LA Times Gives New Meaning to ‘Speaking Out’

The Los Angeles Times gives new meaning to the term “speaking out,” extending it to students who violated university policy by loudly disrupting a pro-Israel event at the University of California Irvine last May with chants including: “These colonizers and occupiers! You should not be on our f****** campus”; . . . “F*** you!” . . . “Israel, Israel you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” . . . “Long live the intifada!” . . . “Israel, Israel what you say? How many people did you kill today?”

As Snapshots noted last week, The Times’ online article about SJP’s appeal protesting the administration’s sanctions gave voice only to those who drowned out others’ voices, dedicating three out of seven paragraphs to SJP statements, while failing to publish even one sentence reflecting the views or statements of the pro-Israel groups which ran the disrupted event or pro-Israel students who attended.

Meanwhile, The Times has compounded the problem on Friday by running the same skewed article in print and adding the egregiously misleading headline: “UCI group fights discipline; University punished students who spoke out at event featuring Israeli veterans.” (Emphasis added.)

For comparative purposes, here is how The Times used the term “spoke/speak out” in recent weeks in other contexts:

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also spoke out against lowering the standard of proof required in sexual misconduct cases.

Ran [of the Cambodia America Alliance] said it’s important that Cambodians outside the country speak out [against the imprisonment of Cambodian political leader Kem Sokha].

“That’s the only reason” the automakers would want a new review, said U.S. Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego), who spoke out against the plan [to consider cutbacks in pollution and fuel economy standards for automobiles and light trucks.]

The original lawsuit was filed by former employee Brandon Charles, who said he was fired because he spoke out against a SoFi manager for openly discussing sexual acts with two younger, female subordinates at the company’s Healdsburg, Calif., operations office.

But [Michael Bradley] feels a responsibility to speak out, in words and deeds, on issues that go beyond sports, which he did last summer by wearing a rainbow captain’s armband after an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and later when he called for national unity in the wake of the presidential election.

Trump neither tweeted nor spoke out about NAFTA during the first session of negotiations, which lasted five days.

[A group of clergy and activists from across the country] also spoke out against the president, placing much of the blame for a rise in white nationalist fervor on his shoulders.

[West Hollywood] Mayor Pro Tem John Duran said he spoke out only after hearing Horvath encouraging people to come forward and said he felt a responsibility to let people know they should not incriminate themselves.

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The Laguna Beach protests came after a weekend in which prominent leaders spoke out in Los Angeles against racism and violence.

Clearly, depicting students who shouted down others at an organized, authorized student event with chants of “You should not be on our f****** campus! F*** you!” is a departure from The Times’ traditional usage of the term “speaking out.” The headline also implies that UCI punished the students for “speaking out,” which it did not. UCI sanctioned the students who “disrupted a portion of the question-and-answer period, in violation of university policy.”

CAMERA has requested a clarification to the headline. Stay tuned for an update.