L.A. Times Readers Canceling

Angry Californians are slashing back at the liberal Los Angeles Times for its sleazy scandal-mongering during the recall campaign where the paper dredged up a slew of women who claim they suffered from groping by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

According to the Times, as of Saturday evening, about 1,000 readers had canceled their subscriptions to protest the handling of the Schwarzenegger story. In addition, the Times admitted getting as many as 400 phone calls critical of its coverage — many angry, some profane.

The paper cited reader Kathy McIver, a Democrat and longtime subscriber to The Times. Today's paper, she told the Times, will be the last that will be delivered to her door.

McIver said she is angry over the Times' biased coverage of the campaign, especially angry about the stories that the newspaper has run in recent days detailing allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger touched women inappropriately.

None of the women cited had ever filed complaints about the alleged incidents.

"I was disappointed that The Times was being used to be the messenger," she told the Times, "and that they would do that type of investigation and not balance it out by having something negative about [Gov. Gray] Davis because, as we all know, he's done some negative things."

Said another irate reader, Debbie Mahoney, a 52-year-old Northern California resident who said she has read the Times periodically for the last five years, "To me this is a fairness issue." The Times, she added, has demonstrated "true bias" in its coverage of Schwarzenegger.

"You don't even call him by his name," she said. "Whenever I see coverage of Schwarzenegger, I see 'actor.' He's not running as an actor. He's running as a businessman."

"I just think it's a recurring pattern that the Democrats use the press with last-minute smear tactics in tight races or when the race is going against them, and I can quote history on this," Robert Rosenquist, 50, an ophthalmologist, told the Times. Schwarzenegger also struck back, charging that the paper was trying "to derail my campaign, and I think that it's part of the puke campaign that Davis launched now."

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California Governor's Race

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