Mayor Karen Bass Can't Stand the Heat as Her Team Scrambles to Edit Press Conference Blunders

justmindy | 5:45 PM on February 22, 2025

Karen Bass is throwing fire chiefs under the bus and now she is completely rewriting history, apparently.

Wow. The @latimes reports Mayor Bass’ office has been editing out Q&A sessions from news conference videos posted to her FB page, cutting out parts where reporters press her about her handling of the fire. LAT asked Bass’ office why the videos are being edited, & got no response.…
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 22, 2025

The reporter from CBS delivered a stinging question — one that got under the skin of Mayor Karen Bass.
Bass had flown home from Ghana the day before to a city engulfed in crisis, with firefighters battling out-of-control wildfires, hydrants that were dry and residents reeling from a chaotic evacuation. Standing in the city’s Emergency Operations Center, the reporter wanted to know: What did Bass have to say to critics who were demanding she step down?
Bass, standing with a clutch of city and county officials, promised a “deep dive” into everything that had gone wrong. With the fires still raging, she made clear she was done with the question.
“I answered it in the morning. I answered it now. Won’t answer it again,” she told the room full of reporters.
That testy exchange — and the entire news conference — can be found on the Facebook page for Los Angeles County government, which has uploaded more than two dozen wildfire media briefings since the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out.
On the mayor’s Facebook page, however, the Q and A is nowhere to be found.
Video from that Jan. 9 news conference does appear on Bass’ Facebook platform. But it cuts off the moment the questions begin. The last thing the viewer hears is a reporter asking, “What is it going to take to stop this fire?”
That wasn’t an isolated case. On the mayor’s Facebook page, video from a Jan. 8 evening wildfire news conference also excludes the Q and A segment. The same is true of the wildfire media briefing video posted from the morning of Jan. 10.