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: Irresponsible Outlandishly Poor Judgement

Following our recent post exposing Tony Ortega’s servile defense of Backpage we’ve been getting all kinds of questions about public outrage at the time. As always here at the blog, we’re here to help.

As one angry reader of the Village Voice, Strider01, observed in the wake of Tony Ortega’s truly idiotic ‘arguments’:

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Slavery By Its Other Name

By any reasonable accounting this has been a very bad year for James Larkin and Michael Lacey, the former capi di tutti i capi of the Backpage family — the largest online advertiser child sex trafficking the world had ever seen.

Despite the perfectly transparent attempts by the likes of Tony Ortega to deflect

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Public Service Announcement: Richard Henning Wood

Richard Henning Wood Golden Village Palms Resort

Richard Henning Wood, also known as Benused, is a stalker who violates people’s privacy on behalf of Tony Ortega (Ortega referrers to Richard Wood as anonymous source).

Be aware of Richard Wood coming to your neighborhood he will fly his drone over your property and

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Salting the Earth with Lies and Untruth

Arielle Silverstein and Tony Ortega

When James Larkin and Michael Lacey, the pimp runners of the Village Voice Media, finally shoved their prostitution propagandist-in-chief Tony Ortega over the side of their sinking garbage barge in the most dishonorable discharge that rag of paper had ever seen, the cheers of a grateful nation were

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Parallels Raise Questions About “Tony Ortega’s Smoking Gun”

The other day we told you about the alarming parallel that seems to exist between recent stories of Backpage’s sexual exploitation of young women for financial gain going viral and the exploits of real life criminals in charge. Tony Ortega’s sham coverup, shilling for this soulless corporation is connecting with readers and needs investigating.

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Another Explosive Backpage Article Goes Viral

The other day we were first to break the story to our readers of a pending tv series based on an article about Backpage which went viral. Today we received news of a similar type story – another damning article dealing with the underage sex trafficking mill and the human vermin like Tony Ortega

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Tony Ortega: All in the Family

Tony Ortega and his equally suspect wife, Arielle Silverstein, have a history of palling around with some of the worst of the worst.

In the same way Tony Ortega went to bat for his old bosses Michael Lacey and James Larkin over at the Backpage in their pursuit of building a half-billion dollar

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The Downfall of Backpage: Coming to a TV Near You

It’s not often we follow entertainment news here on the blog but today something came across the transom that we just couldn’t ignore.

Last year Christine Biederman, who spends her time as a lawyer and part time investigative reporter based out of Dallas, Texas, wrote an incredibly damning exposé on the Backpage empire

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Tony Ortega’s Severe Fact Allergy

Not that Tony Ortega, self-professed ‘expert’ and paid propagandistic shill, asked us but we thought it might be high time someone offered this pretend journalist a crash course on ‘facts’. The fact is we worry Tony Ortega may have a severe fact allergy.

Much to the credit of print journalism, Tony Ortega has

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Ortega’s Incriminating Silence Loudly Proclaims Guilt

The shutdown of the adult section on Backpage.com, one of the biggest classified ads sites in the world, sent shockwaves through the seedy world of online human sex trafficking across the globe only a few short years ago.

In the wake of the this uncommonly prescient move by federal authorities, many with guilty

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