Distractions Deflect From Issues Even Around City Hall
By PAT MAIO
Staff Reporter
Comedians get paid good money spoofing Angelenos and their lack of attention to serious items in the news, such as grand jury investigations into how city contracts are divvied out.
Is the local reaction to the current round of government inquiries disproving the myth? A random check of opinion in and around Los Angeles City Hall last week turned up some familiarity with the ongoing county and federal investigations and the departures of three deputy mayors. But there were also a few blank stares.
“There are so many exposes on the front pages of newspapers these days,” said Tom McQuade, a tax examiner with the Internal Revenue Service, who said he wasn’t familiar with the controversy. “There’s Kobe (Bryant), the man in Fresno who killed nine people, illegal immigrants flowing across the border, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So much is happening that people tune out.”
Nancy A. Cammarata, a senior management analyst with the Los Angeles Fire Department, said the brouhaha at City Hall doesn’t sound all that serious.
“I read about it in the newspapers,” she said. “Sometimes people just leave for other jobs. I don’t know if the departures were appropriate or not. That’s entirely up to the mayor’s office. Over time, the details will surface. Right now I’m not concerned.”
Jacquelyn Lacey, director of central operations with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, has followed the activity closely, but doubted those outside government were as attentive.
“It’s competing with other headlines,” she said. “The deputy mayors are very important to the mayor’s office. It causes one to wonder what is going on in the office, or what led to the resignations in that office. L.A. residents are a little bit more laid back on local politics.”
Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at California State University, said that if this were New York, the tabloids would be all over the story. “The threshold for something becoming a big public issue is higher here,” he said.
To be fair, Sonenshein and others note that despite the increased media attention in recent weeks, the investigations appear to be at an early stage and there have been no indictments. “The public takes a lot of interest in scandals that become criminal,” he said.
Rod Goree, an analyst with the L.A. Personnel Department, admits that aside from those who work in and around City Hall, public opinion is likely to be minimal. “Nobody is talking about this around the water cooler,” he said.
Xandra Kayden, senior fellow with the School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California at Los Angeles, cited a cynical public and a news media that has failed to spotlight complex issues.
“In a sense, things don’t happen unless the Times says it’s happening,” Kayden said. “It is hard to get a voice or platform to be heard because this is such a large and complex city,” she said.
Unlike New York, where there are four daily newspapers two of them tabloids the press in Los Angeles is less rough-and-tumble, she added.
“It’s something about the culture that it just doesn’t want to listen. Television is a lost cause here,” she said. “I do find that people don’t instinctively understand why this scandal is different.”
Marcia Brandwynne, assistant news director of KTLA (Channel 5), which is owned by Tribune Co., conceded that “this is not a television story, but it is an important one that we alerted our viewers to. It’s hard to explain financial malfeasance and government malfeasance.”
Aly Colon, a media analyst with the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., explained that eyes might be glazing over on the issue because local media has failed to present the stories in a compelling way.
“Sometimes stories are written or produced in such a way where the relevancy, humanity and impact may not be made as clear in people’s lives,” Colon said. “People respond to stories because they resonate with them. Journalism has learned how to repeat information, but not deliver information that resonates with people.”
