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]

Recognizing the Face of Religious Bigotry

Not long ago a curious reader asked us if we’d read Tony Ortega’s first article on Scientology to see if, even years ago, his hatred and bigotry were as virulent then as they are now.

Well, today we reached far back in our archives to see what we might discover… And what we

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Not Cool, Ortega… Not By A Long-shot

It’s always a little ironic when journalists castigate the subjects of their reports for the very things they are guilty of. Like the well known-anchor from a popular local news program in Southern California who for months gleefully reported on a number of infamous celebrity infidelities while himself in the midst of an extra-marital

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On Tarantulas, Scorpions And Finding Ortega’s Niche

We’ve had a good laugh reading an article written about Tony Ortega by the former rag (Phoenix New Times) that once employed his services as a tabloid hack. Beneath the multiple layers of ridiculousness ripe for satirizing, however, it’s clear the piece was meant to make a point.

And as with so much

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How This Disastrous Ortega Interview Has Aged: [Spoiler Alert, Not Well!]

Karen de la Carriere promotional photo

We reported on a laughably ridiculous article written to, ostensibly, laud Tony Ortega and promote his then-upcoming book tour, funded by Karen e la Carriere. History has not been kind to the underwhelming article as Ortega’s over-hyped book launch wound up being really more of a crash and

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New Times Falsely Fetes Failed, Fired, Former Staff: Tony Ortega

The Phoenix New Times, the tabloid rag in Arizona which inexplicably decided it was somehow appropriate to publish Tony Ortega’s disgustingly offensive comic alerting and directing potential terrorists on how best to strike at the state in order to maximize body count, isn’t exactly known for having a sterling record of journalistic integrity.

After

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What Ortega’s Terror Map Shows Us About Who He Is

Maya Angelou famously once said, “When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.” Well, Tony Ortega has showed us who he really is time and time again. And it is high time we started paying attention to exactly who he is telling us he truly is.

Recently we posted a

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Destroy Lives, Create Profit

In an interview with a popular women’s magazine, an actress explained how she has been working as an undercover FBI agent fighting against child sex trafficking on sites like Backpage.

During her time undercover the star participated in half a dozen child-sex stings around the world as an unpaid volunteer.

She explained her involvement

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Poetic Justice for Sex Trafficking Profiteers

Backpage, the human sex trafficking website Tony Ortega worked so hard to legitimate and normalize, may be gone but its dark reverberations are still felt in communities everywhere.

That said, it’s not often that good news comes out of the sickening world of sex trafficking, where tens of

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The World-wide Impact of Backpage Tony Ortega Doesn’t Want You To Know About

For all our discussion of the tremendous damage the child-sex selling web site Backpage which Tony Ortega staunchly defended and even bragged about, ours was hardly the only country ravaged by its lustful greed. Over the weekend an overseas reader sent in a reminder that his country, Australia, was also ruthlessly victimized by the

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Why Does Tony Ortega Keep Siding with Child Predators?

Tony Ortega

It’s no secret that Tony Ortega lives to attack people online. Not all people, of course, as evidenced by his strange preoccupation with actively defending and excusing the behavior of known child predators.

Today we uncover yet another example of this clearly worrying fascination with defending those who would sexually abuse children.

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