I have a beef with how New York Times reporters Shawn Hubler and Soumya Karlamangla chose to cover Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass’s overseas trips in their coverage of the tragic fires. The issue came up because when the fires broke out on January 7, Bass was in Ghana for the inauguration of new president John Mahama. This wasn’t as random as it might seem. During her time in Congress, Bass served on the Foreign Relations committee with a special focus on African affairs, and she traveled there frequently and established many relationships. It was for this reason that the Biden administration asked her to attend the inauguration of Mahama.

Unfortunately, after she left for Ghana on Saturday morning, “the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office began telegraphing increasingly dire messages about heavy winds on Sunday.” In other words, she had no way of knowing ahead of time that there could be trouble. And her initial absence when the fires broke out might not have been a problem if she hadn’t publicly promised not to do international travel if she was elected as mayor, but she did.

“I went to Africa every couple of months [when serving in Congress], all the time,” she said, adding, “The idea of leaving that, especially the international work and the Africa work, I was like, ‘Mmm, I don’t think I want to do that.’”

She ultimately decided that she did, telling The Times that if she was elected mayor, “not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally — the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to L.A.”

Of course, she never said she’d turn down a direct request from the Biden administration to attend an inauguration. It was the second foreign inauguration she attended, the other one being for Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum. But, again, this wasn’t some junket. It was a trip next door to pay respect to a new government that shares a border with California. Not only that, but Los Angeles County has 3.5 million people of Mexican descent.

Hubler and Karlamanga are quick to point out that Bass also traveled three times to France. But this was to attend the Olympic and Paralympic Games. That made sense because Los Angeles is scheduled to host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Despite the ample justification for these foreign trips, Hubler and Karlamanga write that Bass’s pledge not to travel internationally “has been spectacularly broken.” They even criticize her for a domestic trip she made to Washington, DC.

In late April, she led a bipartisan delegation of mayors to Washington, D.C. There, she successfully lobbied federal leaders to expand veterans’ eligibility for housing vouchers, a change that is expected to be instrumental in addressing homelessness in Los Angeles and across the U.S.

But not only was the trip productive, she had specifically mentioned DC as one of the places she would travel to as mayor.

So, yes, Bass has done some international travel but I would call it “spectacular” in any meaningful sense. It was all reasonable and no one complained about it until she was in Ghana when the emergency hit. Opportunists want to blast her for this, but that doesn’t mean the New York Times needs to join their chorus.

She returned home promptly and was patched into all the important calls during her flight. Maybe there are things she’s done or not done as mayor to criticize with respect to wildfire preparedness, but being on a diplomatic mission at the request of the president isn’t some sin requiring atonement or for which she should suffer political consequences. This is just crap reporting, in my opinion.