Ted Rall has been an editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times as well as an essayist and his work is featured in over 100 publications nationally across America.
The LA Times recently went to war with the journalist on behalf of the LAPD and it’s officers – who dislike Rall’s strong anti-police brutality stance in his work – by publishing a dubious audio recording of a Jaywalking arrest Rall endured 14 years ago, which was procured from a secret source within LAPD.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League aka [__LAPPL did a victory dance__](http://lapd.com/blog/lappl_applauds_la_times_firing_of_cartoonist_ted_rall/) and ratted out the LAPD as the source of the tape, which under California law should’ve required Rall’s signature to obtain. Their complete first amendment [__chilling statemen__](http://lapd.com/blog/lappl_applauds_la_times_firing_of_cartoonist_ted_rall/)t can be found here:
> This serves as an example of how an accusation and subsequent negative story about the behavior of police officers may well be inaccurate and feed a negative narrative about law enforcement.
Oh [__LAPD__](http://www.lapdonline.org/) and LAPPL, how can you get upset at any single journalist for criticizing your many, many misdeeds?
Technical analysis of the tape by Rall reveals the Los Angeles Times pretext to call him a liar and for his firing to be bogus.
Rall’s cartoons have appeared regularly in Rolling Stone, Time, Fortune and Men’s Health magazines, and were for several years the most reproduced cartoons in the New York Times.
His prolific work has been honored twice with the Robert F. Kennedy Award which is also known as the “poor man’s” Pulitzer Prize, for documenting the lives and often the plight of the poor.
Rall’s international travels through Central Asia have been published and radio broadcast in addition to appearing in his 2006 book “Silk Road to Ruin”.
According to Wikipedia, Ted Rall is also an unapologetic liberal and atheist, who is widely known for calling upon President Barack Obama to resign.
His latest book “[__Snowden__](http://www.amazon.com/Snowden-Ted-Rall/dp/1609806352)” will be released at month’s end and is a “portrait of a brave young man standing up to the most powerful”.
Clearly, Rall is not afraid to wade into controversy, but in America the 1st amendment is written to protect journalists free expression on all manner of controversial topics.
[__Across the rest of the web, other editorial cartoonists have been in an uproar over the Rall affair.__](https://twitter.com/digitaljungle/status/629251114647617536)
Here's hoping @TedRall won't regard me as a scab for pitching this cartoon to the @LATimes. pic.twitter.com/GsCHdqKXjP
— John Curtis (@digitaljungle) August 6, 2015
The LA Times bent over backwards to use secret material without a full investigation of its contents. The audio recording is over 14 years old – and improperly acquired from LAPD at best – all in the major newspaper’s insipid attempt to claim Rall lied about the incident.
Being a journalist, Rall fought back by [__sending those recordings to experts__](http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-second-enhanced-tape-reveals-all/), whose analysis says that, not only is his version of events correct, but even witnesses noted how unusual it was for a jaywalking arrest to end in handcuffing.
The LAPD officer involved is of course lying about the whole affair too, as the tape proves when reviewed by audio forensic experts.
Even worse, to collude with his [__Los Angeles Times__](http://www.latimes.com/) editors in a smear campaign over a jaywalking ticket 14 years ago???
*Ed. Note: Article updated to remove the live interview cues to audience and to include more background on Ted Rall, as well as to raise the LAPPL’s article to the Cover image courtesy of John Curtis, whose tweet is embedded in this story too. Also, Google plus is obviously not dead just yet.*
