days ago in which he described the NCAA women’s basketball Sweet 16 game between UCLA and LSU as a match between good and evil. In it, he specifically referred to LSU players as “villains” and “dirty debutantes.”
Dude.
After a stunning and immediate backlash, the Times eventually edited-out the offensive references, claiming it “did not meet Times editorial standards,” and Bolch apologized for his choice of words.
Bolch, a Times reporter for a quarter-century, claims he did not understand these deeply offensive connotations or associations?
Neither did the Times’ editors?
Not even the Louisiana hot sauce reference? See: Clinton, Hillary for the last time “hot sauce” caught the public’s attention, when as a presidential candidate she ludicrously told Black radio hosts that she carried it in her bag.
Sorry, I’m not buying it.
Sports journalism, including at ESPN, HBO and on down the line, is saturated with storylines about race, racism and society. In fact, sports arenas and stadiums around the United States have anti-racism pleas in every direction you look, including some that are literally painted onto the field of play.
One cannot be involved in the highest levels of sports or sports journalism without being confronted by these messages.
In 2007, the Times eagerly demanded the firing of radio shock jock Don Imus after he referred to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”
Well, where is the LA Times now in supposedly more-enlightened 2024?
While Imus, who died in 2019, unacceptably leaned on his comment being made during his live broadcast, Bolch and the Times had plenty of time to consider Bolch’s before it went live.
Bolch should be shown the door like Imus was.
The Times spends each and every day preaching about race. It preaches how those inclined to vote for former president Donald Trump in 2024, like it did in 2016, must be motivated by racism, even if their actual motive is economic, public safety or any other reason. It finds racism (and sexism) in everything, from police to policies, whether or not it’s actually there.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it isn’t.
The Times points to it regardless, not to be transparent, but for its agenda.
You can’t have it both ways, LA Times.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Bolch’s apology should be accepted. But continuing to give him space on its dwindling pages while calling out what it perceives as others’ racism is nothing but pure hypocrisy.
And the Times has enough trouble drawing and maintaining an audience as it is.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)