End of Los Angeles Times Relationship
Scheer has often expressed highly controversial thoughts. For example, on February 15, 2005, Scheer wrote an article entitled "What We Don't Know About 9/11 Hurts Us" for the LA Times. In it, he asked, "Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?" After running his column for more than 12 years and working as a reporter for the paper 17 years prior, the Los Angeles Times ended a nearly thirty year relationship with Scheer in November 2005, citing the need to cut costs while subsequently replacing him with two conservative columnists. Scheer said in an interview with "Democracy Now!" that the paper's owner, the Tribune Company, currently owns a newspaper and a television station in the same market, which is illegal, and may have fired Scheer in an attempt to make it easier to obtain a waiver permitting the dual ownership from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He also commented during a November 14, 2005, appearance on Democracy Now! that,
"What happened is that I had been the subject of vicious attacks by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh…. I was a punching bag for those guys. I'm still standing, and the people who run the paper collapsed."
In a posting at the Huffington Post, Scheer wrote:
- "The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately 60 percent of Americans now get the point but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher."
Scheer's firing incited a protest held outside the Times downtown office on November 15, and hundreds of readers wrote letters of complaint while some, including actress Barbra Streisand, publicly announced the cancellation of their Times subscriptions. Within a few days of his column being retired by the Times, the San Francisco Chronicle offered itself as the new home paper of Scheer's syndicated column, which ran there for years. On November 29, 2005 Scheer co-launched, as Editor in Chief, the online news magazine Truthdig, where his column is now based. Scheer's column is syndicated nationally by Creators Syndicate in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Nation.
Read more about this topic: Robert Scheer
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