Today's front page Daily News prominently features a Q and A with Tennie Pierce, the former firefighter who sued the city of Los Angeles over a prank in which he was fed dog food, conducted by the paper's award-winning reporter Beth Barrett.
Normally, Barrett is a great digger and reporter, very tough on her subjects, and many people think she should have won this weekend's Southern California Journalism Award for Hard News, which instead went to perfectly professional but not earth-shattering fire coverage by a huge team of Los Angeles Times reporters.
Barrett blew the lid off Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's affair with now-departed Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas. Some political analysts believe Barrett's scoop assured that Villaraigosa will not run for governor of California.
But Barrett's softball interview leaves out most of the key controversies swirling around Tennie Pierce, and some of those controversies helped discredit Pierce in the eyes of the public.
The Weekly published the most extensive investigation into what really happened at Fire Station 5, in March of 2007. Key among the issues that the Daily News' Q and A was silent on today include:
- Pierce lied in public at the City Hall appearance that set off a firestorm of support for him by black organizations, claiming that "nine white members" of his fire crew were behind the prank, when in fact, the pranksters were a mixed bag of ethnicities and races.
- The same day that the Latino firefighter, Jorge Arevalo, fed Pierce dog food as a prank, another colleague alleged to the Weekly that Pierce taunted the much smaller Arevalo at a volleyball game, shouting, “I take craps bigger than you!”
- Despite intense investigation of the incident, no racist undertones, comments or motivations were found to be involved in the prank. A jury later agreed that the two white captains punished for their handling of the incident had been victims of reverse discrimination.
- Photographs of Pierce hazing other firefighters showed him to be a raucous prankster with no problems engaging in outlandish behavior, including Pierce spraying water into the face of one strapped-down firefighter, smearing shaving cream around the groin area of another strapped-down firefighter, and gleefully laughing at a third who had been wrapped in a bed sheet scrawled with, “Oy Vey! I’m Gay!”
- Pierce's attorney Genie Harrison in whose office's Barrett conducted this rehashing of old news, stood to rake in a tidy fortune in attorney's fees for representing numerous malcontents and firefighters who claimed wrongdoing.
- "Justice" is not what Pierce's colleagues think he is seeking, including his longtime friend Vance Burnes, a black firefighter who called into question key parts of Pierce’s lonely depiction of himself as a harassed firefighter singled out by his colleagues for speaking up.
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Comments
There are 2 comments posted for this article.
I agree with Pelisek on this one as far as Pierce goes -- he lied to the Council and the public, and the Daily News interview portrays him as someone with a life-long chip on his shoulder for having been raised by a poor mother, "never took a drink until I was 49," somehow he had an elevated opinion of himself for what he accomplished. It's hard to understand Barrett's motive here.
-- BUT I totally disagree that Barrett did our city any service by "blowing the lid" off the Mayor's affair. While the whole local press turned into sleazy tabloid paparazzi, the city was harmed by a lack of attention to the REAL news, like the fact that Sacto stole $1.2 BIL of our surplus gas taxes then without a peep or notice from the media (so he's taking almost as much this year, as though we didn't desperately need that money for Transportation). Reporters hounded him at the Port and that little foreign reporter sued for millions for phony injury, because she intentionally disobeyed the law; from that time on, there's been a "Let's get 'em" attitude that is more spite than civic service. I'm glad Barrett didn't get the award -- she's a selfish career opportunist.
Posted on June 23, 2008 4:33 PM by sean
Above, by "he's taking almost as much this year," I meant Arnold, not Antonio. Arnold tried to cut taxes but when the Dems resisted, he agreed to turn to OUR "surplus" gas taxes that we were promised would go for Transportation only. -- Why doesn't the media, which supports mass transit and dutifully rails about the poor state of roads and highways (the curb lane of Sunset Blvd. west of Beverly Hills is a tire-killer) scream about this? -- (Locally, let's see if Prop S and trash fee hike go to public safety, LAFD and LAPD, and if the little old ladies in WLA being mugged through open windows because they can't afford the AC, but must pay these fees, get their share in their "rich" neighborhoods, as the Eastside derides us. Or will we on the westside get stiffed again, as my HOA says.
Posted on June 24, 2008 6:46 PM by sean