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]

What is Ethical Journalism? Part 1

“Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage.” (SPJ Code of Ethics)

Karen de la Carriere, Tony Ortega’s funding source

The encroachment of fake tabloid-style news is and should be a concern for every American who cares about truth. Hucksters, hacks, and

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A Liar Or A Self Admitted Rapist?

Karen de la Carriere and Ron Miscavige Sr

From time to time here at the blog we feature Tony Ortega’s unreliable sources who always claim they are telling the truth.

Truth?

No, it’s an assault on truth by providing an altered reality.

Case in point, recently a posting authored a

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Tony Ortega’s “Bunker Boy” Mentality

Merriam Webster defines the term Bunker mentality as a state of mind especially among members of a group that is characterized by chauvinistic defensiveness and self-righteous intolerance of criticism.

Is it any wonder then that Tony Ortega’s continued attitude of extreme defensiveness and self-justification based on his exaggerated sense of ‘being under persistent attack’

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The Petty Anti-Intellectualism of Ortega’s Bigot Blog

Who needs soap opera’s when you have all the petty drama and backstabbing cat-fights you can handle, in the comment section on Tony Ortega’s blog?

One measure of the volatility and instability inherent in the sort of warmed over pablum Tony Ortega serves up over at his hate-filled blog is to observe the adolescent,

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In The Tabloid War On Objective Reality, Truth Is The First Causality

Tony Ortega

Whenever we speak about the scourge of tabloid journalism, without fail reasonable and rational people inevitably raise the question, “Who spends their time reading tabloid garbage?” We, however, would like to pose our own question: How can dishonest, self-described tabloid “journalists” live with themselves?

As we’ve seen again and again, the answer

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Who is Tony Ortega’s Unfocused Hate Audience?

Here at the blog we will occasionally get questions from readers who are seeking clarification on the various stories we publish. One question which we seem to receive almost weekly is ‘who is Tony Ortega’s audience?”

Clearly our readers are puzzled by the mystery of just who Tony Ortega imagines he is addressing when

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Is Tony Ortega Locked In A Toxic Relationship With His Readers?

The phrase, ‘toxic relationship’ is one that gets thrown around a lot by the media these days, but it’s difficult to know exactly what it means and if it’s actually something to be worried about.

In its simplest terms a toxic relationship is basically one that is fundamentally unhealthy, and is causing you, or

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The Impotence of Tony Ortega

Tony Ortega’s sponsor, Karen de la Carriere

By this point there are few who haven’t heard that Tony Ortega and his marauding gang of online trolls and bigots are hopelessly biased when it comes to offering anything close to ‘straight talk’ about Scientology.

This is because partisan hacks like Ortega and company who imagine

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Tony Ortega: The Face Of Our National Tabloid Epidemic

Tabloid Hack

Tony Ortega gets called a lot of names by people in the news business. Most of them, as you can well imagine, are none too flattering.

If you ask us, however, the most damning name applied to Tony Ortega’s “profession” style, also turns out to be the most objectively accurate –

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Employees Quit In Protest of Social Media’s Lax Attitude Toward Hate Speech

Pertinent news today from the world of Big Tech.

We’ve been seeing recently how social media platforms have been taking a stronger stance against those engaging in hate speech, like Tony Ortega’s hysterical hate pal who found himself temporarily banned from Twitter for his bigotry.

Twitter has also taken admirable steps in the

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