Los Angeles Times Ignores Evidence, Publishes Bigoted, False & Misleading Article
The Church of Scientology provided over 15 pages of evidence to the Los Angeles Times undermining their recent article in advance of its publication.
The LA Times received this evidence and chose to ignore all of it.
We here present the letter sent to the LA Times so that you can review for yourself the evidence they chose to entirely ignore.
You will then see for yourself that the LA Times is on a biased drive to harm the Church of Scientology using any misrepresentation or outright fabrication that they can find.
Here are the facts the LA Times ignored:
April 25, 2023
August Brown
Los Angeles Times
august.brown@latimes.com
Dear Mr. Brown:
To say that “a profile of the band The Mars Volta” generates questions like this says only one thing: the LA Times has inbred editorial anti-Scientology bias.
We’ve lost count of how many times the LA Times has asked us for comment on the allegations of the Jane Does, and how many times your organization has failed to perform an ounce of due diligence regarding those false allegations. Given the Times’ inability to get anything right about its reporting, we will be very blunt and clear:
The Church is not a party to this case. The prosecution’s insertion of religion into this matter is blatantly unconstitutional.
The Church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone, Scientologists or not, to law enforcement. Quite the opposite. Church policy explicitly demands Scientologists abide by all laws of the land. All allegations to the contrary are totally FALSE.
As to the civil matter, the scandalous allegations about the Church are complete fabrications. The allegations in the civil complaint of harassment are nothing but an attempted money grab. Every single instance of supposed harassment by the Church has been debunked.
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Cedric Bixler-Zavala and his wife’s claim that the Church “murdered” their dogs is a flat-out lie. Before they got dollar signs in their eyes and dreamed of suing the Church, they blamed their dog kennel for killing their dog. (See social media posts, Attachment.)
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Tellingly, the second dog-poisoning fabricated incident against the Church was not reported to the Animal Cruelty Task Force, which the LAPD told them was necessary for any investigation to be opened. (“The accusation alone does not compel us to initiate a crime report without proof.” ) You should ask Cedric lots of questions about this as part of your profile.
If there were any truth to this allegation, we certainly should have heard from LAPD directly. Rather, and what is blatantly obvious to anybody, is that these two shakedown artists filed a report so they could say, “We filed a report.” But as the report makes crystal clear, when LAPD asked them for substantiation, they refused to provide any. Of course they did; they could not provide evidence connecting this or any of their false reports to the Church because there is no evidence. The entire matter is a fabrication. And even more ridiculous is that the LA Times is asking about it.
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In August 2018, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and his wife accused a person, who has had no connection to and zero contact with the Church his entire life, of hacking their computers and spying on them. The person was simply parked on the side of the road near their home. Video of the incident made available publicly showed Bixler to be the aggressor and screaming crazy accusations that the person was sent by Scientology to harass her. Bixler called the police. The matter was rejected by the City Attorney’s Office years ago. (See Attachment.)
Imagine being an innocent person dragged into the insane world of these two. Ask your “profile” subject why he continues to make knowingly false accusations.
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The allegations of “phone hacking” are similar concoctions. In fact, LAPD investigated years ago, with “TID Electronics – cell phone technicians” stating, “there was no evidence of hacking/tampering.”
The only investigations that should be open are investigations of these individuals for filing false reports with law enforcement. LAPD never came to the Church regarding any of these allegations: we only heard about these false allegations from media like you.
The Bixlers now know that dupes in the media, like the LA Times, fall for any allegations against the Church because the Times disregards the facts when Scientology is involved.
The Los Angeles Times is on notice. The plaintiffs in this civil matter are inveterate scam artists. There is an actual story here about a couple of malign grifters. We’ve given you more than enough information to dig into that story.
Sincerely, Karin Pouw
cc: Craig Marks
Music Editor
craig.marks@latimes.com
B.J. Terhune
Assistant Managing Editor
bj.terhune@latimes.com
Shelby Grad
Deputy Managing Editor for News
shelby.grad@latimes.com
Kevin Merida
Executive Editor
kevin.merida@latimes.com
