The Los Angeles Times laid off 115 employees on Tuesday, including approximately 25% of their newsroom, and yet somehow the two worst people at The Times appear to have managed to avoid being laid off.
Reporters, editors, columnists and others were laid off days after staging a one-day strike in an attempt to pressure owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong from making the cuts. The layoffs also come weeks after senior newsroom staff resigned.
“We still believe in the Los Angeles Times and the important role it plays in a vibrant democracy,” the Los Angeles Times Guild said in a statement. “But a newspaper can’t play that role when its staff has been cut to the bone. Los Angeles is a first-class city and needs a first-class newsroom to check its leaders, celebrate its victories, and tell the stories of its people.” (RELATED: LA Times Denies Submitting Question Seen On Biden’s Reporter Cheat Sheet)
Statement from the @latguild on today’s mass layoffs at the @latimes: pic.twitter.com/uRPWcMJqpf
— L.A. Times Guild 🦅 (@latguild) January 23, 2024
“This layoff was handled in a brutal and inhumane way,” the statement continued. “We had members locked out of communications systems before they could even read the layoff notices in their company email. Some were laid off several hours into their shifts.”
“Today has been gutting,” the statement concluded.
And yet somehow, the layoffs weren’t gutting for perhaps the two most unbearable LA Times reporters.
Now don’t get us wrong, we’re not cheering for more layoffs. In this economy, a layoff is frightening. But if any reporters deserved the axe, it was two who danced on the graves of anti-vaxxers and tried to play clean-up for Hamas beheading Israeli babies.
It appears investigative reporter Adam Elmahrek remains employed for now, but perhaps that’s just “disinformation,” the same way he claimed that pointing out Hamas beheaded Israelis in their barbaric assault is also “disinformation.”
In a tweet that is now private, Elmahrek argued that a report regarding the above from Israeli news outlet i24News is “unverified” and “sensational.”
Elmahrek said the “only source” “appears to be the Israeli military, which is widely known to spread lies and disinformation.”
Elmahrek went a step further, arguing that other journalists, like CNN’s Nic Robertson, and CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell “will have blood on” their hands for reporting the “heinous allegations,” according to Free Beacon.
Then again, The Times seems to share in Elmahrek’s disgusting display of ignorance, editing an article to say an “earlier version of this column mentioned rape in the attacks, but such reports have not been substantiated.”
Witnesses of the horrific attack have repeatedly said that women were raped and murdered.
Then, of course, we have business columnist Michael Hiltzik, who also appears to have skated by the round of layoffs.
Hiltzik is perhaps best known for mocking unvaccinated people who died from the coronavirus. Hiltzik told CNN that while it’s normally appropriate to mourn the dead in a positive light, it is not “entirely appropriate” to do the same for those who died of COVID-19 and chose not to be vaccinated.
“So many of them have actually promoted reckless, dangerous policies and … they took innocent people along with them,” Hiltzik said. “Every one of these deaths is a teachable moment and, unfortunately, we haven’t been learning from the lesson that we should be hearing from them.”
LA Times’s @hiltzikm on mocking people who die of Covid after opposing vax mandates: “We have a cultural habit, not speaking ill of dead … I’m not sure that in this case that’s entirely appropriate, because so many of them actually have promoted reckless, dangerous policies.” pic.twitter.com/zEXIrYmYlI
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 15, 2022
Hiltzik’s comments came after he published a column entitled “Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary.”
“How should we react to the deaths of the unvaccinated? On the one hand, a hallmark of civilized thought is the sense that every life is precious,” Hiltzik wrote. “On the other, those who have deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others, and end up in the hospital or the grave can be viewed as receiving their just deserts.”
“Mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belted,” Hiltzik continued.
Hiltzik responded to an inquiry about his current employment status with an email that said: “the least you could do is actually read the column you criticize, so people wouldn’t be inclined to think you’re illiterate.”
As The Times begs for new subscribers to keep their organization afloat, maybe management should look inward and reflect on why no one wants to read them anyway. Instead of laying off reporters who write about food, art and even gaming, maybe lay off reporters who mock their fellow Americans for dying and act as press secretaries for a terrorist organization.
The Daily Caller has reached out to The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Times Guild, Hiltzik and Elmahrek but has not received a response at the time of publication.