A fight over a progressive L.A. news site leads to dueling lawsuits

The question of who controls a small independent media outlet has roiled Los Angeles’ left for more than a year.

This week, the clash over Knock LA exploded into the legal system, with dueling lawsuits that allege copyright and trademark infringement, defamation and even theft of trade secrets.

In one corner is a group of prominent journalists, including Cerise Castle and Ben Camacho, who have built large public followings for tough reporting on local law enforcement.

On the opposing side stands Ground Game LA, a scrappy advocacy group whose ascent has been inextricably tied to the leftward shift in the city’s political power structure.

Ground Game LA formed Knock LA in 2017, billing the nonprofit community journalism project as “by and for Los Angeles progressives.” The publication flourished during the pandemic, as public health restrictions and protests over police reform put fresh focus on city government. Knock LA and its extremely online reporters helped channel that frenzy of attention into activism, with popular voter guides and live coverage of public meetings.

Amid a particularly fertile moment for local leftist politics, Ground Game LA also soared.

Meghan Choi, Ground Game LA’s co-founder and executive director, led Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez’s insurgent City Council bids, helping them unseat incumbents. The group also rallied behind Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez and City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s successful campaigns in 2022.

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But there were deep fissures between the organization’s leadership and some of the journalists who had become synonymous with Knock LA’s work.

Camacho and Castle charge that Ground Game LA has continued to profit off their work without authorization, even after blocking their access to the site, and are seeking nearly $5 million in damages. Ground Game LA argues that the journalists essentially tried to hijack the news outlet, taking its trademarked name, stealing its confidential mailing list and misrepresenting themselves as the outlet’s rightful leaders.

On Tuesday, Castle and Camacho filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Ground Game as well as Liberty Hill Foundation and the California Endowment, two leading philanthropic groups that have provided it with financial backing.

Castle and Camacho said in their lawsuit that Ground Game and the nonprofits have “maliciously and systematically” exploited their copyrighted journalistic works “across multiple platforms.”

At issue is Castle’s 15-part series, “A Tradition of Violence,” on gangs of deputies within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The account of violent law enforcement cliques went viral when Castle published it on Knock LA in 2021, winning accolades and contributing to heightened scrutiny of the Sheriff’s Department.

Camacho is known for obtaining the photos, names and serial numbers of 9,000 LAPD officers, then providing them to Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which published the records, prompting two lawsuits from L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto. He identified 23 images and articles that he said Ground Game had infringed upon.

The duo trace the infringement to March 2024, when Castle led an effort to separate Knock LA from Ground Game. The move, according to the suit, was prompted by reasons including “editorial overreach,” “demands for unpaid labor,” “racial discrimination” and “lack of support for Mr. Camacho” after Feldstein Soto’s office sued him.

Within weeks, Camacho and Castle contend, they were cut off from Knock LA’s email and other systems “in a deliberately hostile and retaliatory action.” They say the move kept their journalistic work captive and allowed Ground Game “to profit from their unauthorized use.” As independent journalists, both assert that they had retained the copyrights and never “executed any work-for-hire agreements” or transferred their intellectual property.

The pair accuse Ground Game of misappropriating their work to boost its fundraising and stature. By providing grant money and social media promotion, the California Endowment and Liberty Hill “materially contributed” to the infringement, the suit alleges. Both organizations declined to comment.

Castle and Camacho are seeking an injunction barring Ground Game from using their copyrighted works and an award of damages “totaling no less than $4,650,000,” among other demands.

“This lawsuit is about protecting years of investigative work that I developed independently, often under difficult and dangerous conditions,” said a statement by Castle, who now works for Capital & Main. “No one should be allowed to take your work, take credit for your work, and use it to fundraise without consent. That’s not solidarity — it’s exploitation.”

On Wednesday, Ground Game countered with force, filing a federal lawsuit and exhibits spanning 119 pages that cast Camacho, Castle and two others as villains in a “scheme” to seize the reins of Knock LA, register it as their own company and unlawfully use its trademarks for their own offshoot site.

Ground Game’s suit also focuses on spring 2024, when Castle — Knock LA’s then-managing editor — along with Camacho, the photography editor, and Katja Schatte, the editor in chief, asked to separate from Ground Game and form their own new entity.

When Ground Game’s board rejected that proposal, the trio “began interfering” with Knock LA, and the parent organization shut down their Knock email accounts soon after.

The quarrel quickly spilled into public view. Castle, who is Black, accused Ground Game LA of racism, and a social media “toolkit” — complete with talking points, hashtags and draft posts — alleged that the nonprofit was holding the news outlet “hostage.” Other contributors joined with Castle, recording a video that accused Ground Game LA “of killing local journalism” and appealing to the public to stand with them.

Ground Game LA alleges that around that same time, the offshoot group took the organization’s confidential mailing list and sent multiple emails without permission, “representing themselves as the legitimate successors of Knock LA” and “misrepresenting” their separation from the broader group to divert donations.

The offshoot group used the contact list to “advertise, promote, and grow … their individual and personal interests,” according to the suit, calling such actions a “theft” of trade secrets.

Ground Game LA also accuses the offshoot group of hijacking Knock LA’s social media accounts and trying to lock the organization out of them, “including by changing the Two-Factor Authentication for Knock LA’s Instagram account, removing the administrator email on Knock LA’s Facebook account, and taking down multiple YouTube videos from Knock LA’s YouTube account.”

Their lawsuit seeks to prevent the offshoot group from using the mailing list or Knock LA trademarks and demands that they restore access to “blocked social media accounts.”

Knock LA continues to publish new material, and its website still prominently features Castle’s series on the Sheriff’s Department. But its Instagram and Twitter accounts have been dark for months.

Neither side directly responded to the allegations but both lamented that the acrimony had escalated to litigation.

“Our folks worked very hard and did everything that they could to prevent it from getting to this place,” Choi, Ground Game LA’s executive director, said of the dueling lawsuits. “Fundamentally, this is just about somebody trying to hijack our project and our identity.”

Camacho, in a statement shared by his attorney Almuhtada Smith, emphasized the sacrifice of “time, risk and dedication” that went into his photography and writing — and that now motivates his and Castle’s fight.

“We didn’t want to take legal action, but our efforts to resolve this privately were ignored,” Camacho said in the statement. “No creator — especially those from historically excluded communities — should be expected to let others profit off their work without permission or credit.”