MSM Treason Lobby Propagandists Faring Badly—But Fired Sacramento Bee Editor Rick Rodriguez Lands Plum Job At Arizona State University

Once in a while, I get curious about some of the Main Stream Media Treason Lobby propagandists that I have outed at VDARE.COM. Many of them subsequently lost their jobs although, sadly, their immigration enthusiasm probably did not do them in.

Nevertheless, I consider their firings poetic justice.

What, I often wonder, are they doing now? With the employment market for newspaper reporters and editorial page writers all but non-existent, things must be tough for them (I hope).

I set out to find out what I could.

The Los Angeles Times Mexican-born former editorial page editor Andres Martinez has fallen precipitously from grace. A member of the New York Times editorial board from 2000 to 2004, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist after resigning in disgrace from the L.A. Times, Martinez now blogs for the Washington Post and is the director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program at the way-to-the-left New America Foundation. Other subversive "fellows" include Jorge Castaneda, [Email him] Mexico's Foreign Minister from 2000-2003 and The Washington Monthly's Paul Glastris. (See his 1995 review of Alien Nation.)

Worse for Martinez than his dramatic and embarrassing professional decline: he and his ex-lover, Kelly Mullens, have become main attractions in the gossip rags. Mullens filed a restraining order against Martinez for stalking and sending her obscene, threatening e-mails. (Details here)

For his part, Martinez counter-sued Mullens, a publicist, for betraying confidences he shared with her during pillow talk when he was a prominent player at the L.A. Times. (Which is what led to his resignation.)

Juicy stuff, if that's your thing!

Off the radar, but to differing degrees, are two of the worst Open Borders cheerleaders, CNN's Maria Hinojosa and the Sacramento Bee's Diana Griego Erwin who once won a Pulitzer Prize while on the staff of the Denver Post.

Hinojosa who I identified as a "Mexican mouthpiece", was infamous for her slanted documentaries like Immigrant Nation; Divided Country that spewed anti-American propaganda while insulting patriots who want border security.

Although Hinojosa officially "resigned" from CNN, that's improbable.

Much more likely is that Hinojosa was fired, since her current jobs have much less national exposure and assuredly lower salaries. Hinojosa is at PBS where she hosts Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One and on V-me, a Spanish-language TV network, where she moderates La Plaza: Conversaciones con María Hinojosa.

Totally vanished is immigration enthusiast Griego Erwin, fired five years ago from the Sacramento Bee for making up names and fabricating circumstances to give her columns the politically correct slant she always sought—especially on her pro-illegal alien pieces.

Bee officials assigned to investigate her columns discovered that Griego Erwin may have created as many as 43 bogus sources during her twelve year Bee career. The magnitude of the Griego Erwin scandal dwarfs that of the much more publicized New York Times' Jayson Blair fiasco.

The latest Google entry for Griego Erwin is my 2005 blog. Where Griego Erwin is now and what she may be doing is a well kept secret.

But what's amazing is that Griego Erwin's enabler, executive editor and senior vice president Rick Rodriguez, subsequently fired from the Bee in 2007 after a 28-year career with the McClatchy Company (official statement: Rodriguez resigned "to pursue other opportunities") has landed a plum job.

Rodriguez failed in every respect to instill the fundamental standards of journalism at the Bee and ignored for years the accumulating evidence that Griego Erwin was writing fiction. Nevertheless, in February 2008 Arizona State University appointed Rodriguez to the faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He became the school's first Carnegie Professor specializing in "Latino and borderland issues"!

At the end of the press release, ASU added that Rodriguez was known as a "champion of watchdog journalism"

I'm speechless! Rodriguez was guilty of just the opposite: letting a lying columnist have free rein for over a decade without even minor oversight.

In announcing Rodriguez's appointment, Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan created his own version of the facts when he said:

"Rick Rodriguez is one of the leading editors of his generation, a national voice who has always championed great journalism and in-depth, investigative news reporting. He has been a teacher in the newsroom for more than 30 years, and now our students will benefit enormously from his passion, values and integrity."

Rodriguez's integrity? Am I missing something?

The rest of Callahan's statement was predictably subversive and centered on the so-called importance of Latinos having a voice in the media—even though the missing voice is that of patriotic Americans.

Continued Callahan:

"Latinos are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population. We need to create a cadre of young journalists who can not only speak the language, but are equipped with a deep understanding of the cultural, historical, political, religious and sociological backgrounds of the wide variety of Latino populations. There is no one better to do that than Rick Rodriguez, who has been a national leader of ethnic diversity in newsrooms and news products."

The ramifications of the Rodriguez farce are remarkable.

In an interview with the Poynter Institute's Gregory Favre, who once called Rodriguez his "longtime colleague and dear friend", Rodriquez pompously answered questions as if he had not been the central figure in one of the biggest outrages in journalism history.

Of course, Favre must be fully aware of Rodriguez's poisoned past, but he pressed on as if nothing were ever wrong.

The Rodriguez-Favre exchange was posted under the "Diversity at Work" section of Poynter's website and titled "ASU's Rodriguez Teaches How to Provide In-Depth Immigration, Latino Coverage."

Asked Favre: "What is the emphasis of the course you are teaching?"

Rodriguez answered: (hold on to your hats; my emphasis added throughout):

"This semester just ended, and I taught a course in depth reporting. My goal has been to try to get students immersed in their stories, to force them to ask tougher questions than they have in reporting daily stories, to do the background work—reading, researching and interviewing—that is necessary to do in-depth reports.

Continued Rodriguez:

"At the same time, I've been working to launch a new program, which is part of Arizona State's Southwest Borderlands Initiative. As part of the initiative, the Carnegie Corporation is sponsoring a very unique multi-disciplinary seminar in which scholars from five different departments at Arizona State will share their expertise on Latino issues in the borderlands with top graduate and undergraduate students.

"It's a terrific line-up that includes nationally prominent civil rights leader Raul Yzaguirre, borderlands expert Carlos Velez-Ibanez and other highly accomplished professors who will lecture about health, education, urban planning, religion, immigration, demographics and other topics. The goal is to give the next generation of journalists the background and skills to provide more sophisticated, nuanced and deep reporting on Latinos and the borderlands, both in the Southwest and in Mexico."

Favre: "Isn't there a follow-up project?"

Rodriguez (get this!):

"I'm hoping to help make sure in-depth journalism continues to thrive, which I think was one of the hallmarks at the Sacramento Bee, and that coverage of the fastest growing segment of the population—Latinos—is much better and deeper than it has been in the past."

Favre: "Given the economic earthquake in the news business today, what are you telling the young people in your class?"

Rodriguez (this one is the best of all!):

"I tell them that the need and demand for news and information is greater than ever and that there will always be a market for great storytellers...."

"Great storytellers"! I suppose Rodriguez has Griego Erwin in mind? Few were better than her at spinning yarns.

The idea that an utter and complete journalism failure like Rodriguez could be in a lofty academic position to further poison young Hispanic minds is beyond comprehension to me.

Just as Rodriguez enabled Griego Erwin, so have Callahan and Favre sanctioned Rodriguez's sins by sloughing off his astounding transgressions and promoting him as if he were a messiah.

If he had more courage, Callahan would have passed over Rodriguez for a more qualified candidate. Then the Rodriguez-Griego Erwin-Sacramento Bee disaster could have been made a mandatory case study for understanding the consequences of shoddy, dishonest journalism.

If there is a happy side to the Rodriguez story, it's that fewer opportunities exist today for journalists of all stripes, diverse and otherwise. Many of Rodriguez's blissfully naive pupils will never see the inside of a newsroom.

In the meantime, the rest of us will have to suffer along reading the same tedious pro-Open Borders stories, assuming we have the stomach for them, routinely cranked out by sympathetic Anglo-Saxon reporters and their diverse peers.

The brutal reality: the voiceless in the media are not Latinos but American patriots, who are rarely included and always marginalized in immigration stories.

Please email the key figures in my column. And, while I understand that it may be difficult to remain civil, please do not be vulgar.

Rick Rodriguez (rick.rodriguez@asu.com)

Christopher Callahan (christopher.callahan@asu.com)

Gregory Favre (gfavre@poynter.org)

Joe Guzzardi [email him] is a California native who recently fled the state because of over-immigration, over-population and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth rate stable. A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.