The Media Did It

Some years ago while gathering information about the roving hookers of Sepulveda Boulevard, I got a cigar shoved in my face by a woman who hated newspapers. It was my own cigar.

It happened on a side street in Van Nuys. She had complained to the police that prostitutes often conducted their business in her frontyard, smashing her prize periwinkles, and she was sick and tired of it.

The idea of couples rolling around someone’s flower bed created an image I couldn’t resist, so I paid the lady a visit. I was smoking cigars in those days and was holding one in my hand in order to free my mouth to speak when she appeared in the doorway of her home.

I introduced myself as a newspaper columnist and explained my purpose, but that’s all I managed to say. She exploded into a tirade against newspapers with such hostility that I put the cigar back in my mouth in order to free my hands for self-defense.

If it weren’t for us, she screamed, there would be no whores, no crime and no one ruining her flowers. The word “flowers” was preceded by an alliterative adjective I am not allowed to use.

I had been standing halfway in the doorway when she suddenly slammed the door, flattening the cigar more or less against my face. It was like shtick from an old Laurel and Hardy movie. I felt like Ollie.

I stood on the porch for a moment and instantly made two important decisions: One, I would give up cigars, and, two, I was going to start doing something about the media’s negative image. That’s when I began apologizing.

*

What got me thinking about the incident was a magazine article I read recently about the low esteem in which we information gatherers are held by the public. The lady with the hookers in her blossoms was just one example. I’ve been apologizing for our actions ever since.

I figured, you see, that if we just said we were sorry often enough, even if we weren’t, it would create an aura of contrition that might serve us well in the future when we needed friends.

It didn’t actually matter what we apologized for as long as the effort seemed sincere. Think of Japan expressing remorse for World War II, and you’ll get the general idea.

I suggested to an editor that under the Los Angeles Times logo we ought to print the motto “Sorry About That,” thereby creating a sense of regret for whatever followed in the newspaper. But the idea was vetoed as inappropriate and possibly stupid. I was on my own.

Over the years, in addition to apologizing for various local media stampedes, I have expanded my range to assume personal responsibility for such diverse national iniquities as the rising crime rate among actors, Mike Tyson’s attempt to eat Evander Holyfield, the popularity of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” new holes in the ozone layer and Bill Clinton’s questionable choices in women friends.

But even that, I realized, wasn’t enough. So I began attending forums wherein the media were the target. I’d stand like a guy at an AA meeting, admit my addiction to newspaper writing and apologize for my weakness.

One of the forums I still attend off and on is that of FAIR, an acronym for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Run by a deceptively jolly man named Jim Horwitz, FAIR meets locally at Midnight Special, a bookstore in Santa Monica, in order to strip the skin from the media. The process is slow and often painful, but one can’t deny its cleansing properties.

*

I attended a FAIR meeting one night specifically to apologize for my columns but became so rattled by the questions and comments of the crowd that I found myself apologizing for things I hadn’t even written, like letters to the editor and negative obituaries on women in sports.

One middle-aged guy with a ponytail accused me of injecting opinion into my column, which, of course, I denied. Later, fearing for my safety, I apologized anyhow, feeling like those American POWs during the Vietnam War forced by the Communists to confess to crimes they hadn’t committed.

I dropped by a FAIR meeting the other evening expecting another cleansing session but instead got an uncharacteristic night of fun. There were performances by singer-satirist Roy Zimmerman, famous for writing songs like “Do the Clinton” (Come on and slide over to the middle/Straighten up and step light/Lean it to the left a little/Now lean it to the right. . . .) and by stand-up comic Darryl Henriquez, who does a fine imitation of a rat.

Both Zimmerman and Henriquez zeroed in mostly on politicians, mad scientists, animal haters and anti-environmentalists. No effort was made to flagellate the mass media, which left me feeling alone and unhated.

The evening of silent rejection has caused me to reassess my attitude regarding our sins. If I’m not going to be a victim, I’m sure not going to go around apologizing anymore. Media critics can find themselves another whipping boy. I’m out of the atonement business, and I’m not a damned bit sorry. And that goes for the lady with the whores in her periwinkles.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com