Editors help Christie lie to public

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Having failed to lower property taxes, Governor Christie is trying to shift the focus to an income-tax cut starting in 2013 that will help the wealthy more than the rest of us.

The Record's editors don't even bother to hide all the selective reporting that allows Governor Christie to put a positive spin on his policies -- as in today's lead Page 1 story on competing tax-relief plans in Trenton.


After reporting in the third paragraph that Christie's proposed 10% income tax cut would cost the state more than $1 billion, the story sails on, ignoring history and how the governor has fumbled his main campaign pledge.


In his first two years in office, Christie failed miserably to deliver on his promise to lower property taxes and now, with the help of the media, he is trying to shift the focus to income-tax relief, which would benefit the wealthy far more than the middle class.


Today's story by Staff Writer John Reitmeyer not only fails to mention that, it conveniently ignores the estimated $1 billion that would be raised by a tax surcharge on millionaires. Christie has vetoed such as hike at least twice.


News emergency


Elsewhere on the front page, the paper demonstrates unusual enterprise in publishing Staff Writer Jay Levin's Saturday night interview with the Bergenfield baseball coach who received the liver he desperately needed from one of his former players.


Below that is an upbeat story on Christie's plan to make over Rowan and two other universities in the state, complete with a full-page graphic on A-6.


Francis "Frank" Scandale, who was fired on Halloween and replaced as editor by Timesman Martin Gottlieb, attended Rowan University in rural Gloucester County, where lightweight Scandale presumably dated farm animals.


Of course, the major element on A-1 today is about the Super Bowl, continuing the intense coverage that began on Wednesday.


Geezers on Page 1


Let's hope the front-page profiles of the opposing coaches -- who are 59 and 65 years old -- signal that the Woodland Park daily under the 64-year-old Gottlieb will be paying more attention to issues of concern to the elderly.


But readers will find journalism as usual in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, which leads with another Road Warrior column based on reader e-mails complaining about unlit stretches of highway.


The column, and an accompanying L-1 story on road signs, continues Sykes' intense focus on drivers to the exclusion of commuters who use mass transit.


Recently, Sykes also has published slanted stories that put NJ Transit's light-rail system in a bad light.


Auto dealers rule


Readers continue to wonder whether Sykes, Road Warrior John Cichowski and other transportation reporters are in the pockets of all those auto dealers who advertise so heavily in the paper.


The only Hackensack news today is the obituary of Jean Fontanella Zisa, 86, matriarch of the prominent political family, who died on Friday (L-7).


The obituary embodies the antiquated notion that newspapers shouldn't say anything negative about the dead by completely ignoring the Zisa family's decades-long grip on the city and its Police Department.


More poor editing


The general lack of editing at the paper again is evident in the self-serving column Mike Kelly wrote about Samuel S. Vaughn, a book editor and publisher who handled the reporter's book in the 1990s (Opinion front).


Vaughn must have done some editing job, because Kelly's clunky writing is apparent even today, as in this sentence from his column:


"My telephone rang at home one night and a lilting baritone spoke in my ear."


Huh? A "baritone spoke in my ear"?


Later on O-1, Kelly writes, "A book in progress was the equivalent of a mass of putty that needed to be massaged, pounded, pushed, rolled, smoothed and stroked."


Too bad Vaughn didn't know enough to "smother" Kelly's "mass of putty."


In other sections, two pieces I enjoyed reading today were Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn's report on all the Tudor Revival homes in Bergen County (Real Estate front) and Staff Writer Lindy Washburn's account of her off-season visit to the magical city of islands called Venice (Travel front).