Longtime Los Angeles Times reporter-turned-business columnist Michael Hiltzik let his liberal flag fly on the front of Sunday’s Business section. The online headline was “Cultural production of ignorance provides rich field for study.”
The protagonist of this story was academic Robert Proctor of Stanford, touted as “one of the world's leading experts in agnotology, a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of ignorance.” As examples of propagated ignorance, Hiltzik discussed thinking smoking is safe, and vaccinations are deadly, and...."fabricating" Obamacare horror stories:
Los Angeles Times
LA Times Columnist Proclaims The 'Study of Ignorance' Leads to Big Tobacco, The Nazis, Fox News, and The Tea Party
By Tim Graham | March 10, 2014 | 8:35 AM EDT 
By Tom Blumer | February 25, 2014 | 10:19 AM EST
It would be easy to dismiss the attempt by the leftist groups Credo Mobilize and Forecast the Facts to prevent the Washington Post from publishing Charles Krauthammer's February 20 column ("The Myth of 'Settled Science'") as the whining of immature children who cover their ears and say "la-la, we can't hear you, and we're going to shut you up" every time they come across inconvenient facts.
Howard Kurtz takes the failed effort more seriously, and properly so, given that the petitioners are constantly trying to convince WaPo, the New York Times, and eventually the rest of the establishment press to do what the censors at the Los Angeles Times have already done: stop publishing any op-ed or letter to the editor from anyone they would consider a "climate change denier." Excerpts from Kurtz's Monday "Media Buzz" post at Fox News, plus a Fox News Special Report video showing Krauthammer brilliantly summarizing his column in 89 seconds, follow the jump.
OpenSecrets.org Shows Koch Campaign Money Dwarfed by Dozens of Other Groups, Misclassifies Many As 'On the Fence'
By Tom Blumer | February 17, 2014 | 3:28 PM EST NOTE: Go to the end of this post to see my reaction to an email NB received from OpenSecrets.org.
The web site OpenSecrets.org has done a great deal of useful work. Especially helpful are its lists of high-dollar political campaign donor organizations.
The web site's 1989-2014 and 2012-specific lists, to name just two, demonstrate that the hyperventilating on the left and in the establishment press about the eeeevil Koch Brothers is completely out of line:
By Tim Graham | January 24, 2014 | 11:21 AM EST
When Edgar Tamayo killed a police officer in Houston, he could have been defined by our national media as "an American living in the shadows." But in Thursday's New York Times, the headline was "Texas Executes Mexican Man for Murder."
Reporter Manny Fernandez began by noting outrage at Rick Perry's Texas from "the State Department, Mexican officials, and Latino advocates," but it wasn't until the second paragraph from the end that Fernandez whispered in print that Tamayo was "in the United States illegally." The Times even took most of three paragraphs to get to the cop-killer part:
LAT's Terhune Claims Obamacare's Insurers, Not Government, Are 'Under Fire' For 'Frustration and Fury'
By Tom Blumer | January 14, 2014 | 12:45 PM EST Let's see. We know, to name just a few of many impositions, that much of the enrollee information that HealthCare.gov and other exchanges have communicated to insurers has been erroneous, that insurers have had to deal with signing up hundreds of thousands of policyholders they originally cancelled, that deadlines for premium payments have been serially revised, and that there is no computerized subsidy payment system in place.
Yet Chad Terhune at the Los Angeles Times is irresponsibly steering gullible readers into believing that insurers are responsible for the Obamacare-related chaos and poor customer service, when it's a virtual miracle that anyone is being served at all (HT Patterico; bolds and numbered tags are mine):
By Tom Blumer | January 9, 2014 | 1:55 PM EST
In the competition for most obvious Obama administration apparatchik at the Los Angeles Times (i.e., the biggest tool in the toolbox), Doyle McManus has to be considered a front-runner.
As I noted on Tuesday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), McManus, in a Sunday column, contended that "President Obama has run into his share of controversies, but none that quite reached scandalhood." He even petulantly asked, "Does anyone even remember the IRS flap?" McManus was apparently so unconcerned about being seen as inconsistent that he didn't bother telling readers that he held exactly opposite positions on at least two Obama administration "scandals" — that's what he called them – just eight months ago (HT to frequent commenter Gary Hall).
By Tom Blumer | January 7, 2014 | 11:11 PM EST
Los Angeles Times columnists have produced several delusional doozies in the past few days.
One of the more hysterical came from Doyle McManus on Sunday ("The president's hump year; The sixth year is often tough, but Obama could triumph"). While acknowledging that "The public's initial romance with the president has faded" and that "events are in charge now," he backhandedly described Obama's presidency thus far as scandal-free. Really (HT to frequent commenter Gary Hall):
By Tim Graham | January 4, 2014 | 7:11 AM EST
The Los Angeles Times decided, as one of California’s leading arbiters of political correctness, that they would skip the ironic headline of “Illegal alien wins license to practice law.” That kind of direct language is a bit too honest. The use of the I-word will be banned in all civilized and "inclusive" forums in the future, and this may mark the beginning.
“California court grants law license to Mexican immigrant” was the headline, and reporter Maura Dolan took many paragraphs before listing just how many times this new lawyer evades all those annoying technicalities they teach you about in law school.
LA Times: Finally, There May Be an 'Answer to the Koch Brothers' — As If There Haven't Been Dozens, For Decades
By Tom Blumer | December 23, 2013 | 12:50 PM EST Did you know that the left has been almost completely starved for funding all these years? Why, there's almost nobody out there providing seed money for "community organizers," activists, and "advocacy groups" to offset the evil impact of the Koch brothers.
Continuing an establishment press meme going back at least to April, as NewsBusters' Tim Graham noted at the time, that's the impression one would get from reading Evan Halper's coverage of Tom Steyer, the left's most recent addition to what is really a decades-long line of deep-pocketed providers of the mother's milk of politics — and the guy sure knows how to pick 'em when it comes to identifying a pet cause (HT to Gary Hall; bolds are mine):
By Tom Blumer | December 8, 2013 | 8:50 AM EST
On Friday morning, Richard Pollock at the Washington Examiner (HT Ed Driscoll at PJ Media) broke an important story about the the large number of doctors choosing not to participate in Covered California, the state's Obamacare exchange.
The odds that the agenda-driven press in the formerly Golden State of California was already aware of this problem and chose not to report on it would seem to be pretty high — and they're still ignoring the story, despite its obvious impact on the availability of medical services once Obamacare kicks in on January 1. Excerpts from Pollock's report follow the jump (bolds are mine):
By Tim Graham | November 27, 2013 | 2:53 PM EST
NB reader Gary Hall reports "It's not unusual to see a fake wrap front page at the LAT's - that's a full page ad that you peel off an throw away. Sometimes it's a half page that's wrapped around." (Washington Post readers often have a sticker advertisement pasted on the front page.)
But Wednesday's Los Angeles Times is dominated by an ad for the Disney cartoon movie "Frozen." This is the first time Gary remembers seeing this kind of promotion. (Visual here.)
By Tim Graham | November 3, 2013 | 9:25 AM EST
Longtime Los Angeles Times political reporter Robert Shogan died this week at 83. The Times appreciated him with the GOP consultant Mike Murphy's title "the Colombo of American political journalism."
The Washington Post obituary noted Shogan "leavened some of his books with accounts of newsroom irreverence that did not appear in the next day's paper." For example, this line about JFK: