CONFLICT OF INTEREST OR MERE COINCIDENCE? LA TIMES KILLS LEADING STORY ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BY WRITER WITH ARMENIAN ROOTS–CATALYZING CHARGES OF BIAS
Sirius Information, Inc
Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog
April 30, 2007 Monday
Rumors are running rampant that the Los Angeles Times killed
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 LA Times managing editor Douglas Frantz would probably
prefer not to address, the LA Weekly reports.
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 LA Weekly, forgotten,
reports Weekly writer Daniel Hernandez.
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 have already done. The
revised Times article ran under the headline, "Genocide Resolution
Still Far From Certain" on April 21, four days before Armenian Genocide
Remembrance Day in LA. 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. "Colleagues, You should know that
I had a Page One story killed this week by Doug Frantz," the letter
began. "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.
He continues: "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.