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]

Backpage.com 2

“The whole point of Backpage.com is that we aren’t involved after two consenting adults find each other through the community bulletin board, which exists solely so that people can freely express themselves.” – Tony Ortega

As we reported the past few days, though the Feds shut down the infamous sex ring, personally vouched for Tony

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Backpage Prostitution Continues, Feds say

Even though federal authorities have long since raided and shuttered the world’s largest online prostitution syndicate run by Tony Ortega’s former bosses, new reporting suggests Backpage.com is still a marketplace for prostitution in places like metro Atlanta, according to a Channel 2 Action News investigation earlier this week.

Way back when

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The Big Lie

By Kathy Haggis, February 3, 2011

Paul harbors some odd theories about life. His favorite is known as “The Big Lie Theory” which boils down to this: The bigger the lie the more likely people are to believe it.

Paul would wax enthusiastic about this concept when discussing potential true stories we could adapt into

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In Search of Rosebud

By Kathy Haggis, March, 3, 2011

How does an individual go so far off the beam as to think he can defame any number of people and entire institutions with impunity? One thing I know from having been at the receiving end of such a campaign, is that not only must the perpetrator spin stories

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Backpage Boss Breaks Silence

It’s that time again! Time for your Backpage Sex Peddling trial update, brought to you by Tony Ortega and his criminally indicted bosses.

This week, we heard the first words Backpage.com co-founder and Tony Ortega’s former boss, Michael Lacey, offered about allegations he faces for running a prostitution ring and shady money laundering operation.

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When Skeptics Fail as Skeptics

Back in the Classical age there was a line of thinking known as skepticism. Skepticism did not mean to simply debunk, refute, or sneer at a certain belief or philosophical position, but to question and scrutinize all beliefs and positions (all human knowledge, in fact) from a non-biased position, holding no belief or position of

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Can Tony Ortega Sink any Lower? Yes he can!

You’ve got to hand it to a loser like Tony Ortega. Every time you think he can’t sink any lower he always manages to find a way to outdo even himself, the master of petty hate-blogging.

This time he fires up his dusty basement computer to file an urgent report on the breaking news of

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Tony Ortega’s Hive Loses Its Sting

Tony Ortega and others who have adopted his hive-mentality want you to believe that all religious thought is dangerous. It’s a big part of the reason he has devoted the bulk of his career (in so far as Ortega has ever had a “career”) to working towards undercutting and subverting religious belief and practice.

From

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Defunding Anti-religionists

Tony Ortega is no stranger to manufacturing outrage out of whole cloth in support of his anti-religion agenda. Now he’s helping other anti-religionists to exercise their frustration at the public’s increasing demand that action be taken against those who would advocate for intolerance.

Taking to Twitter recently, Tony jumped at the chance to retweet his

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Booksellers Can’t Give Tony Ortega’s Book Away

This week the largest book seller in the world, Amazon, posted its new rankings for its top 100 selling books. If you’re looking for anything written, edited, or with contribution from Tony Ortega you better break out your magnifying glass. That’s right, not only does Tony Ortega not appear in the top

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