By Kay Ebeling
Producer, City of Angels Network
Examiner Caves to Catholic Church Lawyers and Fires Me, Part Two: If anyone still wonders if the Catholic Church uses its muscle to muzzle local news media, I am now living proof. The email Examiner Dot Com sent when they fired me opened with, “After reviewing the allegations brought forth by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles."
My editor didn't notice the "slander and defamation" in the April 29th stories in question until May 20th, after Examiner received a letter from the General Counsel of the L.A. Archdiocese, which I assume means Ms. Marge Graf. Funny thing is if she had just picked up the phone and called me and said, "Kay, that nun in San Marino is upset over what you said and crying in her Danish," I would have gladly removed the stories.
Instead, once again the Catholic Church rears its Mafioso-like head and applies muscle at the top, so one story about a nun’s outfit being the opposite of a modest habit was an excuse to get me fired from Examiner, thanks to yet another attorney working for Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles (pictured with one of his minions above).
I mean face it, hardly anyone ever says anything derogatory, inflammatory or funny in a nasty way about nuns in American media today.
Now I understand why Governor Keating quit the National Review Board fed up with the bishops’ Mafia style.
Now I understand why so many mainstream reporters stop reporting about pedophile priests.
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The L.A. Archdiocese pressuring Examiner to fire me - and succeeding - proves how much effort the Church puts into stifling true stories about its crimes. Makes you wonder what else the Church is hiding, what could be worse than what has been able to seep out so far? What could be worse than more than five thousand priests identified so far as sexual predators, just in years recent enough for victims to come forward?
How about Negligence and Fraud at a national - no international - level?
Now we know the Church DOES use its muscle to muzzle negative news reports
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Meanwhile I feel liberated now that I'm away from Examiner Dot Com, where not only was I totally on my own to find, track down, research, run all over town, and then write stories - but then I had to market them myself.
NOTE TO ANYONE thinking of becoming an Examiner.
The six months I was with them, every month it was “next month” that Examiner was going to start its national marketing campaign. After a while you realize their entire marketing campaign is you and each Examiner going out and finding readers, one at a time.
That's Examiner’s national marketing campaign, each writer goes out and finds readers.
One at a time.
Then you get paid one penny per click, so you have to go out and find a lot of readers to buy a sandwich.
When I wasn’t writing stories, I was trying to find news groups and blogs and other places to post links to the stories, so I could bring in readers more than one at a time, maybe five at a time, one after the other.
My coverage of sex crime coverups in the Catholic Church lost all its momentum.
I totally could not figure out who the audience was for pedophile priest rape stories at Examiner.
What kind of potential customers for advertisers could I bring in to this corporate journalism experiment in which I found myself trapped?!
With Pedophile Priest Rape Stories?????
So I became stifled.
I gut wrenched out the few stories I was able to write during the Examiner Dot Com period, unable to find my voice there. The stories then read exactly like that, like they were groaned out. Recently, putting together a collection of articles, I could not find anything I had posted at Examiner Dot Com good enough to put it in a portfolio.
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I thought here at Examiner we report what mainstream is afraid to report. Instead Examiner reports what will get it more advertisers.
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The biggest disappointment is I thought I was joining a 21st Century, forward thinking - give America what mainstream news media are too frightened to report - news organization.
Instead Examiner Dot Com turned out to be more corporate than the L.A. Times Mirror AOL Turner CNN whatever it all is today. Examiner writers’ stories are only there to draw in advertisers.
That's why all the stories there are in a 6 point ugly gothic type. They really don't want people who come to Examiner Dot Com to read the articles, they want Examiners to draw in readers to the ads.
With ugly 6 point Arial type mandated for all Examiner stories!
No one wants to read that font, so the eye instead is drawn to the ads on the sides
Examiner uses that obvious graphic art trick - ugly masses of print - to draw readers away from the stories to the ads.
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The Joke is on the Church
I had already decided to quit Examiner Dot Com a week earlier, because they were on my case to start posting all my stories in 6 point Arial type, and because they were not doing any marketing at all at the corporate level, and I was beginning to feel like I was working for Ex Scam-iner in reality.
Lucky for all of us, The L.A. Archdiocese General Counsel wrote that letter to Examiner demanding my removal, revealing the Roger Mahony machine to be paranoid, unable to stand criticism, and lurking everywhere online ready to stifle freedom of speech -
Just hours before I was going to quit anyway.
Did anyone ever expect anything better from Roger Mahony?
More to come shortly...
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