REPORTER ARAX LEAVES L.A. TIMESARMENIAN-AMERICAN COVERED VALLEY FOR 14 YEARS.
By Diana Marcum
FRESNO BEE, CA
June 19 2007
Fresno journalist Mark Arax has left the Los Angeles Times, ending a
public dispute about the paper’s decision not to publish a story he
wrote about the Armenian genocide.
His last day at the paper was Friday.
According to Arax’s attorney, Warren Paboojian, Arax and the Times
reached a settlement to forestall a lawsuit alleging defamation and
discrimination.
Arax said he could not comment on the terms because of a
confidentiality agreement.
The controversy started over a story Arax wrote this spring about
how the Jewish community was divided over whether to call the deaths
of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire between
1915 and 1923 a genocide.
In memos leaked to the online political journal LAObserved.com,
Los Angeles Times managing editor Douglas Frantz said Arax, an
Armenian-American, could no longer write about the Armenian genocide
because he had taken a position on the issue.
Arax had once signed an internal memo reminding editors that Times
policy was to refer to the Armenian massacres in Turkey as genocide —
not "alleged" genocide.
Turkey rejects the term.
The paper’s decision outraged many in Southern California’s large
Armenian-American community, and some called for Frantz to be fired.
In a statement Monday, Times publisher David Hiller praised Arax’s
work, wished him well and said:
"I want to emphasize that Mark’s decision to leave the paper is
not a reflection on his professional work in reporting on Armenian
genocide, or in communicating with the paper to ensure our adherence
to established policy in referring to the genocide, all of which are
journalistically appropriate.
"We regret that the situation surrounding Mark’s story became a
subject of controversy and misunderstanding. The Times does not
tolerate any discrimination in the reporting or editing of the news
based on ethnic heritage or other basis and our internal review found
no such discrimination in this case."
In his 14 years writing about the San Joaquin Valley for the Times,
Arax told the stories of migrant farmworker children who became track
stars, black sharecroppers who came to the San Joaquin Valley during
the Dust Bowl and abuses inside a Corcoran prison.
"I tried to cover the Valley as a foreign beat, write about it as
some other world for the paper’s readers, because the Valley is
another world: It’s geographically exiled and a third world in its
own right with great poverty and pockets of concentrated wealth,"
Arax said Monday.
Jim Tucker, who taught journalism at Fresno State for 39 years, said
Arax’s departure from the Times is a blow for the San Joaquin Valley.
"He was a voice about things that happened here — a voice that
reached a national audience," Tucker said.
"Because of his closeness to this place, he wrote stories no one
else could see or write. Now, strangely enough, his departure is
precipitated by having such a closeness to a story."
Arax grew up in Fresno and went to Fresno State before joining the
Times in 1984. He returned to Fresno in 1990 to write "In My Father’s
Name," a book about the murder of his father, Ara Arax.
He started covering the Valley for the Times in 1993.
Arax also, on occasion, made news. Last year, he publicly harangued
Fresno County supervisor Bob Waterston at a meeting of the Local
Agency Formation Commission.
Arax said he plans to write books and magazine articles and suspects
that most of the time he still will write about the Valley —
following advice that William Saroyan, another Fresno writer, once
gave a 19-year-old Mark Arax: "Write about what you know in the
language you know it."
"I have to keep writing about this place," he said. "It’s a mystery
to me. I’m still trying to figure it out."
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
