Editors claim evil Paterson is killing white suburbanites

The Great Falls of the Passaic River in Paterson are a symbol of a glorious industrial past. Today, if you believe The Record's biased three-part series on heroin, the evil, largely minority city is luring young white men and women from the suburbs to their untimely deaths.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

"IN HEROIN'S GRIP" -- a three-part series in The Record that ends today -- is one of the most biased pieces of journalism I have ever seen.

Timothy Linnartz, 29, of Waldwick and all of the other dead and dying white drug addicts who are the central characters in this drama; their parents and the police, who don't arrest them, remain blameless.

On Sunday's front page, Staff Writer Rebecca D. O'Brien reported  a new phenomena -- "heroin so pure and inexpensive that it is not only hastening the fall of this once vibrant city, but feeding on the wealth of nearby suburbs, towns like Glen Rock and Clifton, Mahwah and Waldwick."

Eye on prize

Lusting for a Pulitzer Prize, Editor Marty Gottlieb and the other white editors who worked on this opus are so eager to demonize Paterson they claim Silk City's "legacy as the first planned industrial city could also be, in part, what contributes to the problem."

Then -- in one of the most ridiculous of the many assertions in the series -- they blame the city's easy access, "more than 30 points of entry, connecting some of the region's wealthiest communities to the poorest" (A-8 on Sunday). 

The only suggestion that Bergen County isn't blameless for the behavior of the addicts flocking to Paterson comes from Capt. Timothy Condon of the Prosecutor's Office:

"Bergen County is coming in and sustaining this violent narcotics trade with their money," Condon says.

The rest of his quote on Sunday's A-8 is incomprehensible.

In the final part on Page 1 today, O'Brien revisits the layoff of one-quarter of Paterson's 500-member police force and once again doesn't mention Governor Christie's cuts in state aid as a factor.

Another error?

One of The Record's readers thinks the photo caption on the Local front today is incorrect in describing a rabbi "chanting Lincoln's words in the form of a 'haftarah'" (L-1).

"First, there are four people and the rabbi on the bimah [a raised platform]. When one reads a haftorah, only the reader is on the bimah. It is clear that the Rabbi is reading from the Torah.  The people are in the position for a torah reading and, most significantly, if one looks at the picture you can see the ends of the torah scrolls.  Gottlieb should have spotted this."