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[See Clickbait, p. 7]
Illustration by Anson Stevens-Bollen
By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
Reform, Rebuild, Restore:
Villanueva’s Campaign for Sheriff By Lyn Jensen, Carson Reporter Alex Villanueva, who’s hoping to become Los Angeles County’s next sheriff come the Nov. 6 election, has a history of whistleblowing within the sheriff’s department, including uncovering promotions linked to campaign contributions. Despite his own high test scores and decades of experience, he says he was denied promotion hundreds of times while Lee Baca was sheriff. Even after Baca resigned in disgrace
over a jail-corruption scandal, and Jim McDonnell was voted sheriff in 2014, Villanueva was still “blocked and blackballed,” he says. Now retired from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after 32 years, Villanueva says, “There’s one job he [McDonnell] forgot to block me out of — his job.” If Villanueva does take McDonnell’s job, it will be the first time since 1914 an incumbent Los Angeles
sheriff has been voted out of office. Villanueva would be the first Spanishspeaking sheriff since 1890 and the first Democrat to hold the non-partisan office since 1880. He says he’s running for sheriff now because, “I saw a progressively deteriorating department with a succession of sheriffs who were failing to do their job, and that leads us up to the current sheriff.” [See Villanueva, p. 4]
October 18 - 31, 2018
Coming Into Being Coincides with Gathering of Elders p. 13
S E V L E S R OU OFF CLICKBAIT NEWS
Port unveils another chapter in its China Shipping saga p. 2 RLn’s midterm ballot endorsements p. 5 INK: Stories on Skin on view at MoLAA p. 11 Dia de los Muertos/First Thursday p. 12
WEANING
Real News, Real People, Really Effective
he American news diet is filled with the real and the absurd, challenging the ability of everyday Americans’ to filter out “fake news.” The regular feces throwing monkey show that is the Donald Trump administration is responsible for this. Headlines frequently draw concern over whether the president’s mental health can handle reality and whether the president’s handlers can keep the president from shooting himself in the foot. Our news feeds are filled with talking heads screaming at each other in bold type: YOU’RE NOT A VICTIM! While online news clips of Trump-backing union workers admitting Republican tax cuts only benefited their asshole bosses become a viral meme. The associate director of Project Censored, Andy Lee Roth, warns, however, not to confuse Trump’ politics as the source of the social problems afflicting our communities and republic. “Displaying brazen disregard for the First Amendment, Donald Trump has routinely demonized the press as ‘the enemy of the people,’” Roth stressed. “It must be noted that many of the stories featured in this year’s book cannot be fully understood simply by focusing on either Trump’s dizzying contempt for the truth or the plots and intrigues of his administration. From reporting on a global decline in the rule of law to the root causes of the opioid crisis, and military expropriation of public lands, among other stories, we hope Censored 2019 alerts the public to social problems whose roots run deeper than Trump’s politics.” Like Project Censored director Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon, the authors of the Junk Food news chapter this past year, professor Susan Rahman and student intern Isabelle Snow, referenced Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death to frame this year’s junk food news chapter, Blurred Lines and Clickbait. Postman said a particular medium can only sustain a certain level of ideas. Since the advent of television Americans receive a great deal of their information through television news, sitcoms and dramas. But, notwithstanding fictional examples like Orphan Black, The Wire and The Handmaid’s Tale, this form can’t articulate complex ideas the way print can. Shortcomings of television
LA County Sheriff candidate Alex Villanueva. Photo by Terelle Jerricks.
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