October 20, 2003
On October 2, the Thursday before the Tuesday California recall vote, the Los Angeles Times published an article in which six women alleged that they had been "groped" by Republican candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. These women had alleged that they had been groped or fondled by the former body builder in a time period that stretched from the 1970s to 2000.
Not only was this article a blatant case of bias by the Times against Schwarzenegger, the Republicans and the movement to recall Grey Davis, it was recognized by readers as such. In some political circles, the Thursday before an election is referred to as "Dirty Tricks Thursday". Exposure on that day leaves the candidate scrambling on Friday to investigate the allegations and then the weekend in defensive mode, making it almost impossible for him or her to stay on their message. There are other factors that showed the bias of the Times other than just the date that the piece ran.
Firstly, the article was longer than most newspaper articles are. The piece contained 3,577 words or was roughly five times longer than average articles; something that couldn’t be missed. As well, none of the women involved, initially came forward to the paper; nor was any information provided to the Times from the camps of rival candidates. Rather the newspaper sent reporters out to find dirt on Arnold by contacting sources in the film industry. The LA Times didn’t seem interested in taking a pro-active approach with the other candidates.
The blatant approach of the Los Angeles Times in attempting to support Democrat Grey Davis in his bid to avoid being recalled, backfired. Californians voted to recall the governor and overwhelmingly voted for Schwarzenegger to succeed him. Within two days after the article was published, the Times received hundreds of telephone calls and emails attacking the paper for its treatment of the Republican candidate. Within those two days over 1,000 readers cancelled their Times’ subscriptions.
As all good liberals do when they are found out, the Los Angeles Times whined about how they were not really biased against Arnold. They claimed that the facts in the story had to be checked and rechecked and rechecked again and that it was just coincidence that it was ready for publication five days before the election. As a last line of defense, and perhaps the weakest, the paper indicated that they had written negative articles about Grey Davis and about candidate, Arianna Huffington, as if that somehow negated the searing allegations against Schwarzenegger that were made so close to voting day. Finally, the paper used the "don’t shoot the messenger" defense. It was reminiscent of Toronto Star publisher John Honderich’s defense of that paper’s Race and Crime series. The Star boasted about what a wonderful job they did for society in their quest for social justice. But if anyone dared disagree with the merits of the series or question the Star’s statistical analysis, Honderich would revert to just being the messenger. Honderich probably pulled it off, but the Los Angeles Times was not so fortunate.
Former LA Times reporter Jill Stewart went on television and announced that the Schwarzenegger story had been finished a couple of weeks earlier but the editorial staff held back publication until closer to the election. In an article published in the Los Angeles Daily News, Stewart wrote what she said was proof of the Times’ bias. According to Stewart, she had obtained information about Grey Davis--that he had a "bizarre dual personality" that resulted in acts of flying into rages against female staffers. Stewart recalled one incident when the governor violently shoved his 62-year-old secretary out the doorway. The former Times reporter said that the paper refused to publish her story because they did not want to run an article that attacked a major politician with facts that came from anonymous sources. It’s seems there was a slight change of policy when it came to Arnold. Stewart further questions why the Times did not send reporters out to dig up dirt on Davis in the same manner that they did concerning Schwarzenegger.
Since the release of Bernard Goldberg’s book, "Bias" in early 2002, there has been more attention being paid to bias in the media. It seems the people of California have caught on.