Papers, Please

Breonna.

A grand jury in Kentucky failed to indict any of the Louisville police officers for Taylor’s killing. One officer was charged with ‘wanton endangerment.’ His inattention in controlling the rate and target area of his firearms discharge resulted in risking the lives of Taylor’s neighbors due to bullets entering the adjacent apartment. A state of emergency was declared before the grand jury’s announcement, because, duh. They knew what was coming.

Indeed, protests began immediately. Fringes of riotous behavior ensued. A white cop shot an unarmed black woman and was only charged for the shots he missed, rather than the shots that actually killed her. The NAACP and the ACLU condemned the ruling accordingly. Protests across the nation fired up again, including in SoCal. On the ground in Louisville, there were reports of white militia providing ‘private’ security for local businesses, much as in Kenosha. Non-violent Black protestors were arrested for ‘rioting’ even as they approached church sanctuaries.

The common contention across conservative social media that it was a justified killing was almost certainly inaccurate. Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron’s claim it was entirely self defense in serving the no-knock warrant was the press friendly story line. It was widely reported Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired first and struck LMPD officer Jonathan Mattingly, prompting fellow officers Brett Hankinson and Myles Cosgrove to return fire, which killed Taylor. A Kentucky State Police ballistic report didn’t quite support that, which found the 9mm bullet that struck Mattingly was neither “identified nor eliminated” as having been fired from Walker’s gun. They ruled out the possibility of friendly fire because all three officers involved were allegedly carrying .40 caliber pistols, while Walker’s gun was a 9mm Glock. Local ordnance records show Hankinson had been issued a 9mm weapon in addition to his .40 caliber weapon.

Taylor’s boyfriend Walker, a licensed gun owner, continued to insist he only fired a warning shot, assuming people were breaking into their residence, and ended up suing the city of Louisville for immunity and damages, under Kentucky’s ‘stand your ground’ law. He was initially charged with attempted murder and assault, but those charges were dropped. Attorney General Cameron failed to explain the discrepancy in the possibility of friendly fire from an additional firearm potentially discharged by Hankinson.

It was a ‘he said she said’ situation, as always erring on the side of law enforcement over the Black community.

Same old hash.

One significant happenstance in latter September of 2020 to note: the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times issued a formal apology for its longstanding participation in systemic racism. They admitted their reporting throughout the years often stereotyped Angelenos of color, sensationalized racial strife events in the south land, and sometimes reinforced excessive elements of penal sentences and the use of force by police as effective crime interventions. While touting their frequent journalistic work supporting local communities of color, the board also reflected a history of purposeful ignorance and occasional, outward prejudice toward non-white populations, noting their respective shortages of journalists of color in their newsrooms.

Like many old school American newspapers, the Times originally spent much of its formative years promoting the interests of local white industry and land ownership, stewarded at inception by a guy named Harrison Otis, a Civil War veteran who used the paper as a platform in shaping the SoCal region to his white supremacist agenda. Print media was no less susceptible than social media in terms of the presumed dictate for objective journalism, since virtually all their original creators benefited from the heavily resourced ruling class aspects of civilization.

The Times supported wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans back in World War II.

They were a propaganda outlet for Eisenhower’s ‘Operation Wetback,’ an overtly racist mechanism to deport Mexican migrants back to their country after having been imported in by that same administration to do agricultural work during World War II when so many whiteboys were fighting overseas. No, really. Ike led a coalition that initiated a protocol called Operation Wetback. It’s true. Look it up.

When the ’91 Watts riots went down after the acquittal of the cops who’d assaulted Rodney King, after it became clear they couldn’t safely send in white reporters to cover the unrest, the Times sent in minority reporters who traditionally had been covering smaller stories and fluff pieces.

The racial strife of 2020 redefined the manners in which journalism needed to change, and the editorial board recognized the need for further inclusion among its staff and the ways in which they needed to craft headlines and stories concerning diversity in Los Angeles.

It was a beginning of sorts, a rare ownership in a traditionally white sector of Americana. As with most social infrastructures, they have a long way to go to reform and reconcile their past implicit and complicit biases. But a first step is better than no steps at all.

I’ve been reading The Los Angeles Times since I was a wee lad. I figured out early on it was the best source of world news outside of the pre-internet sources available to me back then in SoCal. My local papers were jaded with small town jaundices, full of hokey puff pieces and little more. As I’ve mentioned, I read voraciously as a kid, and I went far out of my way to find a Times quarter-fed kiosk so I could leisurely read the paper over breakfast.

In fact, quietly reading a newspaper with my coffee, bacon and eggs, is right up in my top five favorite things to do in life, even now in my fifties (though I had to give up pork when I finally recognized piggies are as smart and cuddly as doggies). Generally, I start with the comics page, then the headlines and the front page, then the op-ed page, finishing up with the arts and entertainment section, a time-honored tradition hailing back to the days when the only way we’d know if Van Halen or Rush were launching a new album or tour, was via advertisements in the Times Calendar section.

Black-and-white print remains my preferred forte in getting my news of the world. I know. I’m a dinosaur. It’s better than clickbait. Most news outlets have transitioned to cyber delivery and online pay wall subscriptions now. It’s much harder to find newsstands and paper kiosks these days. I mourn the passing of that medium with great remorse.

Many online trolls tagged the Times as a liberal mouthpiece, but the truth is, its history shows anything but. Nonetheless, I have found the Times to be consistently reliable journalism throughout my life, which is why I’ve cited it as a source so often within this journal. It’s a main hub of Southern Californian truth-seeking, outside of accredited university publications and studies…its past contributions to white supremacy notwithstanding.

It’s important to note the distinction of issuing unilateral ownership of past discretion. We are going to need truckloads more of this sort of effort from all institutions servicing our society. It seems apropos one of the places that first began launching that new paradigm is our bedrock of journalism, the girls and guys who chronicle the happenings of global and local events, who tell us what’s really going on.

A little ain’t enough, but a little is a start.

*Compiled from September 23, 2020