Bill Donohue comments on how the Los Angeles Times constructs the news:
On January 17, a crowd of 15,000, many of them young people, took to the streets of Los Angeles to participate in the first “One Life” march, a demonstration in support of the rights of unborn children.
On February 1, 10 people demonstrated outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to protest the proposed canonization of Father Junipero Serra, the priest who brought Christianity to California.
Guess which event the Los Angeles Times ignored and which one it covered?
Across the nation, the Washington Post covered the Los Angeles pro-life march, and the newswire in Times Square highlighted it. But the L.A. Times effectively censored it, even though the demonstration was held one block from its headquarters. Its omission of this huge event, and its flagging of the tiny protest, are a reflection of its politics: the Times is pro-abortion and not exactly Catholic-friendly.
The non-event protest was the work of the ill-named Mexica Movement. In fact, there is no movement: there is just a handful of Christian-bashing, European-hating activists. In 2000, a Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, counted a “few dozen members” who showed up to protest Elton Johns’ appearance at Tower Records in Los Angeles (he allegedly sang a “racist song” on the soundtrack of the film, “The Road to El Dorado”). In other words, 15 years ago this rag-tag group marshaled more activists than it did last Sunday. Some “movement.”
The few who protested Father Serra showed how low-class they are when they compared the priest to the devil and Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez to Hitler. For good reasons, Gomez is well-liked by minorities, though his few detractors garner the news. Shame on the L.A. Times for profiling them.
Contact L.A. Times editor Davan Maharaj: davan.maharaj@latimes.com
