The Fed Tapes: How the LA Times Won the Pulitzer

[ellisonz]

3. Here's my commentary:

By Zachary Ellison. Twitter @ZacharyObama. Photo of the Los Angeles Times headquarters building in El Segundo.

Link to: The Fed Tapes: How the LA Times Won the Pulitzer - What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin

The dangers of practicing investigative journalism in Los Angeles alone are immense. People wonder why I would have any interest in such a perilous adventure as this, but really it’s the stories that keep you going. For everyone source that I get, with the information that they carry, the more I slowly learn about the web of relationships that underwrite politics in Los Angeles. People think the whole city government must have gone corrupt, except of course so often if you talk about their particular candidate or representative. Practicing accountability journalism is often about keeping yourself accountable in gathering the facts and attempting to analyze them for meaningfulness. Doing so on a case as complicated as the LA Fed Tapes is truly perilous.

The slow grind versus the fast brew of fleshing truth from reality that is sometimes stranger than fiction. For this reason, I listened with excitement this last week to former LA City Councilmember and journalist Mike Bonin’s podcast with Los Angeles Times journalist Benjamin Oreskes and editor Steve Clow. The Los Angeles Times coverage of this Tapes scandal resulted in the Pulitzer Prize being awarded to the Times for Breaking News Reporting with a slew of reporters sharing in the award. Bonin who is targeted in the discussion heard on these recordings in the most hateful, bigoted scornful way particularly by former LA City Council President Nury Martinez admits to having mixed feelings about the award. As he notes, the source of the tapes is still officially unknown, the leaker “Honest-Finding-1581” having posted the recordings in clips on Reddit and then Tweeted it out under the unceremonious “LAunionLaundry” account on Twitter. That account lead the Los Angeles Police Department to a second Twitter account, perhaps the leaker had issues with remembering his account credentials to login or got met with a firewall?

https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/la-fed-tapes-journalism-in-los-angeles