Opinion: Outside the Tent: War Heroes and Juiced Judges
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The Times drew some fire and praise over the weekend for its coverage of the military and corrupt Las Vegas judges. In Current, Marine dad Frank Schaeffer bashed the paper for not giving war heroes an A-1 parade. According to Schaeffer:
I haven’t seen one recent story dedicated to the heroism of our troops given such consistent prominence in The Times or other leading papers. Nor have I read a front-page headline about a military medal ceremony and the story behind it, although every year I see front-page treatment in The Times of who wins the Oscars.
Meanwhile, the Times’ ‘Juice vs. Justice’ series on judges in Las Vegas (Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) has been generating controversy.
Our paper’s own Las Vegas blog details the reaction from the tight-knit Las Vegas legal community. The Las Vegas Sun reports that the selection of judges in Vegas may be overhauled. And
I’m embarrassed. For the local judicial system. For the valley’s media. And for Southern Nevada. It took an out-of-state newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, to publish one of the most devastating pieces about Las Vegas that we have seen in many years [....]
While Ralston praises Times for devoting resources to the Las Vegas investigation Cal State Fullerton’s Jeffrey Brody criticizes The Times for just that (via LA Observed). Brody writes:
A newspaper that has its core business in Southern California, and is losing circulation, needs to pay attention to the communities in its own backyard. Study after study stresses the importance of local news. The Times has many skilled journalists who could do a great job in Southern California. Better to focus on prize-winning reporting in your circulation area than risk losing more readers and face a sale to a media company that will diminish the quality of the institution.
But local blogger Brady Westwater defends the series:
First, Las Vegas is in the LAT’s market. Second, Las Vegas is to a certain extent a suburb of Los Angeles since LA supplies the largest number of its visitors, many of its second home buyers and a lot of now full time residents who are still interested in Los Angeles. Most importantly, though, many of the people most affected by the crooked judges in Nevada are Los Angeles business people and visitors to Vegas.