Whole Life Times: Robert Scheer’s Untimely Departure

January 2006

Robert Scheer’s Untimely Departure

Is Anybody Left at the LA Times?

Interview By Terrence McNally

After 30 years as a writer including the last 13 as a weekly columnist on the opinion page, Robert Scheer was fired Nov. 10 by the Los Angeles Times. It wasn’t about ratings; as one of the Times’ most outspoken and progressive voices, Scheer’s columns often topped the paper’s list of most e-mailed stories.

At the Huffington Post blog, Scheer wrote, “Publisher Jeff Johnson, who offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by Pres. Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately, 60 percent of Americans now get the point—but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher.”

One-time editor of Ramparts magazine, Scheer is the author of six books; the “left” of KCRW’s nationally syndicated Left, Right, and Center; a weekly columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and a contributing editor to The Nation. He launched the web magazine Truthdig.com just after Thanksgiving.

WLT: What happened at the LA Times?
RS: First of all, the Chicago Tribune bought the Los Angeles Times and when they got rid of Michael Kinsley, the publisher announced he was taking over the editorial page and Op Ed pages.

Does that happen elsewhere? There’s a perception that publishers deal with business and editors deal with journalism.
Unfortunately, at most papers the publisher does control the editorial position. It wasn’t true at the LA Times and for that reason I think it was better. The publisher clearly made this decision. He told anyone who wanted to hear, “I want this section to be more conservative.” He used that word and he told them he hated my column. I never heard why; I assume it has to do with the content.

People who work at newspapers are brave about covering everyone except themselves. They’ll sail out of that building and confront heads of corporations, the president, dictators, but ask them what’s going on in their own building and they walk around like church mice.

So here you have the editorial page editor and the Op Ed page editor saying, “Oh this is a good new mix” as if this is their decision. It’s nonsense. The publisher made this decision and they go along with it.

Now is it because the Tribune company is concerned about their ownership of a television station in the LA market? It’s against the law for the Tribune to own a television station and a newspaper in the same market. When they bought the paper, they thought Congress was going to pass a law to loosen that rule, but there was a revolt on the grassroots level and Congress didn’t do it. Now, unless they get a waiver, they have to sell one. This is not reported, since no one in the building will actually challenge the publisher. Did someone in the Bush administration say, “If you want a waiver, get rid of Scheer?”

Your work has often caused you problems. Do you have any regrets?
On our TruthDig.com site, we have Ron Kovic’s introduction to the reissue of his new book. We met back in ’71 when we both spoke at a rally at the Westwood Veterans Cemetery. We were together there as night fell, looking at all these crosses.

I’d been over there and had seen what that war was doing in Vietnam. I wrote about it in 1964 and ’65 before Ron joined the Marines. My only regret is that I wasn’t more effective at warning people about it or Ron Kovic wouldn’t have been in a wheelchair for the last 35 years.
I feel the same about Iraq now.

Tell us more about Truthdig.com.
We’re an archival site. We’re digging, it’s an archeological model. There’s a truth, but you’ve got to dig for it. I asked Orville Shell to help us think about China; he writes an essay, he gives us links. It’s a guide. Saddam Hussein is on trial but everybody forgets the history. If the trial is dealing with charges against Saddam Hussein for crimes he committed in 1982, why did Rumsfeld embrace him in 1983 and ’84? Why did he become our ally after those crimes? So Juan Cole, the leading academic expert on Iraq, takes us on a journey, linking to all the basic documents from other places on the Internet, the National Security Archive and so forth. We have Steve Wasserman’s absolutely brilliant analysis of what’s going on at the LA Times. He calls it the WalMart-ization of journalism. So this is not Bob Scheer’s blog, or (Truthdig publisher) Zuade Kaufman’s.

Our slogan on top of the site is a quote from AJ Leibling, the great media critic, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Well, I now own part of one.

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org) and is the founder of mcnally: message&media, a consulting company for strategic communications.

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