Larry Mantle of KPCC's Airtalk discussed the issue this morning with guest Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, who broke the story, reported earlier by LA Observed.
And here's another take on the whole affair from USA Armenian Life Magazine's Appo Jabarian -- scheduled to be published in Friday's edition. Excerpts:
In recent years, the Los Angeles Times officially adopted a journalistically accurate editorial policy
regarding the veracity of the Armenian Genocide. Readers welcomed Times’ highly commendable editorial position. In fact, the Times illustrated how much it values its professional integrity. Over the next few years, the common expectation that Times will no longer question the veracity of the genocide, metamorphosed into a sigh of relief. But alas, that sigh of relief turned out to be a false sense of security when a very disturbing development emerged only recently.
In his weekly commentary yesterday, titled “Los Angeles Times Must Dismiss Managing Editor Douglas Frantz,” Harut Sassounian, the Publisher of The California Courier, wrote: “When a company discriminates against an employee on the basis of his or her ethnic origin, it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits ‘employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.’ It appears that such a breach of the law took place when Douglas Frantz, the Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Times, blocked the publication of an article on the Armenian Genocide written by Mark Arax, a distinguished journalist of Armenian origin, who has worked at the Times for 20 years. On April 11, 2007, in an e-mail to Arax, Frantz accused him of having ‘a conflict of interest that precludes you from writing about the Armenian genocide, and particularly about an ongoing congressional debate about it. …Your personal stance on the issue, in my view, prohibits you from writing
about the issue objectively.’"
Sassounian continued: “To justify his discriminatory action, Frantz used the pretext that Arax and five other reporters at The Times had signed a joint letter in September 2005, reminding the editors that the newspaper was not complying with its own policy of calling the Armenian Genocide, a genocide. The editors, at that time, had no problem with that letter. On the contrary, they thanked all six reporters -- five Armenian-Americans and one Jewish-American -- for the reminder and pledged to comply with the paper’s policy on this issue. To make matters worse, in his e-mail, Frantz falsely referred to the above-cited letter as a ‘petition,’ and on that basis accused Arax of taking ‘a position’ on the Armenian Genocide. He thus implied that all six letter-writers -- Mark Arax, Ralph Vartabedian, Robin Abcarian, Greg Krikorian, Chuck Philips, and Henry Weinstein -- were political activists rather than independent journalists. By ‘prohibiting’ Arax from writing on the genocide issue, Frantz, by implication, was also prohibiting all six journalists … of ever reporting on this subject,… thus practically issuing a gag order that silences all Armenian Americans working at the Times.”
Sassounian added: “By the same logic, Frantz is implying that Latinos will be barred from writing on illegal immigrants, African American journalists from covering civil rights, Jewish-American reporters from writing about the Holocaust and Asian-Americans covering issues peculiar to their community. … Jim O’Shea, the top editor of the Los Angeles Times, in a meeting with this writer last week, said that the letter signed by the six journalists was not a ‘petition’ at all, and that there was nothing improper about it. In fact, he admitted that the letter upheld existing L.A. Times policy. Amazingly, even after discovering the truth, rather than reversing themselves and publishing the Arax story, The Times’ editors continued to endorse Frantz's censorship and compounded the discrimination. They did this by assigning their Washington reporter, Richard Simon, supposedly to update Arax's story.”
Having completed an in-depth investigation in this matter, Sassounian further outlined the employment discrimination problem created by Frantz expressing his belief “that rather than Mark Arax having an ethnic bias, Douglas Frantz himself seems to be the source of the problem. … It appears that he has strongly held personal views on Armenian-Turkish issues which have clouded his professional judgment, causing him to take actions which are improper and
possibly illegal:
1) In a discriminatory e-mail, Frantz falsely accused Mark Arax and five other Times’ reporters of signing a "petition" on the Armenian Genocide.
2) Frantz … reportedly … personally opposed the congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide.
3) Frantz was stationed for several years in Turkey … during which he may have developed very natural friendships with Turkish individuals and officials.
4)The Turkish Consul General in Los Angeles has reportedly bragged about his close friendship with Douglas Frantz and said that he turns to him whenever he has a problem with The Times.
5) This writer was told by the editor of The Times, Jim O’Shea, who has known Frantz for many years … that Frantz has a very abrasive personality. No wonder he was short-tempered and abrupt during a phone conversation that he initiated, falsely accusing this writer of threatening him, when in fact he was simply being told that the controversy regarding the Arax article might upset the Armenian community, if it turned out that the story was blocked due to the Armenian background of the journalist.
6) Frantz is scheduled to moderate a panel at a conference in Istanbul, May 12-15, on "Turkey: Sharing the Democratic Experience." The panelists are asked to discuss: "Can the Turkish experience be emulated by other countries in the region and beyond?" … the conference does not cover the lack of freedom of speech in Turkey, the jailing and killing of journalists such as Hrant Dink, and draconian laws on ‘denigrating turkishness.’“
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Instead of being belligerent against journalists that are being guided by the truth about the facts of the Armenian Genocide, Frantz should have acted fairly and professionally. On the contrary, he chose to act with a denialist’s Turkish Chutzpah and shamelessness!
One wonders if the Times is trying to fool its readers by giving them a simple lip service through an editorial policy regarding the facts of the Armenian Genocide that is blatantly ignored by Frantz. Or has the Times lost its authority on an individual employee like Douglass Frantz who has all too willingly allowed his denialist position to interfere with his duties as Managing Editor?
What right does Frantz have to disobey the editorial policy of his employer? And to add insult to the injury, how can he shamelessly punish those who adhere to that policy by permanently denying them their basic right to write about any topic related to the facts of the Armenian Genocide?
This writer, along with several readers and community members is shocked that the Los Angeles Times is allowing a single individual to fail an entire institution unchecked.
We urge the Los Angeles Times to do the right thing by dismissing Frantz who has committed the very crime of having personal conflict of interest that he has grossly accused those journalists who continue to uphold the Los Angeles Times’ still-valid editorial policy.
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I would like to encourage the readers to express their outrage on Douglas Frantz and his ill-treatment of Mark Arax by sending their e-mails to: Publisher David Hiller: David.Hiller@latimes.com, and Editor James O’Shea: James.oshea@latimes.com.