Armenian genocide dispute erupts at LAT

[Gavur]

Managing editor (Turkophile) Doug Frantz may be fired as a result!

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/04/armenian_genocide_dispute.php

[Joseph]

Managing editor (Turkophile) Doug Frantz may be fired as a result!



http://www.laobserved.com/archive/20...de_dispute.php

Good. I hope he gets canned. Frantz has been writing fluff pieces on Turkey for years and it seems he has prohibited any mention of the Armenian Genocide.

[1.5 million]

Fascinating. Obviously it should be a top priority for the Armenian community in S Cal to continue to expose this anti-Armenian loser and make sure that he is fired. These insidious connections that Turkey establishes with people like Frantz are a major hidden uncurrent that works against Armenian Genocide recognition. Armenians need to get more sphisticated about these things and go after these people and organizations - big time. I particularly liked the comment in the article that compared Franz attending this (poor excuse for a)conference (Turkish propoganda & tourism promotion activity) with his attending a conference with David Irving. If it is unacceptable for Holocaust sensibilities it should be unacceptable for Armenian genocide (or any other genocide)!

[Joseph]

Commentary

Los Angeles Times Must Dismiss

Managing Editor Douglas Frantz



By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier



When a company discriminates against an employee on the basis of his or her
ethnic origin, it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which
prohibits "employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and
national origin."

It appears that such a breach of the law took place when Douglas Frantz, the
Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Times, blocked the publication of an
article on the Armenian Genocide written by Mark Arax, a distinguished journalist of
Armenian origin, who has worked at the Times for 20 years.

On April 11, 2007, in an e-mail to Arax, Frantz accused him of having "a
conflict of interest that precludes you from writing about the Armenian genocide,
and particularly about an ongoing congressional debate about it. =80¦Your
personal stance on the issue, in my view, prohibits you from writing about the issue
objectively."

To justify his discriminatory action, Frantz used the pretext that Arax and
five other reporters at The Times had signed a joint letter in September 2005,
reminding the editors that the newspaper was not complying with its own policy
of calling the Armenian Genocide, a genocide. The editors, at that time, had
no problem with that letter. On the contrary, they thanked all six reporters
-- five Armenian-Americans and one Jewish-American -- for the reminder and
pledged to comply with the paper's policy on this issue.

To make matters worse, in his e-mail, Frantz falsely referred to the
above-cited letter as a "petition," and on that basis accused Arax of taking "a
position" on the Armenian Genocide. He thus implied that all six letter-writers --
Mark Arax, Ralph Vartabedian, Robin Abcarian, Greg Krikorian, Chuck Philips,
and Henry Weinstein -- were political activists rather than independent
journalists.

By "prohibiting" Arax from writing on the genocide issue, Frantz, by
implication, was also prohibiting all six journalists, among them a Pulitzer Prize
winner, of ever reporting on this subject. In other words, Frantz was not just
blocking one particular article and its author, but all future articles on the
Armenian Genocide that may be written by any of these six journalists, thus
practically issuing a gag order that silences all Armenian Americans working at
the Times.

By the same logic, Frantz is implying that Latinos will be barred from
writing on illegal immigrants, African American journalists from covering civil
rights, Jewish-American reporters from writing about the Holocaust and
Asian-Americans covering issues peculiar to their community.

Sadly, Frantz's misrepresentation of the joint letter as a "petition"
initially helped convince other editors at The Times that Arax had an ethnic bias,
thus gaining their support in his decision not to run his article. Only days
later did these editors take the trouble to investigate the matter and discovered
that they were misled by Frantz. Jim O'Shea, the top editor of the Los
Angeles Times, in a meeting with this writer last week, said that the letter signed
by the six journalists was not a "petition" at all, and that there was nothing
improper about it. In fact, he admitted that the letter upheld existing L.A.
Times policy.

Amazingly, even after discovering the truth, rather than reversing themselves
and publishing the Arax story, The Times' editors continued to endorse
Frantz's censorship and compounded the discrimination. They did this by assigning
their Washington reporter, Richard Simon, supposedly to update Arax's story.
Even though Frantz, in his April 11 e-mail told Arax that he had "no questions"
about his "abilities as a reporter and writer," he did use the excuse that Arax
and Washington editor, Bob Ourlian, had gone around the "established system
for assigning and editing stories." Obviously, this was a red-herring. The
editors in the chain of command both in Washington and Los Angeles were aware of
Arax's article and none of them had any questions or complaints about procedure
or content. In fact, not even Frantz himself cited a single factual or bias
problem with the story. The only problems he did point to were that Arax had
taken a "personal" stand on the Armenian Genocide, which allegedly led him to
have a "conflict of interest," presumably because of his Armenian heritage.Arax
has written countless major investigative stories over the course of his 20
years at the Los Angeles Times, including several on the Armenian Genocide,but
never had a single one of them "killed" by any editor. But that was before
Frantz entered into the picture, moving from Istanbul to Los Angeles to become
the newspaper's Managing Editor in November 2005.

The thrust of Arax's story was not only about the clash between Turks and
Armenians over the congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide, but also
about the split in the Jewish community between those who sympathize with the
victims of the Armenian Genocide and those who put a higher premium on Israel's
strategic alliance with Turkey.

Richard Simon, on the other hand, proceeded to write a completely different
story which was published in The Times on April 21. His article covered the
conflicting political pressures affecting the adoption of the Armenian Genocide
resolution by the Congress and its "uncertain" chances of approval. There was
no reason to kill the Arax story to run Simon's. Both articles could have been
published, one as a sidebar to the other. In a vain attempt to appease Arax
and defuse a looming controversy that is sure to anger the half-a-million strong
Armenian community in Southern California, a handful of paragraphs from
Arax's article were incorporated into Simon's story. The editors told this writer
that they were dismayed that Arax refused to have his name jointly appear on
the byline for Simon's story. Even then, despite Arax's justified protests,the
editors added a tagline at the end of the article, stating that Arax
"contributed to this report."

An investigation of this matter in the past two weeks has led this writer to
believe that rather than Mark Arax having an ethnic bias, Douglas Frantz
himself seems to be the source of the problem. Based on discussions with
individuals familiar with various aspects of this controversy, conversations and
meetings with top executives at the Times, and a contentious phone call with Frantz
himself which he initiated, it appears that he has strongly held personal views
on Armenian-Turkish issues which have clouded his professional judgment,
causing him to take actions which are improper and possibly illegal:

1) In a discriminatory e-mail, Frantz falsely accused Mark Arax and five
other Times' reporters of signing a "petition" on the Armenian Genocide. This
accusation was used as a pretext to block Arax's story on the Armenian Genocide.

2) Frantz has reportedly made comments to at least one co-worker at The Times
that he personally opposed the congressional resolution on the Armenian
Genocide. He also said he believes that Armenians rebelled against the Turks, an
argument used by Turkish denialists to justify the genocide.

3) Frantz was stationed for several years in Turkey, first working for the
New York Times as Istanbul Bureau Chief and then for the Los Angeles Times
during which he may have developed very natural friendships with Turkish
individuals and officials.

4) The Turkish Consul General in Los Angeles has reportedly bragged about his
close friendship with Douglas Frantz and said that he turns to him whenever
he has a problem with The Times.

5) This writer was told by the editor of The Times, Jim O'Shea, who has known
Frantz for many years from their time together at the Chicago Tribune, that
Frantz has a very abrasive personality. No wonder he was short-tempered and
abrupt during a phone conversation that he initiated, falsely accusing this
writer of threatening him, when in fact he was simply being told that the
controversy regarding the Arax article might upset the Armenian community, if it turned
out that the story was blocked due to the Armenian background of the
journalist.

6) Frantz is scheduled to moderate a panel at a conference in Istanbul, May
12-15, on "Turkey: Sharing the Democratic Experience." The panelists are asked
to discuss: "Can the Turkish experience be emulated by other countries in the
region and beyond?" Among the speakers at the conference are the President,
Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Turkey. One of the participants on the
panel chaired by Frantz is none other than Andrew Mango, a notorious genocide
denialist. Despite being sponsored by the International Press Institute, the
conference does not cover the lack of freedom of speech in Turkey, the jailing
and killing of journalists such as Hrant Dink, and draconian laws on
"denigrating Turkishness." O'Shea told this writer that the Los Angeles Times will be
paying Frantz' airfare to participate in this conference. Would The Times pay for
Frantz's trip, if he were moderating a panel that included David Irving, the
infamous Holocaust revisionist?

Arax has filed a discrimination complaint with The Times against Frantz. He
is also considering a Federal lawsuit for the possible violation of his civil
rights. The Times executives are expected to make a decision this week on what
action, if any, they would take against Frantz.

The Publisher of The Times, David Hiller, and the Editor, Jim O'Shea,
reassured this writer last week that they would not tolerate any executive who has a
bias against the Armenian Genocide and discriminates against Armenian-American
employees. Once the internal investigation is complete, the expectation is
that the top management of The Times would do the right thing and find an
appropriate way of eliminating the hostile working environment created by Douglas
Frantz at one of the nation's greatest newspapers.

It is hard to imagine how Frantz could continue working at a newspaper in a
community where more than half a million Armenians reside, given his
unfavorable actions against his Armenian-American colleagues and his negative views on
the Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian community highly values the special relationship it has
developed in recent months with the publisher and other executives at the Los Angeles
Times. The opinion column written by Matt Welch, the Times' assistant
editorial page editor, published on Sunday, April 22, is another indicationof the
newspaper's solid position on the facts of the Armenian Genocide. The Frantz
episode is an aberration and has to be dealt with as such. His continued presence
at the highest echelons of this venerable newspaper would only serve to
antagonize the Armenian community and all those who care about the upholding of
equal rights for all employees regardless of their race, color, religion, sex and
national origin.

Readers can communicate their views on Douglas Frantz and his mistreatment of
Mark Arax by sending their e-mails to: Publisher David Hiller:
[email protected], and Editor James O'Shea: [email protected].

[Joseph]

TROUBLE AT THE L.A. TIMES
By Daniel Hernandez

LA Weekly, CA
April 26 2007

An editor kills a Page One story on Armenian genocide, and charges
of bias fly

Did the Los Angeles Times kill a front-page article about the fight
over the recognition of the Armenian genocide because its writer,
Mark Arax, is Armenian?

It's a question L.A. Times managing editor Douglas Frantz would
probably prefer not to address.

News broke earlier this week that Frantz killed Arax's story in a
terse email message to the writer because, Frantz said, Arax had
"a conflict of interest" and a "position on the issue." Frantz was
referring to a 2005 letter in which Arax, four other Armenian Times
staff writers and legal affairs reporter Henry Weinstein reminded the
paper's top editors to refer to the genocide as genocide, in accordance
with the paper's style rules. The 2005 letter had been well-received,
acknowledged, and, sources at the paper tell the L.A.

Weekly, forgotten.

But in his recent email to Arax, obtained by the Weekly, Frantz
characterized the letter as a "petition," as in some form of
activism. He also told Arax that he "went around [the] system" in a
bid to land the story assignment, by dealing with an editor in the
Times Washington bureau, Robert Ourlian, who is Armenian American.

So Frantz reassigned the story to Washington reporter Rich Simon, who
turned around a decorous and somewhat routine take on Turkey's ongoing
mission to block Congress from recognizing the slaughter of more than
1 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkey during World War I, something
several Western developed countries - including France and Canada -
have already done. The revised Times article ran under the headline,
"Genocide Resolution Still Far From Certain" on Saturday, April 21,
four days before Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in L.A.

Arax was given a consolation tagline at the end of the article for
having "contributed" some reporting.

Arax, sounding incensed, sent an email to some of his fellow reporters,
which made its way to the Weekly.

Here's how it started: "Colleagues, You should know that I had a
Page One story killed this week by Doug Frantz. His stated rationale
for killing the piece had nothing to do with any problems with the
story itself. In an email to me, he cited no bias, no factual errors,
no contextual mishaps, no glaring holes."

Arax then spelled out the holes he saw in Frantz's objections,
reiterating that the 2005 letter was not a petition, and that the
standard process was used with Ourlian to assign and edit the story.

And he pushed the dispute up a notch, going so far as to suggest that
the only person in the dustup who has a bias or personal stance is
Frantz, who lived in Turkey for years.

Said Arax, in his email: "Because his logic is so illogical, questions
must be raised about Frantz' own objectivity, his past statements to
colleagues that he personally opposes an Armenian genocide resolution
and his friendship with Turkish government officials, including the
consul general in Los Angeles who's quoted in my story. Frantz is
heavily involved and invested in defending the policies of Turkey."

Arax ended the note by sharing the news that he has filed
a discrimination complaint against Frantz inside the paper, and
that a Times Human Resources Department inquiry was launched. The
reporter, based in Fresno and officially assigned to the paper's
West Sunday magazine, declined to speak to the Weekly, citing the
internal investigation. Ourlian, the Washington editor, and Frantz,
also declined to comment. Times editor James O'Shea and publisher
David Hiller did not reply to interview requests.

But Harut Sassounian, publisher of the local Armenian paper The
California Courier, has been more than willing to publicly address
the dispute. On Tuesday, Sassounian began circulating a scathing
article he penned calling for Frantz's resignation, accusing Frantz
of discriminating against Arax because of his ethnic background.

Sassounian framed the dispute in terms the rest of Los Angeles media
can easily digest. "By the same logic, Frantz is implying that Latinos
will be barred from writing on illegal immigrants, African-American
journalists from covering civil rights, Jewish-American reporters
from writing about the Holocaust and Asian-Americans [from] covering
issues peculiar to their community," Sassounian wrote.

Sassounian told the Weekly he learned about the matter from people
who had been interviewed by Arax and were waiting for his story to
be published. He said Arax never called him. The Courier publisher,
based in Glendale, said he had recently met David Hiller at a dinner
event and had a cordial conversation with him. So he called the Times
publisher directly to find out what happened to Arax's piece. Within
minutes, Sassounian said, he got a call back - from Douglas Frantz.

Sassounian said Frantz was "abrupt" and "evasive," telling Sassounian
that there was "no problem" and that the story needed "depth and
balance." Sassounian said he warned Frantz that if it turned out
Arax's story was axed simply because Arax is Armenian, a confrontation
would arise between the paper and the L.A. Armenian community, which
happens to be the largest in the world outside Armenia. That's when
Frantz went bonkers, Sassounian said.

"He says to me, 'I'm going to hang up on you! You've threatened me! I
said, 'I didn't threaten you.' He said, 'You threatened me. I'm going
to hang up.'"

And Frantz did, he contends. Hiller and O'Shea, Sassounian said,
treated him much differently. Sassounian said that in conversations
with the Times publisher and editor, they apologized for Frantz's
behavior and said they would not tolerate any bias against the
Armenian community in their paper's pages. "They all apologized for
his behavior, for accusing me of threatening him," Sassounian said.

When the Sassounian piece started making the rounds, Frantz quickly
shot back, defending his actions to media blog LAObserved: "I put a
hold on a story because of concerns that the reporter had expressed
personal views about the topic in a public manner and therefore was
not a disinterested party," Frantz told the blog.

But who's really the disinterested party here?

Frantz was a longtime correspondent based in Istanbul for both The
New York Times and the L.A. Times. As Sassounian noted, Frantz is
scheduled to be back in Istanbul next month to moderate a panel for the
International Press Institute's World Congress that is titled, "Turkey:
Sharing the Democratic Experience." Among the panelists is Andrew
Mango, who Sassounian describes as a "notorious genocide denialist."

And then there's the matter of Frantz's coverage of the Armenian
genocide while at The New York Times. In January 2001 the paper ran
a correction on Frantz's reporting, for downplaying the genocide. A
month later, the Armenian National Committee of America put out an
action alert again accusing Frantz of downplaying the genocide and
casting it as merely an Armenian allegation. The paper never ran
a second correction. Frantz joined the L.A. Times as a reporter in
Istanbul, brought on by his friend, then-managing editor Dean Baquet,
who left the paper in spectacular fashion late last year and then
rejoined The New York Times.

The L.A. Times dispute over Arax's killed story became public on
Tuesday, April 24 - the massacre's traditional remembrance day. All
day long, cars and trucks driving in Little Armenia in Hollywood were
draped with Armenia's red, blue and orange flag. A somber march and
rally was held on Hobart Street. The few young people the Weekly spoke
with after the Unified Young Armenians rally said they had not heard
of the controversy at the L.A. Times, but spoke with a refreshing
sense of naunce about the imperatives of history.

"It's politics," said Sevak Ghazaryan, 19, a student at Glendale
Community College. "Turkey and United States are very close. The
United States has a military base in Turkey, and businesswise they
import a lot of goods from Turkey for cheap price, likewise for oil.

So therefore, Turkey plays a big role in business and economy for
the U.S. It's just politics."

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/trouble-at-the-la-times/16232/

[Joseph]

Arax drops a bomb
Kevin Roderick

Monday, April 30 2007

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/04/arax_drops_a_bomb.php

Times staff writer Mark Arax just escalated ˜ in a big way ˜ his dispute
with the paper's managing editor over a recent story about the Armenian
genocide. He emailed an open letter to everyone on the news editing system
laying out his side and demanding a public apology from Managing Editor Doug
Frantz. Here's the whole thing; links to the background are at the end:

From: Arax, Mark
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 10:48 AM
Subject: from Mark Arax

April 30, 2007

Dear Colleagues,

I am not sure about the timing of writing you. In no way do I want my
personal issue to add to the turmoil inside the Times. But as I‚ve watched
our newspaper respond to my issue over the past several days, I‚ve come to
conclude that it raises troubling questions that go right to the heart of
what we do and how we do it. I know of no other way to explain the matter to
you than to proceed straight with logic.

I have been accused by Doug Frantz of having an opinion on the Armenian
genocide. „Are you now or have you ever been a believer in the Armenian
Genocide?‰ Of the numerous accusations that Frantz has thrown my way over
the past month, this one I am happy to plead guilty to. Yes, I have a stance
on the Armenian genocide. I believe it happened. And I am gratified to know
that my newspaper believes it happened, as well. So here is the dilemma at
hand: What is our obligation when this same newspaper, in stories from
Istanbul in 2004 and 2005, begins to contradict its policy on the genocide?
What is a reporter to do when members of the Armenian community˜judges,
politicians, civic leaders--start calling and demanding to know why the
newspaper is suddenly throwing qualifiers in front of the word „genocide?‰

This was the question confronting me and Greg Krikorian and Ralph
Vartabedian and Robin Abcarian in the fall of 2005. So we did what our
Jewish and African American and Latino and Asian colleagues have done
countless times when faced with an ethnic community angry over our coverage.
We went to our editors. We reminded them in a letter that the newspaper had
an official policy on the genocide˜that it happened, that there was no need
to equivocate or treat it like a „he said-she said‰ dodge. We pointed out
chapter and verse in the Times style book. „The Armenian genocide is a
historical fact and we should use the word Œgenocide‚ without qualification
in referring to it.‰ To act as our newspaper‚s eyes and ears and help
correct the error was our duty. To stay silent would have been a dereliction
of that duty and only served to damage our newspaper‚s public standing even
more.

Thus, the proper question confronting Doug Frantz as he read my story three
weeks ago on the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress is not whether I
believed in the Armenian genocide or signed that letter in September 2005.
The proper question˜the only question that mattered--was whether I had
allowed my beliefs to bleed into my story in a way that made it tendentious.
This is the same question that every editor must ask of every story because
all reporters, all human beings, have opinions. And yet it does not matter,
really, what Henry Weinstein believes in his gut about capital punishment.
It does not matter what Megan Stack utters over dinner about the war in
Iraq. It does not matter what Robert Lopez writes in a memo to his editor
about our coverage of border issues. The only question that needs to be
answered is if their biases are on display in a story. This is what we have
spent years training as journalists to put aside˜our own quarrels, our own
narratives, our own wounds. This is how I, the son of a murder victim who
had spent more than half his life searching for the killers, was able to go
inside the California prison system and uncover official abuses against
murderers and rapists.

Let me now briefly explain what happened to my genocide resolution story as
it made its way through the editing process in early April.



Bob Ourlian had first crack at it. He removed a few paragraphs here and
there for space. He removed a handful of words that he considered imprecise
or too loaded. Then he put the story on the budget˜„it‚s a great read‰˜and
began to sell it for Page 1. As the story moved up the chain of command, no
editor called Ourlian or me to alert us to any bias or need for more
reporting. Not Joan Springhetti or Tom Furlong or Scott Kraft or Craig
Turner. And here is the crux of the matter. Not even Doug Frantz, in his
e-mail to me explaining why he was putting the story on hold, said one word
about bias or any problems with the story itself. No holes, no contextual
problems.
Instead, Frantz told me he was holding the story˜a hold that later became a
kill˜because of two other issues: One, because of the 2005 letter to our
editors (Frantz called it a „petition‰) I had taken a public stance on the
issue and had a „conflict of interest.‰ Two, Bob Ourlian and I, as a pair of
Armenians, had gone around the established system to plant a story about the
Armenian genocide resolution. So rather than judge my story on its merits,
Frantz suddenly chose to take a gratuitous leap and look into my heart as a
writer and the ethnic heritage I was born with. This is dangerous stuff. For
one, it raises questions that are impossible to answer. And it has grave
implications for all of us, for every journalist in every newsroom. In other
words, it is not good enough for the story itself to be fair, objective,
well reported and well written. Even when a story passes all those tests, it
could still be censored by some tortured inference that the reporter holds
an opinion, even though that opinion never shows up in the story.

So my story never ran. A completely different story by Rich Simon replaced
it. To justify this, the top editors have now manufactured all sorts of
after-the-fact reasons in explaining why my story needed a „new angle.‰ And
what became of Frantz‚s two stated reasons for killing my piece? Jim O‚Shea
told me the HR investigation has concluded that Bob Ourlian and I had
followed the proper procedure in compiling and editing the story. And the
letter the six of us signed in 2005 did not address a genocide resolution in
Congress but rather the fact of the genocide itself. Thus, it was not a form
of advocacy, he said. In other words, Frantz‚s two reasons for killing the
story have no merit.

I hope you don‚t think it selfish of me, but I believe I deserve a public
apology from Frantz. And I believe that the five colleagues who signed the
letter with me˜ Krikorian, Vartabedian, Abcarian, Weinstein and Chuck
Philips--deserve to hear from our editors that our letter was the right
thing to do. Are we to stop our conversation inside the paper about issues
of fairness and accuracy in fear that raising those issues might someday
disqualify us from ever writing about a subject again? If we can no longer
trust that we will be judged on the merits of our work˜the words carried on
the page--then the very foundation of our vocation is destroyed.

What the six of us did wasn‚t a public display. We didn‚t grab a bullhorn in
one hand and a petition in the other and take to the corner of First and
Spring. What we did we did inside the paper as loyal employees who care
deeply about the Times. In no way should the carrying out of this duty
preclude us from writing about the Armenian genocide now or in the future.

Thank you for your ear.

Respectfully,

Mark Arax

Ourlian is an editor in the Washington bureau. Word going around Times
staffers at this weekend's Festival of Books was that editor Jim O'Shea
ordered Frantz to make a public apology and that it wasn't going down too
well with Frantz No confirmation on that from O'Shea (who I had two pleasant
conversations with this weekend) or Frantz.

[Gavur]

Boycott l.a. Times!

[Joseph]

Commentary
Los Angeles Times' Managing Editor's
Misconduct Infuriates the Community



By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier



Last week's column on the actions of Douglas Frantz, the Managing Editor of
the Los Angeles Times, who has been accused of discriminatory practices against reporter Mark Arax, sent shock waves throughout the community. Frantz had blocked the publication of an article written by veteran reporter Arax on the Armenian Genocide resolution in the U.S. Congress.

My previous column was posted on scores of websites and quoted or commented upon by the L.A. Weekly, Hurriyet, one of the largest newspapers in Turkey,
several wire services, and many other newspapers around the world in various
languages. This writer was also interviewed by Larry Mantle on KPCC radio in
Southern California and appeared on the Larry Zarian TV show which covers Glendale,
Burbank, La Crescenta, Montrose and La Canada.

Within days of the release of that column, as hundreds of critical e-mails
poured into the newsroom, several top executives of the Los Angeles Times began
issuing public statements in response to the complaints.

The e-mail sent by David Hiller, the Publisher of The Times, was both fair
and sensible. He assured the readers that he takes accusations of discrimination
at the newspaper "most seriously." Hiller said that he "will never tolerate
anybody being discriminated against based on ethnicity, race, religion, or any
other ground. This includes how reporters are assigned stories and how stories
are handled in the editing process. =80¦I am proud of the reporting that The
Times does on the Armenian genocide, and also the positions we have taken on our
editorial pages. I am also proud and grateful for the welcome and support my
new friends in the Southern California Armenian communities have shown me since
my arrival here six months ago. I look forward to continuing that fine
relationship and the strong and open communications on which it is based."

The second reaction came from Jim O'Shea, the top editor of the L.A. Times.
In a

memo to the staff, he said he was responding to complaints from many staffers
and readers who had written to him in recent days. He stated that he
recognized "the gravity of this issue" and took "these complaints seriously." Although
O'Shea announced that an internal investigation was being completed, he
nevertheless jumped the gun and proceeded dutifully to defend his colleagueFrantz
without waiting for the completion of that process. While saying that he
wanted to "set the record straight because much of the publicity surrounding this
issue is inaccurate," he proceeded to make several faulty and misleading
statements himself.

In his memo, O'Shea reiterated Frantz's earlier unfounded accusation of bias
on the part of Mark Arax, impugning yet again the integrity of this
professional reporter. O'Shea hid the fact that a subsequent investigation proved that
the so-called "petition" that Arax and five other reporters were accused of
signing was not a petition, but a letter that simply informed the editors and the
staff of their deviation from the newspaper's established policy of referring
to the Armenian Genocide as genocide. O'Shea's repetition of such accusations
against Arax serves only to compound the newspaper's potential legal problems
and exposes The Times to possibly more damaging lawsuits.

Moreover, O'Shea's memo contained several inaccurate statements:

-- He claimed that The Times simply placed a "hold " on Arax's story for one
week. In fact, the story was put on hold for two weeks before it was killed
and eventually replaced by a much weaker story on the Armenian Genocide
resolution written by Richard Simon;

-- O'Shea claimed that Simon, the new reporter assigned to the story,
"uncovered additional material involving the position on the resolution of House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi," was false. In fact, there was nothing new or important in
that story. Pelosi did not even talk to Simon;

-- O'Shea bragged that The Times had done a thorough job covering the
Armenian community and cited 67 stories over the past two years that mentioned
Armenia or Armenians. But he failed to state that many of these articles had
mischaracterized the Armenian Genocide and only after repeated complaints, a
correction was grudgingly published. Could it be that the editor was including some of
these corrections in his count of 67 stories? Furthermore, even in the midst
of the current controversy, while covering an Armenian Genocide protest rally
in Hollywood, The Times published in its April 25 issue a photo and caption
that read: "=80¦the annual genocide protest marking the day in 1915 that Armenians
say Turkey began mass deportations, arrests and executions."

Fortunately, O'Shea ended his missive on a positive note by stating that he
would "never tolerate anyone on the staff making decisions on a story out of a
bias or because of the ethnicity of the writer." Yet he undermined his own
credibility when he added: "In this case, that did not happen," thereby
pre-judging the outcome of the newspaper's internal investigation.

The crudest public statement of all was made by Simon K.C. Li, the
newspaper's Assistant Managing Editor, who rushed blindly to defend his boss, Douglas
Frantz. In a letter to the L.A. Weekly, Li chided writer Daniel Hernandez for
repeating "a nasty innuendo from Harut Sassounian's piece" and provided a
lengthy and convoluted explanation as to how Frantz ended up being the moderator of
a panel in a conference to be held in Istanbul in May in which genocide
denialist Andrew Mango is to participate.

Li explained that Frantz was initially supposed to interview Orhan Pamuk and
Elif Shafak at that conference. When that fell through - Li says he does not
know why - Frantz was assigned to a second panel that also did not materialize
and he ended up on a third panel with denialist Mango "through a series of
accidents." Li could not explain why Frantz did not resign from the panel, after
discovering the names of its participants.

Li unabashedly said he did not know "whether Sassounian's description of
Mango is fair or widely accepted." It is amazing that the Assistant Managing
Editor of the Los Angeles Times could not type the name Mango into his google
search and find out his identity and position on the Armenian Genocide.
Nevertheless, Li went on to insult L.A. Weekly's readers by calling them "biased,
unthinking, [and] credulous." One would hope that when Frantz goes, he would take Li
with him.

Finally, the Readers' Representative Office at The Times, acting more like
the representative of the management, sent a reply to those who complained to
the newspaper, telling them that they do not have "the full context of the
issue," and releasing yet another offensive statement from Frantz. The problem with
this statement is that it repeats Frantz's unfounded accusation against Arax,
thus compounding his discriminatory misconduct against the Armenian American
reporter and getting himself in more legal hot water.

Arax, in an open letter he sent to his colleagues at The Times on April 30,
exposed the details of Frantz's actions and demanded a public apology from him
- which is not asking very much in view of the gravity of Frantz' misconduct.

It behooves the top management of the L.A. Times to resolve their Douglas
Frantz problem as soon possible, before the reputation of this venerable
newspaper is further tarnished.

[1.5 million]

It behooves the top management of the L.A. Times to resolve their Douglas
Frantz problem as soon possible, before the reputation of this venerable
newspaper is further tarnished.

Agreed. Perhaps the LA Times can use the method the Turks used to resolve their "Armenian Problem" to resolve their "Douglas Frantz problem"....in the meantime it seems that they are digging their hole deeper. Kudos to Mark Arax and Harut Sassounian BTW!

[Gavur]

Fish stinks from the head
Boycott O'Sheat!
and L.A. times