Tony Ortega and The Underground Bunker

Tony Ortega is a former employee of the Village Voice—a publication which found itself in hot water when it was revealed they’d been advertising the services of known sex-traffickers in their seedy ‘Backpage’ section.

Ortega now runs the Underground Bunker blog. Billing itself as the go-to zone for (eye-rolling sensationalized, bigoted, anti-religious) rants, it gives away Ortega’s game. How much clearer can it be that this supposedly “legitimate” blog is nothing but a bully pulpit from which Ortega can indulge his intolerance disguised as social outrage and foist off entirely fabricated nonsense as “breaking news”?

Sources in the journalist community consider Tony Ortega a developer of false leads, and let’s be clear Ortega is not a real journalist and here is why. When evaluating information, we are often admonished to “consider the source.” In the case of Tony Ortega, the warning applies not only to the content of his blogs but also to Ortega personally and the “publications” for which he worked.

Alternative papers are free weekly publications that earn revenue most often through the sale of the kind of advertising that reputable newspapers won’t permit – adult bookstores, strip clubs, classifieds with strong sexual content, etc. In between the trash, they slip in tabloid-style articles, promoted as “edgy” or “daring” when, in truth, they are simply fabrications sensationalized by low credibility writers like Ortega. While some of these “papers” make an effort to rise above the rest, most are gutter rags that all too often define “alternative news” as a slanderous substitution of the facts.

Ortega has spent his life practicing this excuse for journalism within the New Times Media and the Village Voice Media franchise of alternative papers. This platform has suited him well, for Ortega wrote for sleazy tabloids like he was born to it, a disposition that was in evidence as far back as high school.

[Header image: John Rickard]

Tony Ortega in 3-D: Deceit, Distraction, Discredited

When we last looked in on Backpage, ads for underage “escorts” and “ exotic body-rubs” were providing millions in monthly profit for Village Voice Media, the company signing Tony Ortega’s paychecks.

Perhaps this is why Tony and his bosses were so desperate to change what was quickly becoming the national topic of conversation

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Tony’s Ortega’s Crusade of Untruth

When last we saw the Village Voice, they had just received a letter of complaint signed by three dozen religious leaders making an urgent impassioned call for an end to Backpage.

This was, of course, merely the tip of an already mammoth iceberg.

More than fifty Attorneys General had sent Village Voice

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The Unethical, Amoral Cesspool Tony Ortega Sold his Soul To

This past week we’ve been examining Tony Ortega’s response to the numerous instances of protest aimed at him for his participation in the Backpage child sex trafficking scheme he so ardently defended while on their payroll.

We’ve seen how angry protestors fed up with Ortega’s two-faced ‘human-trafficking-as-First-Amendment-right’ defense of Backpage flocked to his

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An Inconvenient ‘WE’

Tony Ortega has been trying to separate himself from The Village Voice and its online whorehouse money-maker Backpage ever since he was unceremoniously fired and sent packing.

A number of Village Voice insiders we’ve talked to from that time have echoed what we’d been hearing, namely that Tony Ortega was being

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The Sick And Selfish Game Tony Ortega Plays

In our last installment we saw how Tony Ortega has a history of lying and gaslighting his way through his professional life every bit as much as personal life.

We saw yesterday how Tony Ortega lied during a speech to students at his own former college, feigning innocence in the face

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Unconscionable Predictability

Here at the blog we wrote to explain a little context behind just how Backpage was converted into a human trafficking and prostitution enterprise, with men like Tony Ortega doing much of the heavy lifting to sell the idea to the public.

For six years Tony Ortega lived off the money

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“You’re Gaslighting Yourself, Tony Ortega”

The internet slang dictionary of record, defines the term “gaslighting” as a “form of intimidation or abuse, sometimes where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity.”

For Tony Ortega, however, gaslighting is something more. It is the very definition of

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“Nothing More Than Naked Greed And The Love of Money”

It’s been a while since we last checked in with what is happening in the whirlpool of lawsuits and litigation surrounding the Backpage sex syndicate for which Tony Ortega acted as defacto public-facing apologist.

For more than six years Tony Ortega paychecks were directly dependent upon how much ad space Backpage could sell

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Tony Ortega and the Case of the Killer Asteroid!

We received yet another ‘Ortega complaint’ in what seems to be becoming something of a running series here on the blog. These letters to the editor demanding better certainly do underline a lot of what we have been saying for months about the bad faith motivation, professional malpractice and pervasive bias on

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The Cult of Ortega

Tony Ortega’s online methodology is based upon his drive to divide, create conflict, and capitalize off of the very chaos he has manufactured.

If we have learned anything during our time examining the dark professional history (to say nothing of the twisted personal past) of Tony Ortega it is this — neither Ortega

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