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LOS ANGELES – The past two weeks have not exactly been stellar ones for the Los Angeles Times, to say the least. While, in the end, few readers will notice its execrable handling of the HIV infection story of June 2009, for those who have a stake in the outcome, these days will be recalled as yet another low-point in a litany of low-points for the venerable daily that was once a newspaper of record.

Even those who scoff at the idea of fair coverage by the Times have been shocked – shocked! – at the spectacle of the once-mediocre paper assuming the position and becoming an actual, literal, physical and palpable mouth-to-asspiece for state and county propaganda ever since the news broke June 10 that a female performer had tested positive for HIV.

Adding insult to injury and engaging in behavior that seemed more like a declaration of war than the simple covering of a news story that deserved better, a fervor – what else are you going to call it – seemed to have taken hold within the newsroom that as it continued was more than just unbecoming and unprofessional, but kind of downright dangerous.

Not being idiots, of course, Times editors had to know that headlines proclaiming actual numbers of HIV infections are impossible to reel in once cyberspace has its claws into them, which is exactly what happened with the story of the 16, or is it 18, “undetected,” or were they “unreported,” HIV cases in the porn industry since 2004.  That puppy has long since planted itself like a thousand seeds of truth, multiplying throughout the universe, all but impossible for follow-up stories to kill; though the Times, to its credit, has tried, sort of. What’s done is done. Oops.

To be fair, the entangled parties – the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), the LA County Health Department, the State Division of Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation – have a long and sometimes contentious history with one another. But then, why wouldn’t they? Regulating porn sets has been a hot-button issue for a long time, and AIM, since its founding, has been ground zero when anything goes wrong. Sounds like publicity soup to me.

The fact is, the working relationship between AIM and state and county health agencies had long since settled into a calm and orderly routine that seemed to be functioning, at least in terms of helping prevent any new cases of HIV in the industry for several years, and perhaps even more fundamentally, by providing a necessary if limited structure for the benefit of a shifting population of talent.

Until the news broke, that is, and what seemed to be a calm erupted into a brush war, with the Times fanning the flames.