Speaker 1: I first got the tip about the incident at the
Speaker 1: hotel Constance back in the spring of twenty sixteen. Eventually
Speaker 1: I learned about Carmen Puliofido, the dean of the medical
Speaker 1: school at USC, and the young woman who odeed there,
Speaker 1: Sarah Warren. Eight years later, many things have changed, but
Speaker 1: others have not. I'm Paul Pringle. This is Fallen Angels,
Speaker 1: Episode ten. In this final installment of our show, I'll
Speaker 1: revisit some of the people in places we've talked about,
Speaker 1: a kind of epilogue. George Tindall, the former gynecologist at
Speaker 1: USC's student Health Clinic, was arrested by the LAPD in
Speaker 1: June of twenty nineteen. He was charged with more than
Speaker 1: thirty felonies. When I last interviewed survivors Lucy g and
Speaker 1: Audrey Nassager in the summer of twenty twenty three, Yindall
Speaker 1: had still not gone to trial. He was living at
Speaker 1: home under house arrest. I periodically check in with Lucy
Speaker 1: and Audrey on what's happened since.
Speaker 2: Well, George Tindall has died, and he died before the
Speaker 2: LEDA even bothered to get us closer to trial, and
Speaker 2: that was a huge disappointment because none of us got justice.
Speaker 1: And it was quite a delay. Leave The story ran
Speaker 1: in twenty May of twenty eighteen, and he died five
Speaker 1: years later and nothing had happened in the meantime. He
Speaker 1: was arrested in charge, but no trial, and he was free.
Speaker 1: He was out on bail and live in his life.
Speaker 2: It's pretty unheard of in the criminal law for case
Speaker 2: to take five years, even a murder case usually has
Speaker 2: tried before that. It's very obvious that the authority slow
Speaker 2: walked to this case.
Speaker 1: Lucy, how did you feel when you heard the news
Speaker 1: of Tyndall's death.
Speaker 3: So I was getting ready to go to court who
Speaker 3: were trying to set the first court date, and then
Speaker 3: I got a message that they were postponing the court
Speaker 3: date because Tyndall had died, and that the next court
Speaker 3: date would be to dismiss the case and dismiss the trial.
Speaker 3: And I was so devastated.
Speaker 1: Did you speak to each other about this when you
Speaker 1: heard the news?
Speaker 2: Lucy texted me right away and it wasn't one hundred
Speaker 2: percent confirmed yet, but we started talking immediately about what
Speaker 2: had happened and how we were going to go to
Speaker 2: court and tell the court how we felt about this
Speaker 2: and let other survivors know, so we could get a
Speaker 2: group together and just let everybody know. The district attorney
Speaker 2: had in their hands homemade videotape that doctor Tindall made
Speaker 2: of himself performing sexual acts on women in the Philippines
Speaker 2: and telling them during the acts, this is what I
Speaker 2: do to my patients. So that's just one of many
Speaker 2: things the police recovered from him that are the smoking
Speaker 2: gun evidence. He knew what he was doing was wrong,
Speaker 2: so there's no way he wanted a trial. He escaped
Speaker 2: justice by dying. He got to live in his home
Speaker 2: the entire time and spent just a couple of days
Speaker 2: in jail. In some ways, he beat this case. As
Speaker 2: far as for him, he beat it.
Speaker 1: There are no plans to prosecute anyone else as far
Speaker 1: as you know.
Speaker 2: In the Tindal matter, detectives didn't ask any questions about
Speaker 2: anyone else and their complicity, or any of the people
Speaker 2: that paid him off, any of the authority, and so
Speaker 2: there will be no further investigation as far as I
Speaker 2: can tell.
Speaker 3: Andrea and I spoke with one of the people that
Speaker 3: was investigating the case for the DA's office, and they
Speaker 3: indicated that they want to do the case differently and
Speaker 3: that their hands were tied.
Speaker 2: I have a profound sense of frustration with the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system, where I have now worked this month for
Speaker 2: thirty years, and it's just so frustrating to be on
Speaker 2: the victim side of a horrific crime and to see
Speaker 2: how justice can be completely not achieved, not a team,
Speaker 2: and because the authorities didn't want justice. If they wanted
Speaker 2: this case to get resolved, they would have pushed it forward,
Speaker 2: and they didn't, and I think they got the result
Speaker 2: that they wanted. He was old, and I was concerned
Speaker 2: about him dying from the minute they filed this case,
Speaker 2: and they drug their heels at every turn.
Speaker 3: So I've been trying to look on the bright side
Speaker 3: of things. I've made lifelong friendships because of this. You know,
Speaker 3: there's some silver lining, but it is.
Speaker 4: Very disheartening.
Speaker 2: We did get a lot done, We got a lot
Speaker 2: of legislation passed, We built a lot of friendships. We
Speaker 2: worked on some I call them the Naughty Doctor bills,
Speaker 2: so that the institutions must report to their governing boards
Speaker 2: that once some a doctor has been reprimanded, he or
Speaker 2: she must provide and must provide written materials to every
Speaker 2: patient walking in the door. We moved the ball down
Speaker 2: the field in that there's more room that can be
Speaker 2: done for sure for accountability and lifting the statute of
Speaker 2: limitations for survivors of university sexual assault. That was one
Speaker 2: of the biggest bills that we helped storm the Capitol
Speaker 2: and Sacramento and march around and tell our stories and
Speaker 2: got that bill passed through legislation and then signed by
Speaker 2: the governor. And that was that was huge.
Speaker 3: And actually that similar bill that passed to New York
Speaker 3: is what allowed Ejing Carroll to sue Donald Trump. I
Speaker 3: hoped it changed the culture in the nation too. I
Speaker 3: hope that people seeing Eagan Carroll get her a measure
Speaker 3: of justice will help women everywhere and the next generation
Speaker 3: too realize that that people believe women, people believe victims.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Finally, as for common Puliafido, to this day, he has
Speaker 1: never faced any criminal charges besides getting fired by USC.
Speaker 1: The only real consequence Puliafido has faced is losing his
Speaker 1: medical license, and he's been busy trying to get it reinstated.
Speaker 5: Maybe a year or two ago, I was contacted by
Speaker 5: California Medical Board and they have a criminal investigative division
Speaker 5: that reached out to me.
Speaker 1: That's Miriam Jones. Dori Yoda's sister. Dora is the young
Speaker 1: woman in Puliafido's circle whose baby.
Speaker 5: Died, and it was a particular detective who asked me
Speaker 5: some questions. She said that Puliafido was attempting to regain
Speaker 5: his medical license. She wanted to see if there was
Speaker 5: any information I had to prevent him from getting his
Speaker 5: license that would help her case against him, and I
Speaker 5: told her to contact Dora's landlord and see if he
Speaker 5: is still getting his payments from Puliaffido. Puliafido is still
Speaker 5: paying for all of my sister's bills because my sister
Speaker 5: still lives there, and I know that because I drive
Speaker 5: by her house sometimes in check to see if she's
Speaker 5: still there. The detective reached out to the landlord of
Speaker 5: my sister's apartment and yes, he is getting his usual
Speaker 5: rent from Puliafido every single month, and even told her
Speaker 5: that he sees him there on a regular basis physically
Speaker 5: at her house. So the medical board denied him his
Speaker 5: license because part of the agreement for him to get
Speaker 5: it back is obviously he can't be on drugs and
Speaker 5: he can't have contact with Dora because she's on drugs,
Speaker 5: and so then he didn't get his license back. It
Speaker 5: was denied.
Speaker 1: The Medical Board of California rejected Pulliafiedo's petition to reinstate
Speaker 1: his license in January of twenty twenty three. The ruling
Speaker 1: was based in part on the findings that Pulliafido had
Speaker 1: tested positive four times for use of meth or heroine
Speaker 1: in the past three years. The judge who presided over
Speaker 1: the Medical Board hearing didn't buy Pulliafiedo's claim that the
Speaker 1: test results were false positives or that they came from
Speaker 1: quote environmental exposure. Miriam Jones continues to please with the
Speaker 1: La County Sheriff's Department in the DA's office to do
Speaker 1: something to help her sister escape Pulliafido's influence. As for
Speaker 1: the Warren family, for a while it seemed they had
Speaker 1: broken pullia Fido's toxic hold on Sarah and the grip
Speaker 1: of her drug addiction. The family moved back to Texas
Speaker 1: and worked hard to rebuild their lives. I often spoke
Speaker 1: to Sarah. She remained frustrated that Pulliafido was never prosecuted,
Speaker 1: but she was also trying to move on because of
Speaker 1: a restrictive NDA that USC required them to sign. Paul
Speaker 1: and Marianne Warren believed they can't talk about anything related
Speaker 1: to the Pulliafido case, but they can't speak generally about
Speaker 1: their family and their children and what happened after the
Speaker 1: return to Texas.
Speaker 6: When she came, she was with us, and then she
Speaker 6: went and got an apartment, and then she came home
Speaker 6: and yeah, for oh gosh, I guess seven months, and we.
Speaker 4: Were overjoyed to have her back. And she was working.
Speaker 6: I think waiting tables, and she bought her two cats home.
Speaker 6: And Charles was enrolled at the what's it called Long.
Speaker 4: Start, Yeah, so I kind of a community college theaters.
Speaker 4: So yeah, the two of them like spent a lot
Speaker 4: of time together.
Speaker 6: And we're out in the movie room, you see, oh sir, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: And they went out to eat a lot and you know,
Speaker 6: just that they're having a really good time some bowling
Speaker 6: to they bowled, so they like that. And Charles had
Speaker 6: a girlfriend and Sarah actually liked her, because she never
Speaker 6: liked any of his girlfriends, but she liked this one.
Speaker 4: So that was good.
Speaker 1: But in the end, the devastating power of addiction overwhelmed
Speaker 1: the Warren family. On February fourth, twenty twenty three, at
Speaker 1: the age of twenty seven, Sarah Warren died at the
Speaker 1: family home outside Houston. The cause of death was a
Speaker 1: cute pancreatitis due to chronic alcoholism. Then, on May twenty six,
Speaker 1: just four months after Sarah's death, Charles passed away. His
Speaker 1: cause of death was also due to chronic alcoholism. He
Speaker 1: was twenty four.
Speaker 7: It was primarily alcohol. They probably smoked a little weed,
Speaker 7: but it was an alcohol and they just didn't have
Speaker 7: a good handle on it.
Speaker 1: And I know again YouTube did everything you could to
Speaker 1: try to help them get out from under that addiction.
Speaker 4: Absolutely rehabs. Oh my gosh, it didn't stick. It just
Speaker 4: didn't stick somehow. I think Charles gave up when Sarah
Speaker 4: wasn't around. Yeah when yeah, I think so too, just
Speaker 4: kind of gave up.
Speaker 1: Sarah and Charles' brave decision to go on the record
Speaker 1: is what finally cost Pulia Fido his medical license and
Speaker 1: his association with USC is why he's no longer in
Speaker 1: a position to hurt people while collecting a million dollar salary.
Speaker 1: Devon Khan, the whistleblower who first brought the La Times
Speaker 1: the tip from the hotel. Constance shares what Sarah's loss
Speaker 1: means to him.
Speaker 8: A part of me feels that all of the work
Speaker 8: that I did and everything that Paul did to dig
Speaker 8: at the truth was wasted because ultimately she unfortunately passed.
Speaker 8: The faulest that I held onto was that I saved
Speaker 8: that gross life, and to hear that that she passed unfortunate. Certainly,
Speaker 8: it's just a shame and just my knowledge of drug
Speaker 8: abuse and the devastation that it wreeks on people. If
Speaker 8: someone's badly addicted to drugs, it'll make them do things
Speaker 8: that you know they would never ever normally do. And
Speaker 8: I knew that Sarah was in that situation because of
Speaker 8: the drugs, So yeah, it hit me on a special level.
Speaker 1: Don Stokes, the Huntington Beach DJ who dated Sarah briefly,
Speaker 1: also went on the record with The La Times about
Speaker 1: what he witnessed with Puliafido Down likes to think of
Speaker 1: this Erah. He knew the young woman with so much promise.
Speaker 9: Her smile could light up her room. Their eyes dazzled
Speaker 9: like the tide pools in the Gunna Beach, in the
Speaker 9: sunny day and there was a certain spark about her
Speaker 9: that and be captivated, you know, my sir my sincereus
Speaker 9: apologies to Mary and her husband, but I pray for
Speaker 9: their souls.
Speaker 6: Lots of great memories, you know, and that's where we
Speaker 6: choose to put our energies and not dwell on something
Speaker 6: that's you know, horrific that's happened to our family. It's hard,
Speaker 6: it's very hard, but we choose to look at the
Speaker 6: positives because.
Speaker 4: We can't do anything about it, you.
Speaker 6: Know, and you can only cry so much over it.
Speaker 4: We choose to look at.
Speaker 6: The positive and remember them in a significant way when
Speaker 6: they were well.
Speaker 10: Well.
Speaker 4: Sarah's very smart.
Speaker 6: She was always in the gifted classes and make it
Speaker 6: straight A's she was very effrevents it and bubbly.
Speaker 4: She loved the animals. We sent her to Montessori school.
Speaker 7: They put together at Christmas social and Sarah walks after
Speaker 7: and felt the solo song war and everybody's like looking
Speaker 7: over says, oh my god, you got Britney spears underhand.
Speaker 6: He was very athletic and he loved the skateboard. He
Speaker 6: would like skateboard over like ten steps or something that
Speaker 6: was crazy.
Speaker 7: So he was just a kid that was always outside
Speaker 7: and always always had friends, and always doing something that
Speaker 7: was a physical generally.
Speaker 4: He had a sense of humor too.
Speaker 6: He was very funny when you say, and the two
Speaker 6: of them had a fantastic relationship.
Speaker 4: Really, we're just thick as thieves, the two of them.
Speaker 1: After pressuring the board of to force Max Nikias out,
Speaker 1: the USC faculty expected the university would make a real
Speaker 1: effort to end the long run of scandals, the corrupt
Speaker 1: culture that allowed people like pull your fee to inintendle
Speaker 1: to do what they did while the administration looked the
Speaker 1: other way. They've been disappointed.
Speaker 11: This was a leadership problem. It was not a culture
Speaker 11: among students. It was not a culture among faculty. It
Speaker 11: was a culture at the top, a culture of secrecy, centralization,
Speaker 11: cover up.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ariela Gross, formerly a professor at USC, has since
Speaker 1: joined the faculty at UCLA.
Speaker 11: I don't think it's a secret, right how you could
Speaker 11: improve your processes to bring more sunshine in, but they
Speaker 11: did not want to do that. Let's make the way
Speaker 11: we choose deans and other administrators more like the way
Speaker 11: they do it at a public school. Let's get more
Speaker 11: transparent and see, let's get more faculty governance, Let's get
Speaker 11: more accountability, and those things went nowhere. The board immediately
Speaker 11: renegged on the promises to release the report.
Speaker 1: Doctor Gross is referring to the results of USC's internal
Speaker 1: investigations into the administration's handling of Pulliafido and Tindall. The trustees,
Speaker 1: led at the time by real estate tycoon Rick Caruso,
Speaker 1: had promised to make the findings public. That promise has
Speaker 1: been broken.
Speaker 2: The lawyers, the people that signed off the two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars hush money payment, the names of the people
Speaker 2: that approved that were ever released. They clearly knew what
Speaker 2: was going on.
Speaker 1: Here's Audrey again, she's referring to the Tyndall severance money.
Speaker 2: We've got problems with the chairman of the boards that
Speaker 2: he released the report never did. How can you improve
Speaker 2: if you don't show what really happened.
Speaker 1: The trustee's decision not to release the reports became an
Speaker 1: issue when Rick Caruso ran for mayor of Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. Here he is at the KNX
Speaker 1: News mayoral to fielding questions from skeptical voters.
Speaker 12: The reason we didn't release a report. We talked to experts,
Speaker 12: many of them that said, releasing any information is just
Speaker 12: going to cause more horrific pain to those that have
Speaker 12: been terribly, terribly wounded.
Speaker 1: So we chose not to do it for that reason.
Speaker 1: But the La Times later learned that Caruso, under oath
Speaker 1: in a secret deposition for the Tendel civil suit, gave
Speaker 1: a different reason for burying the findings. It was not
Speaker 1: a concern for the victims. It was because USC's lawyers
Speaker 1: told them to.
Speaker 2: It's hard to escape the reality that there's some very
Speaker 2: powerful and influential people on the board of directors at USC,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure when this came to light the full
Speaker 2: scope of the problem that there were many discussions with
Speaker 2: people on the board and people high up in the administration.
Speaker 2: I think people were afraid of being held to account,
Speaker 2: going to jail, having the repeatations be smirched. There's lots
Speaker 2: of reasons that the university wouldn't want that information out there.
Speaker 2: The message isn't tell the messages shut up.
Speaker 1: Sindy Gilbert, the nursing supervisor, certainly got the message. After
Speaker 1: she reported Tyndall to the Rape Crisis Center, the university
Speaker 1: rescinded the promotion she'd been promised. The university's HR department
Speaker 1: accused her of making an inappropriate remark to a coworker.
Speaker 1: None of this struck Cindy as a coincidence. Fearing it
Speaker 1: would never end, she resigned in July of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Doctor Jane John, who helped lead the faculty effort to Ausnikias,
Speaker 1: also faced blowback after she appeared in a student documentary
Speaker 1: about Tyndall called Breach of Trust.
Speaker 13: I swore in the video. I think I said BS
Speaker 13: or hell or damn or something like that. They've investigated
Speaker 13: me for a year and they found that I had
Speaker 13: violated the faculty handbook for swearing, to which I said,
Speaker 13: are you fucking kidding me? I'm joking, And so I
Speaker 13: got investigated after that came out. Was obviously absurd, but
Speaker 13: you know what, that's retaliation, right. It's probably going to
Speaker 13: happen again, but it's worth it. It's worth that somebody has.
Speaker 4: To say it.
Speaker 1: The whistleblowers at USC may feel that speaking out cost them,
Speaker 1: but at the la times, our investigative work was eventually
Speaker 1: honored and encouraged. In April of twenty nineteen, the reporting
Speaker 1: untindalled by Matt Hamilton, Harriet Ryan, and me when the
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism.
Speaker 14: Everyone in the newsroom was gathered around us. It was
Speaker 14: very surreal because ultimately, this is a story about sexual
Speaker 14: assault and sexual abuse, and it's very head spinning to
Speaker 14: be celebrating the revelation of that and reporting around that.
Speaker 15: Reporter Matt Hamilton, I recognized that it was bigger than
Speaker 15: us as well, validation of what the newspaper had done,
Speaker 15: of what a team of people editors, reporters, researchers, copy editors, photographers.
Speaker 16: It's a validation of that collaboration. I was able to
Speaker 16: see our work differently and the commulative effect of these
Speaker 16: incremental stories and the commulative effect of just stay in
Speaker 16: and day out reporting on the university and doctor Tindall
Speaker 16: for by that point years. I felt proud and really
Speaker 16: glad to be with Paul and Harriet.
Speaker 10: There thinking about all the doors we knocked on, and
Speaker 10: particular people who could have turned us away, who maybe
Speaker 10: the smart thing was to turn us away, but had
Speaker 10: led us into their homes and had told us the truth,
Speaker 10: and they did so at a risked to their jobs.
Speaker 10: And I guess it's just sort of amazed.
Speaker 1: At them, Reporter Harriet Ryan. The thing that the.
Speaker 10: Tindall case is that the victims were the patients, But
Speaker 10: often the patients didn't realize what had happened to them,
Speaker 10: how bad it was, and they didn't realize that it
Speaker 10: happened to hundreds of or thousands.
Speaker 4: Of other people.
Speaker 10: But the people that worked in the clinic who had
Speaker 10: to witness it, they knew it every day, several times
Speaker 10: a day, and they were their own kind of victims.
Speaker 10: So I was thinking about those people, and I just
Speaker 10: it was very emotional.
Speaker 1: I believe that Pulletzer also belongs to our colleagues Sarah
Speaker 1: Parvini and Adam il Marik, in recognition of their great
Speaker 1: work on the Polia Fido investigation, the story that led
Speaker 1: us to Tindall.
Speaker 17: So many more pieces of thread were coming loose after
Speaker 17: that initial.
Speaker 1: Investigation, Reporter Sarah Parvini.
Speaker 17: And eventually there's the investigation that Paul and Matt and
Speaker 17: Harriet got a Pulitzer for. Learned that investigations beget investigations.
Speaker 1: In July twenty twenty two, McMillan published my book Bad City,
Speaker 1: Peril and Power in the City of Angels. It tells
Speaker 1: the untold stories behind the story of Puliafido and Tyndall,
Speaker 1: as well as what happened at my own newspaper seven
Speaker 1: months before it was published. As I got close to
Speaker 1: finishing the manuscript, I gave all three former La Times
Speaker 1: editors an opportunity to respond to my reporting for the book.
Speaker 1: They turned me down and instead hired lawyers and threatened lawsuits.
Speaker 1: I had no doubt that they'd hoped to stop publication
Speaker 1: of Bad City, or at minimum since to the portions
Speaker 1: of the book that were critical of them. I found
Speaker 1: it extraordinary that they would engage in what I saw
Speaker 1: as their own personal pursuit of journalistic prior restraint two
Speaker 1: words that to find the mortal enemy of the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: Nothing those editors or their lawyers have claimed has refuted
Speaker 1: anything in Bad City. The same is true for the
Speaker 1: attacks the editors leveled on the book me and my
Speaker 1: colleagues after publication. Dave On Maharaj, Mark Duvison and Matt
Speaker 1: Doug continued to deny that they did anything wrong in
Speaker 1: their handling of the USC investigation, and as for Carmen, Puliafido,
Speaker 1: and Max Nichias, they never granted me an interview under
Speaker 1: any circumstances. The La Times newsroom is seeing other big
Speaker 1: changes since we first started reporting on Pulliofido. In February
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, the billionaire biotech entrepreneur doctor Patrick soon Shown
Speaker 1: announced that he was buying the La Times from Trunk.
Speaker 1: Patrick and his wife Michelle saved the paper from certain
Speaker 1: death as a first rate news organization.
Speaker 18: Patrick Sounshan kind of swoops in as this savior for
Speaker 18: the papers.
Speaker 1: That's Joe Pompeo, media correspondent for Vanity Fair.
Speaker 18: For all intents and purposes, seems like what a lot
Speaker 18: of struggled news organizations wish for, which is a very
Speaker 18: rich individual who can kind of come in reset the
Speaker 18: place and take some losses because they have a lot
Speaker 18: of money to do that, but also has ambition to
Speaker 18: make this a real business.
Speaker 1: Harriet and reporter Adam Almarik felt the same way.
Speaker 10: I feel like it's a little bit of a fairy
Speaker 10: tale in some ways, like forcing out the bad management
Speaker 10: and then forming a union and then getting a billionaire
Speaker 10: to buy the paper, a billionaire who is like a
Speaker 10: benevolent figure who's invested lots and lots of funny in us.
Speaker 10: I feel really lucky to work at the La.
Speaker 19: Times and stay at night as far as the atmosphere
Speaker 19: of the newsra the kind of newspaper that we are. Look,
Speaker 19: there's nobody's perfect. No ownership is a perfect situation. That's
Speaker 19: just that's just life, right. But you know, at least
Speaker 19: now I have not once felt like we're doing something
Speaker 19: for the wrong reasons or we don't have the right
Speaker 19: mission in mind.
Speaker 1: Doctor soon shown went on a hiring spree, adding about
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty journalists to the newsroom. But since
Speaker 1: the cost of supporting journalism has only gotten steeper. All
Speaker 1: across the media industry, we've seen significant layoffs and other cuts,
Speaker 1: including at The Times, where annual losses were in the
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars. Here's Joe Pompeo again.
Speaker 18: This current season of layoffs and contraction industry, I think
Speaker 18: definitely felt to some people like the worst it's been
Speaker 18: since this was happening back in two thousand and eight
Speaker 18: with the crash and the recession, when things really started
Speaker 18: to nose dive in the media industry and hundreds and
Speaker 18: hundreds of journalists put out of work, relatively few jobs available,
Speaker 18: and probably more people than ever trying to apply for
Speaker 18: those jobs.
Speaker 4: It does feel like a.
Speaker 18: Moment where if you ever were going to consider finding
Speaker 18: a more lucrat field to be in, this might be
Speaker 18: the thing that pushes you over the edge.
Speaker 1: Even with the layoffs, the Times remains by far the
Speaker 1: largest news operation this side of the Potomac, and the
Speaker 1: soon Shown family says it remained committed to the paper,
Speaker 1: which is one five more bulletzers since Tindall. So I
Speaker 1: find there is still much to be hopeful about, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to investigative journalism.
Speaker 18: Often those types of big swing investigations that end up
Speaker 18: resulting in a five thousand word expose a that's not
Speaker 18: just something that is holding the powerful to account or
Speaker 18: exposing wrongdoing. It's also generally those types of stories which
Speaker 18: are generating the most interest among readers and therefore also
Speaker 18: tend to be the ones that make people want to
Speaker 18: subscribe to a place like the La Times. So I
Speaker 18: don't think that investigative journalism is necessarily the first obvious
Speaker 18: thing to go, even though it is kind of one
Speaker 18: of the more expensive things to sustain.
Speaker 4: In a newsroom.
Speaker 1: Harriet shares my view, I'm.
Speaker 10: Feeling depressed about journalism but the thing about investigative journalism.
Speaker 4: Is it's supposed to.
Speaker 10: Tell people something that they don't know and they actually
Speaker 10: can't find online. It can't be replaced by AI. That's
Speaker 10: the whole point of investigative journalism. So I feel like
Speaker 10: it's very powerful still, and maybe it would be like
Speaker 10: one of the last things standing in journalism would be
Speaker 10: investigative journalism.
Speaker 1: In so many cases, investigative journalism does not happen without
Speaker 1: brave people like the warrants, the folks who often risk
Speaker 1: everything just to get the truth out. Of course, the
Speaker 1: risk is even greater when they speak the truth on
Speaker 1: the record in clear public view, knowing there could be
Speaker 1: a terrible price to pay. Sarah and Charles Warren did that,
Speaker 1: and their courage set in motion a series of events
Speaker 1: that brought down powerful people who needed to be brought down.
Speaker 1: Of all the names you've heard in this story, I
Speaker 1: hope theirs are the ones you remember again. I'm Paul Pringle.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Fallen Angels, the story of California corruption.
Speaker 1: I'm still an investigative reporter for The Times, and I
Speaker 1: hope you continue to support local journalism in LA and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Fallen Angels The Story of California Corruption is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm
Speaker 1: Paul Pringle. This show is based on my book Bad City,
Speaker 1: Peril and Power in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels
Speaker 1: was written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinkas, and Brent Katz.
Speaker 1: Isabel Evans is our producer. Brent Katz is co producer.
Speaker 1: Associate producers are Hannah Leebowitz Lockhart and On Pajo Locke.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Me, Paul Pringle, Joe Picarello, and Adam
Speaker 1: Pinkas for Best Case Studios. Original music is by James Newberry.
Speaker 1: This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller, with assistants
Speaker 1: from Nisha Venkat, Additional editings, Hound design and additional music
Speaker 1: by Dean White, Harriet, Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and
Speaker 1: Adam Almarik are consulted in producers. Our iHeart team is
Speaker 1: Ali Perry and Carl Catle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.