LA Times manipulates photo, headline to falsely suggest Larry Elder slapped a woman

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LA Times manipulates photo, headline to falsely suggest Larry Elder slapped a woman at campaign stop where he was attacked

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Los Angeles Times has published a misleading photo with an accompanying headline that falsely suggested that California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder, a black Republican, slapped a woman at a campaign stop where he was attacked.


The LA Times article dated Sept. 9 reports that the Los Angeles Police Department is now investigating the attack on Elder. The headline entitled, "LAPD is investigating altercation involving Larry Elder at Venice homeless encampment," paired with a photo of Elder touching a female supporter's face, frames the GOP contender as the aggressor in the unspecified "altercation involving" Elder.


Elder, however, is the victim of the assault in question. Both the headline and the story's promotional tweet fail to mention that the black Republican was attacked by a white assailant wearing a gorilla mask who threw eggs at Elder while he was walking along the encampment-filled 3rd Avenue in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
A woman who says she was in the photo with Elder took to Twitter to expose the Los Angeles Times in a series of tweets calling out the slanted coverage.
She said that Elder was her guest at the time when the group was attacked by hecklers harassing the campaign team with a slew of "racial epithets."


"Yet @latimes finds a deceiving pic of us about to hug to confuse the story- a HATE CRIME was committed against a black man running for Governor of CA," wrote Venice Neighborhood Council member Soledad Ursua, a community officer on the neighborhood council's general board, according to its website.

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Los Angeles Times has since scrubbed the photo after significant backlash online. The stealth-edited article now features an image of Elder in the foreground escorted away from the gorilla-masked attacker pictured in the far-right corner.


"This is completely absurd," Elder's communications director Ying Ma told the Daily Caller. "Larry went to give a supporter a hug and the LAT used a photo taken at an angle that made it appear as if he was hitting her."
The liberal newspaper also downplayed the attack against the black conservative as "a hostile reception" in a prior Sept. 8 article on the confrontation.


Los Angeles Times is well aware that ape characterizations "have been used as a racist trope for centuries," because it's noted in the subsequent Sept. 9 report. However, the California paper buried the lede, only describing the attack in the second graf and the race and costume of the assailant in the fourth.


Ursua, the Venice neighborhood council's Public Health & Safety Committee chair, told The Post Millennial that she does know why LA Times has not issued an apology. "I also do not know why no elected official has denounced this," Ursuea said, naming only Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has condemned the attack. "Not a peep from our city councilmembers," Ursua added.


"There must have been hundreds of photos to choose from. When he got off the bus we hugged. Why not a picture of us hugging? Instead they used a weird angle that makes it look like he had assaulted me. I am so disappointed and this has been so emotionally draining," Ursua said in an email statement.

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