In an interview with Amy Goodman, Scheer took it all the way to the top. He blamed Andres Martinez and Jeff Johnson at the Times, who he says want to make the editorial page more conservative; he blamed Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh for coming down on him too hard (I’m not kidding); and he blamed an ideological alignment of the Tribune Company with the Bush Administration, which he says could deny a waiver that would grant the Tribune Co. two television stations in the same LA market next year (which is illegal without the waiver).
The O’Reilly factor isn’t even worth addressing, while the administration/Tribune plot sounds like an awfully grand and conspiratorial speculation. As far as a more conservative page, he has sort of a point. The Times is hiring Jonah Goldberg, after all. But it’s also hiring Erin Aubry Kaplan and Meghan Daum, both of which the National Review called “liberal.” I can’t vouch for Kaplan and Daum, though Goldberg is definitely 180 degrees from Scheer.
But a real answer hasn’t come from the Times editorial page yet. Stephen D. Burgard, director of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, said this to Romensko:
Readers got a wholly inadequate explanation today from Andres Martinez, editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, in response to widespread questions and concerns about the discontinuation of Robert Scheer's column. It was patronizing and insulting to their intelligence. Why can't you say, "It was time for a change...and that we originally had hoped to continue the column through the year but the columnist did not agree with our decision, so it has ended now." The paper to date has not offered a convincing explanation for ending two regular features - Michael Ramirez's cartoon and Scheer's column. In the absence of offering such an explanation, it would have been better to say nothing.
Here’s most of Martinez’s letter to readers:
Assessing the merits of a column, like assessing the merits of a movie, is a subjective exercise, so readers can agree to disagree over the wisdom of our decision. It's inaccurate, however, to ascribe ideological motives to our decision to stop running Scheer's column.
Some readers have complained that The Times is conspiring to silence liberal voices on the Op-Ed page. Others have gone so far as to suggest that Scheer is being punished for opposing the war in Iraq. But that is hardly a badge of shame around here — the newspaper's own editorial page opposed the decision to invade Iraq.
The truth is that we now publish more Op-Ed columnists — early in 2004 we featured only three regular columnists — than ever before, including more liberal voices (and conservative ones) than ever before. It's also true that some of our columnists are not easily labeled on either side of the ideological divide, which we think is healthy. The goal, as always, remains to offer readers a lively exchange of opinions from across the political spectrum.
Hmm. I’d have to agree with Burgard. That’s a note conspicuously absent of substance.
LA Observed had this to say:
KCRW's Warren Olney kept asking for a reason why the Times would shed one of its few recognizable voices, but Andrés Martinez would never specifically say why he dumped Bob Scheer's column. ("Which Way, L.A.?" audio here. Note KCRW is also home to Scheer's Left, Right & Center.) Martinez would only say that Scheer is "not currently the strongest progressive voice on the op-ed page" and that others write better columns—but wouldn't say who he regards as stronger
.
Martinez should say something smart, otherwise those damn Scheer die-hards protesting in front of the Times building might start getting nasty.
willemmarx @ November 20, 2005 - 2:45pm
Unfortunately I do not know a huge amount about the history of OpEds at the LATimes, so I can't engage directly with this blog.
However, I do think that something Scheer mentions rather succinctly in his interview with Goodman, which seems to go largely ignored by the US media in the current debate about flawed intelligence leading to the Iraq war, is the fact that UN weapons inspectors were in Iraq with access to facilities.
I remember thinking how strange it was that the Bush administration was going to effectively ignore their claims to continue searching for possible weapons programmes, and just go to war straight away. Only later, with the Iraq Survey Group, led by David Kay, were attempts restarted on the inspection front, and even he later admitted that earlier intelligence reports had been wrong.
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