Rafu’s “Vandalism” Article Shows Editors Don’t Care About Community Businesses, Readers, or the Rafu’s Journalistic Integrity
A few days ago, on July 12th, the Rafu Shimpo published a peculiar, three-paragraph article on “Vandalism in Little Tokyo.” In just 80 words (and two low quality photos) it reported that “vandals” had covered sidewalks and signposts with flyers (pictured below) “which depict the image of two men, including a bearded man with a swastika on his forehead,” and that these flyers were in opposition to “the eviction of Suehiro Cafe and Family Mart, tenants of the Sperl Building.” It observed, in a sentence, that the flyers contained a QR code that “provides a link to jtownactionandsolidarity.com,” and concluded with a note that “Police are reviewing surveillance footage of the incident.” At the top was a security camera photo showing two individuals placing flyers on a sidewalk; this was supplemented by what appeared to be a cell phone photo of one of the flyers posted to a sign. Neither photo was high enough quality for either the text of the flyer to be readable or for the flyer’s QR code to be scannable.
One must imagine that this story has piqued the curiosity of many of its readers—vandals posted flyers depicting a man with a swastika on his head to protest the eviction of Suehiro and Family Mart from the Sperl Building? What a bizarre thing to do! And why did they sign the flier with a QR code for the J-Town Action と Solidarity website? Seeing as the article answers none of these entirely reasonable questions, readers might assume that the answers are hidden, beyond the reach of the dedicated journalists of the Rafu Shimpo (who, after all, had the due diligence to check in with the police to determine that the surveillance footage was being reviewed). “This J-Town Action organization seems a little strange,” is their most likely takeaway, but perhaps with the afterthought that, “It’s a shame to hear about Suehiro and Family Mart getting evicted.”
Yet all of these entirely reasonable questions have readily accessible answers. Although unreadable in the photos that the Rafu article provides, the top of the flyer clearly states “Little Tokyo Community Alert! Killer Cop Landlord Evicting Little Tokyo Legacy Businesses.” Just as clear is the fact that the photo on the flyer does not depict two men, but one man with a small doll in the shape of the cult leader Charles Manson (the Manson doll being the one with the swastika), and the photo is explicitly captioned “Anthony Sperl Slumlord of Suehiro / Family Mart.” Suddenly, the story starts to make sense: “vandals” didn’t decide to post photos of two random men to protest an eviction, activists posted a photo that reveals the landlord evicting community members has a fetish for a cult leader in order to protest him. Actually scanning the QR code reveals that the flyer does not just link to “jtownactionandsolidarity.com,” but specifically to “jtownactionandsolidarity.com/SUEHIRO,” a page dedicated to providing information on Suehiro’s eviction defense and more background on Anthony Sperl. Suddenly, all the mystery of this story is gone; answered entirely through information already available on the flyer.
The obviousness of these answers, however, raises a different question: how is it that the Rafu Shimpo, our community newspaper, failed to provide their readers with answers to their questions? More than that, it leads us to ask if the Rafu’s editors intentionally aimed to confuse and misinform its readers. Is it the editors’ customary journalistic practice to describe an image (and to describe it without referencing the caption right next to it) without also reproducing the image in high quality? Is it a customary journalistic practice to mention a QR code while providing a link different from the one in the QR code? Are the editors at the Rafu actually incapable of telling the difference between a doll and a real human being? At a certain point, mounting incompetence becomes evidence of intent. And one would expect that, if the editors at the Rafu were genuinely confused, they would have reached out to J-Town Action と Solidarity (JAS) for comment. But they didn’t, which makes it difficult for us to imagine that the editors at the Rafu published this article with any intention of providing useful information to the community. The Rafu Shimpo is supposed to be a pillar of our community; bringing us together through common understanding. The Rafu Shimpo deserves so much better than this kind of editorial oversight. Our community deserves better.
But all of this leads us to a far more important question: why is it that this shoddy little article on “vandalism” is also the first and only time that the Rafu Shimpo has mentioned the eviction of Suehiro and Family Mart? A quick search of their website, Facebook, and Twitter reveals that the Rafu has never come close to writing an article about this crime against our community. Yet Sperl has been harassing his tenants for years. This is exactly the sort of story our community needs the Rafu Shimpo to tell. Perhaps we might believe that the editors at the Rafu are just taking their time to get the whole story together, but the one thing that this “vandalism” article actually informs us of is how little the Rafu’s editors care about telling the whole story. The only answer we can think of is that the Rafu’s editors care more about making the sidewalk sparkle than preventing our community members from being thrown into the street.
Yet we have reason to think far worse than that. What shocks us is not just how much more the Rafu’s editors seem to care about the sidewalk than our community members, but how little the editors seem to care about our community members at all. We believe that everyone in our community should be upset when one of our community members is in bad trouble. An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us. So when a community member faces bad trouble, JAS is proud to stir-up good trouble. And we do it because we believe our community is proud to take on the good trouble—the marches and the flyers and the protests—to defend a community member from the bad trouble. If the Rafu’s editors see a flyer as “vandalism” instead of good trouble, so be it. What shocks us is that those flyers showed the editors that a despicable villain is troubling Little Tokyo, and yet these editors, in charge of our community newspaper, couldn’t be bothered to write an article properly alerting the rest of the community.
Let us be clear: we’ve known for months how little the Rafu Shimpo’s editors care for basic journalistic integrity when JAS is involved. At the end of last year, several of our members were assaulted by Business Improvement District (BID) security guards and the Rafu ran a hit-piece stating that the LAPD was investigating our members for assaulting the BID (an LAPD investigation that mysteriously vanished without ever interviewing any of our members, the alleged assailants). The Rafu found space in that article to reprint a three-paragraph statement from the Little Tokyo Business Association (LTBA), yet never bothered to contact JAS for comment. It should be noted, furthermore, the President of the LTBA, Ellen Endo, is also an editor of the Rafu—an obscene conflict of interest that the article fails to disclose, in violation of one of the most basic standards of journalistic ethics. But even though we were aware of the Rafu editors’ embarrassing vendetta against our organization (the origin of which we can only guess), we never doubted that they ultimately cared about reporting the news for the good of our community members, in their own way.
But the Rafu’s editors have now shown us their true colors. Again, we are not surprised that they chose to publish a hit-piece against JAS. What shocks us is that they cared more about attacking JAS than defending other members of our community. Their “vandalism” article is a sloppy piece of writing—it confuses the reader about the situation rather than informing them. What sort of publication turns down the opportunity to expose a cult leader-loving, child-killing, ex-cop landlord who is evicting beloved members of the community to instead write a half-baked hatchet-job against an all-volunteer group of community activists? Such a publication is certainly not a community-serving newspaper, or any kind of reputable newspaper for that matter. This sort of editorial decision-making is worthy of a private Facebook group, or of an account on the NextDoor App. The Rafu Shimpo deserves better leadership. Our community deserves better. We deserve not only a reputable newspaper, but a newspaper that is willing to defend each and every one of us. And we are ready to start demanding it.
Our Demands
We demand that the Rafu immediately begin publishing articles to inform the community of Anthony Sperl’s attempt to illegally evict Suehiro and successful eviction of Family Mart.
We demand that the Rafu immediately begin reporting on any and all of Anthony Sperl’s past transgressions in the interest of educating our community about who controls the property in our community.
We demand that the Rafu’s editors immediately begin upholding the basic journalistic practice of contacting individuals and/or organizations in the community for comment prior to publishing an article about them.
We demand that the Rafu’s editors immediately apologize for their past failures to contact individuals and/or organizations in the community for comment prior to publishing articles about them.
We demand that the Rafu’s editors publicly commit to printing a correction for any and all past articles that failed to contact the relevant community members for comment, at the request of the relevant community members.
We demand that the Rafu create an editorial position that is democratically elected by all members of the Little Tokyo community.
An injury to one is an injury to all. When our people are in trouble, all our people need to know. Our community cannot wait to learn what we’re losing until after our community has already lost. We demand real community journalism. We demand a Rafu Shimpo worthy of its legacy. Power to the People.
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One must imagine that this story has piqued the curiosity of many of its readers—vandals posted flyers depicting a man with a swastika on his head to protest the eviction of Suehiro and Family Mart from the Sperl Building? What a bizarre thing to do! And why did they sign the flier with a QR code for the J-Town Action と Solidarity website? Seeing as the article answers none of these entirely reasonable questions, readers might assume that the answers are hidden, beyond the reach of the dedicated journalists of the Rafu Shimpo (who, after all, had the due diligence to check in with the police to determine that the surveillance footage was being reviewed). “This J-Town Action organization seems a little strange,” is their most likely takeaway, but perhaps with the afterthought that, “It’s a shame to hear about Suehiro and Family Mart getting evicted.”
Yet all of these entirely reasonable questions have readily accessible answers. Although unreadable in the photos that the Rafu article provides, the top of the flyer clearly states “Little Tokyo Community Alert! Killer Cop Landlord Evicting Little Tokyo Legacy Businesses.” Just as clear is the fact that the photo on the flyer does not depict two men, but one man with a small doll in the shape of the cult leader Charles Manson (the Manson doll being the one with the swastika), and the photo is explicitly captioned “Anthony Sperl Slumlord of Suehiro / Family Mart.” Suddenly, the story starts to make sense: “vandals” didn’t decide to post photos of two random men to protest an eviction, activists posted a photo that reveals the landlord evicting community members has a fetish for a cult leader in order to protest him. Actually scanning the QR code reveals that the flyer does not just link to “jtownactionandsolidarity.com,” but specifically to “jtownactionandsolidarity.com/SUEHIRO,” a page dedicated to providing information on Suehiro’s eviction defense and more background on Anthony Sperl. Suddenly, all the mystery of this story is gone; answered entirely through information already available on the flyer.
The obviousness of these answers, however, raises a different question: how is it that the Rafu Shimpo, our community newspaper, failed to provide their readers with answers to their questions? More than that, it leads us to ask if the Rafu’s editors intentionally aimed to confuse and misinform its readers. Is it the editors’ customary journalistic practice to describe an image (and to describe it without referencing the caption right next to it) without also reproducing the image in high quality? Is it a customary journalistic practice to mention a QR code while providing a link different from the one in the QR code? Are the editors at the Rafu actually incapable of telling the difference between a doll and a real human being? At a certain point, mounting incompetence becomes evidence of intent. And one would expect that, if the editors at the Rafu were genuinely confused, they would have reached out to J-Town Action と Solidarity (JAS) for comment. But they didn’t, which makes it difficult for us to imagine that the editors at the Rafu published this article with any intention of providing useful information to the community. The Rafu Shimpo is supposed to be a pillar of our community; bringing us together through common understanding. The Rafu Shimpo deserves so much better than this kind of editorial oversight. Our community deserves better.
But all of this leads us to a far more important question: why is it that this shoddy little article on “vandalism” is also the first and only time that the Rafu Shimpo has mentioned the eviction of Suehiro and Family Mart? A quick search of their website, Facebook, and Twitter reveals that the Rafu has never come close to writing an article about this crime against our community. Yet Sperl has been harassing his tenants for years. This is exactly the sort of story our community needs the Rafu Shimpo to tell. Perhaps we might believe that the editors at the Rafu are just taking their time to get the whole story together, but the one thing that this “vandalism” article actually informs us of is how little the Rafu’s editors care about telling the whole story. The only answer we can think of is that the Rafu’s editors care more about making the sidewalk sparkle than preventing our community members from being thrown into the street.
Yet we have reason to think far worse than that. What shocks us is not just how much more the Rafu’s editors seem to care about the sidewalk than our community members, but how little the editors seem to care about our community members at all. We believe that everyone in our community should be upset when one of our community members is in bad trouble. An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us. So when a community member faces bad trouble, JAS is proud to stir-up good trouble. And we do it because we believe our community is proud to take on the good trouble—the marches and the flyers and the protests—to defend a community member from the bad trouble. If the Rafu’s editors see a flyer as “vandalism” instead of good trouble, so be it. What shocks us is that those flyers showed the editors that a despicable villain is troubling Little Tokyo, and yet these editors, in charge of our community newspaper, couldn’t be bothered to write an article properly alerting the rest of the community.
Let us be clear: we’ve known for months how little the Rafu Shimpo’s editors care for basic journalistic integrity when JAS is involved. At the end of last year, several of our members were assaulted by Business Improvement District (BID) security guards and the Rafu ran a hit-piece stating that the LAPD was investigating our members for assaulting the BID (an LAPD investigation that mysteriously vanished without ever interviewing any of our members, the alleged assailants). The Rafu found space in that article to reprint a three-paragraph statement from the Little Tokyo Business Association (LTBA), yet never bothered to contact JAS for comment. It should be noted, furthermore, the President of the LTBA, Ellen Endo, is also an editor of the Rafu—an obscene conflict of interest that the article fails to disclose, in violation of one of the most basic standards of journalistic ethics. But even though we were aware of the Rafu editors’ embarrassing vendetta against our organization (the origin of which we can only guess), we never doubted that they ultimately cared about reporting the news for the good of our community members, in their own way.
But the Rafu’s editors have now shown us their true colors. Again, we are not surprised that they chose to publish a hit-piece against JAS. What shocks us is that they cared more about attacking JAS than defending other members of our community. Their “vandalism” article is a sloppy piece of writing—it confuses the reader about the situation rather than informing them. What sort of publication turns down the opportunity to expose a cult leader-loving, child-killing, ex-cop landlord who is evicting beloved members of the community to instead write a half-baked hatchet-job against an all-volunteer group of community activists? Such a publication is certainly not a community-serving newspaper, or any kind of reputable newspaper for that matter. This sort of editorial decision-making is worthy of a private Facebook group, or of an account on the NextDoor App. The Rafu Shimpo deserves better leadership. Our community deserves better. We deserve not only a reputable newspaper, but a newspaper that is willing to defend each and every one of us. And we are ready to start demanding it.
Our Demands
We demand that the Rafu immediately begin publishing articles to inform the community of Anthony Sperl’s attempt to illegally evict Suehiro and successful eviction of Family Mart.
We demand that the Rafu immediately begin reporting on any and all of Anthony Sperl’s past transgressions in the interest of educating our community about who controls the property in our community.
We demand that the Rafu’s editors immediately begin upholding the basic journalistic practice of contacting individuals and/or organizations in the community for comment prior to publishing an article about them.
We demand that the Rafu’s editors immediately apologize for their past failures to contact individuals and/or organizations in the community for comment prior to publishing articles about them.
We demand that the Rafu’s editors publicly commit to printing a correction for any and all past articles that failed to contact the relevant community members for comment, at the request of the relevant community members.
We demand that the Rafu create an editorial position that is democratically elected by all members of the Little Tokyo community.
An injury to one is an injury to all. When our people are in trouble, all our people need to know. Our community cannot wait to learn what we’re losing until after our community has already lost. We demand real community journalism. We demand a Rafu Shimpo worthy of its legacy. Power to the People.
