Media Malpractice in the Extreme

by John Ziegler

As anyone familiar with my book or either of my two documentary films would already guess, it is really hard for me to be shocked by anything that happens today in the once noble profession of “journalism.” However, when I simply tried to tell the story of the most recent saga of my rollercoaster broadcasting career, even I was truly stunned by the utterly dysfunctional and decrepit state of the formerly esteemed fourth estate.

Media Memory Hole2

This narrative is not primarily about why I am no longer doing a talk show at KGIL in Los Angeles (though that tale itself is fascinating and infuriating and necessary for proper context). Instead, I wish to focus on what transpired after I was told (at least partially inaccurately) by KGIL that they would be flipping the station to all music and that my contract would be paid out.

The radio reporter of the Orange County Register, Gary Lycan, e-mailed me for comment for a story he was doing on why I was off the air and whether it had anything to do with my association with Sarah Palin. I immediately responded that a Palin connection here was totally absurd, that instead this was part of a botched format change (KGIL only partially switched to music at first) and that I would like to speak to him. He never called me or sought further comment. Instead he proceeded to write probably the most ridiculous piece of garbage [see below] ever produced about me in an allegedly reputable (and supposedly non-liberal!) outlet.  


Ziegler Doc 9 08 –

Lycan not only played the non-existent Palin angle to the hilt (while including some of his own insulting opinions about why I have championed her cause, disguised as completely un-sourced “some said”), he implied that I had left my last show early for nefarious reasons when I had made it clear on the air I had a prior public engagement. He even finagled whether I will actually get married to my fiance into a major element of the “news” story.

Outraged, I immediately called the OC Register (for whom I have written numerous columns over the past couple years), and Jeffery Miller, the Arts & Entertainment Editor, graciously agreed to remove most of the journalistically indefensible material posted online. Miller also offered me the opportunity to write my side of the story.

After a few days to think about it (and after nearly everything KGIL promised in our separation agreement turned out to be a lie), I decided to take Miller up on his offer. I wrote an incredibly benign, “just the facts” description of what I actually saw take place in the bizarre final weeks at KGIL, and I submitted it to Miller for his approval. In an e-mail exchange I made it clear that I wanted the article both online and in the paper itself. He unequivocally stated the piece would appear unedited in that Sunday’s paper. Moments after he e-mailed me that my account was posted on the website, I received a Google Alert that this was indeed the case.

Just before that, my lawyer received an angry call from KGIL complaining about the content of my article. When I asked Miller how this was possible, he sheepishly (in an e-mail) admitted that he had given the article to Gary Lycan by mistake before publishing it and that Lycan had sent it to KGIL. Now I fully understand wanting to get comment from KGIL after it is posted, but to have Lycan be in the loop (when much of the article criticizes his work as a “reporter”), is a blatant and massive conflict of interest.

A little later, I noticed that, without any notification/explanation, the piece I had written had been taken down from the OC Register website. The next day Miller wrote to me (in yet another e-mail) that KGIL had laughably threatened legal action against them for publishing my version of the facts and that they were having their lawyers make sure they were in the clear. I told Miller that anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the law could easily comprehend the ludicrousness of KGIL’s threat against the Register, and he agreed. I was told to expect a final decision at any moment.

It was not until the next day (a Thursday) that I finally got a voice message from Miller saying that the article would indeed be put back up online but he just needed to speak to me about it. When we talked he told me that the lawyers had concluded (surprise!) that there was no legal jeopardy for the paper in printing the article but that it would NOT, as previously agreed to by e-mail, be in the Sunday paper (it is important to note that I would never have taken the risk in writing the article without an it would be in the Sunday paper). He claimed that this was because the piece might have to be edited if there was a last second ad that came in but that he wanted the piece left intact.

My BS detector went off immediately and I told him he was lying to me and that I wanted to speak to his superior. Eventually I got a call from Rebecca Allen, who was immediately extremely and almost bizarrely defensive and sensitive. Apparently she wanted me to listen and not be heard, even though it was her paper’s breaking of a clearly written agreement that would burn someone who had simply taken up the paper’s offer to tell their version of the truth about a matter of public interest.

She scoffed at the notion that the decision not to publish the article in the paper had anything to do with advertising or editing, and basically admitted that this was their way of coming to a nonsensical compromise. When I simply tried to inquire as to the reasoning behind (or lack thereof) and the ramifications of such a decision, she abruptly and rudely hung up on me.

Perhaps the most patently unprofessional element of all of this is that she never actually said they were reversing their position or that they no longer planned (as they had stated just two hours earlier) to put the account on their website. But I knew that was the way it was going to turn out.

How pathetic is that? I just simply presumed that nothing other than personal animus (originating from me having called them on their cowardice and incompetence) would drive an alleged journalistic institution to go back on several agreements and decide not to publish a highly credible version of the truth. There was a time when what was clearly journalistically right and wrong (or at least the fear of looking completely silly) would have trumped all other factors at a reputable newspaper. Clearly, those days are gone forever.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the Register did not re-post my column. Up until after Allen hung up on me, there was still a cache version of the piece but that’s disappeared, as well. In a rich irony (considering my many on-air run-ins with the network) the only credible evidence left on the web that the article ever existed comes from this MSNBC version of the OC Register story. The MSNBC edition contains only the beginning and links to the now dead OC Register account. Here is a link to my website where it can be found in its entirety.

I want to make clear that the significance of this story is not that it happened to me (that is simply the only reason it has been told at all – because I happen to have this pathological compulsion to tell the truth even when it’s not in my self interest to do so), but rather because it is a crystal clear case-study on just how repugnant the rotting corpse of journalism (not to mention human nature) has become….

And just how rare and difficult it is for the real truth of any matter to  come out in any significant way.


Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Sep 9th 2009 at 2:19 pm in Media Criticism | 78 Comments