WTF? Scientology gets Yuma TV anchor fired for piece about Lisa Marie Presley

[Dodge Landesman]

Nearly 14 years ago, in March 2009, one of our favorite writers of all time, Roy Edroso, wrote a blurb for us at the Village Voice.

It was just a short little thing, a squib if you will, about a curious local character named Dodge Landesman. This was the opening of it:

Meet Dodge Landesman, who at eighteen is challenging Rosie Mendez for the city council seat in District 2. “I may be the youngest city council candidate in New York City history,” he says, “but I want to transform our political system so it can involve New Yorkers of every generation.”

We were the editor at the time, and we have the haziest memory of it. Roy had a little fun with Landesman’s bona fides, suggesting that the young candidate had more in common with Staten Island libertarians than the Obama Democrats in the Lower East Side he’d need to vote for him. Well, whatever. That sure seems like a time gone by, doesn’t it?

Anyway, Landesman then went on to try out a career in local television news, and made four stops in what he himself told us has been a “rocky career.” That journey took him to Casper, Wyoming; Salisbury, Maryland; and Midland, Texas before he ended up in the media hotbed of Yuma, Arizona at KYMA-TV, the NBC affiliate there, as a morning anchor.

He had started just two months ago, and he said things were going better for him there than at his previous stops.

But then, on January 12, Lisa Marie Presley died. And Landesman noticed that in the ensuing avalanche of news coverage, there was little mention of Presley’s involvement in Scientology, and specifically her potential as a witness in the retrial of Danny Masterson.

Landesman put together a short piece about it, and read it on the air. It was subsequently titled, “Lisa Marie Presley was planning Scientology takedown before her death.”

We noticed the very provocative headline when it hit the Internet on January 16, thinking it was pretty bold for a local TV station, and in Yuma, Arizona, to boot.

Landesman’s piece was very brief and light on details. So it didn’t, for example, point out that what Presley had been asked to testify to in Masterson’s first trial was that she had been instructed by Scientology to convince Jane Doe 1 not to go to the LAPD after her alleged 2003 attack by Masterson.

We were in the courtroom when Deputy DA Reinhold Mueller revealed this to Judge Charlaine Olmedo, and it was quite a bombshell. But Judge Olmedo ruled that testimony about Scientology’s alleged criminal cover-up would be more appropriate for the civil lawsuit filed by Masterson’s accusers, and not for Masterson’s rape trial. She decided not to allow it. Presley wasn’t called at all in the trial, which ended with a hung jury on November 30.

But then, on January 10, Deputy DA Mueller told Judge Olmedo in a subsequent hearing that the DA’s office does intend to retry Masterson, and both he and Judge Olmedo talked about the prosecution calling more or different witnesses the second time around. Might that have included Presley? We don’t know. She died two days later.

Landesman, though he was short on details, was essentially correct in his brief piece, that Presley at one time had planned a “Scientology takedown” with her potential testimony.

Landesman tells us that after he read the piece on-air, it existed on the station’s website for about a day.

But then Karin Pouw came calling. The Scientology spokeswoman was not happy with the piece, and raised a stink about it.

Landesman tells us that his news director criticized him for including some opinion in the piece, but told him that the station intended to keep him on. (We asked the news director for his version of things, but he said the station does not comment on personnel matters, and he said the editorial note below speaks for itself.)

“He wanted to keep me. They said it was opinionated and reckless, but they wanted to give me another chance, so did the station’s general manager,” Landesman says. But he was told that the station’s corporate overlords were unhappy, and once again Landesman was out of a job.

KYMA-TV has subsequently taken down the story (which you can still read here), replacing it with this notice:

Editor’s Note: In an exercise of editorial discretion, NPG of Yuma-El Centro Broadcasting, LLC has elected to unpublish this piece. After careful review, and given information that came to light after the piece was published, NPG of Yuma-El Centro Broadcasting, LLC has determined that it can no longer stand behind the piece because, among other things, it contained aspects of opinion by the author.

Translation: Karin Pouw said boo, and we shit our pants.

Look, Landesman’s piece wasn’t great. It didn’t really get the details right about Presley’s involvement in the Masterson matter. But essentially, it was correct that she was, at one point, planning on exposing Scientology’s wrongdoing after having been involved in it for many years.

To his credit, Landesman is taking his axing with good humor, telling us that he’s pretty much finished with traditional TV news, and figures he’ll be trying something different in media or journalism that interests him more.

Heck, he’s still only 32. He still has his whole career in front of him, and we wish him well.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

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