News media ignore red meat's direct link to heart attacks

Judging from the number of drivers parked on ramps and roads as they waited for arriving travelers on Saturday evening, the cellphone lot at Newark Liberty International Airport, above, is still a well-kept secret more than a year after it opened.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The media storm over meat causing cancer hides the leading killer -- heart attacks from coronary arteries clogged with the saturated fat found in steak, lamb and pork.

Anyone who relies on The Record and other news media for health and nutrition news should have their heads examined.

Today, the Woodland Park daily runs a Page 1 story reporting the World Health Organization's warning about red and processed meats.

And in Better Living, a Your Health column attacks the "B.S. (bad science)" that "artery clogging, inflammation stoking saturated fat is good for your heart and blood vessels" (BL-3).

Yet, in the same space a few weeks ago, a columnist actually made fun of people who were trying to avoid food prepared with artery clogging butter, and basically said they had nothing to worry about.

The Record's editors may argue this is balanced reporting, but it confuses and misleads readers.

And that's bad news on top of Elisa Ung, the chief restaurant critic, who is obsessed with artery clogging desserts, and recipe freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson, who can't seem to cook without heavy cream, butter and bacon.

More baseball

Today's front page from Editor Martin Gottlieb is a disaster -- baseball gets better play than a Paramus vigil for domestic violence victims a week after the murder of a single mother of two in Midland Park (A-1).

We get it, Marty. The fall is time for the playoffs and World Series, but you are alienating the vast majority of readers with your obsessive front-page coverage of the Mets.

On A-3, Governor Christie gets slammed for more off-the-wall comments about President Obama, who has expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

In fact, Christie has been so critical of Obama, and often distorts the president's record, readers have to ask themselves whether the GOP bully is motivated by racism instead of politics, even if The Record won't.

Orange jumpsuits

In Local, orange is the new black-and-white, judging from courtroom photos of defendants in prison jumpsuits on L-1 and L-3.

Law & Order news predominates on what local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza like to call a slow news Monday, but the truth is that's just an excuse for their laziness and disinterest in a job they have been doing forever (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-4).

Can you believe The Record does not have a photo of the Rev. James P. Coleman, former pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack (L-1)?

LOL. What a disgrace. 

The best Sykes and Sforza could do is showing the back of the civil rights hero's head with a story on the naming of a Hackensack street for him -- in a 35-year-old photo no less!!!!

Monday's paper

One look at Page 1 on Monday -- the Mets, Christie, Catholic bishops and marching bands -- prompted many readers to send it straight to recycling.

A long story on Tenafly Mayor Peter Rustin's bid for a fourth term is silent on the decision to block extension of NJ Transit's light rail to the wealthy borough despite increasing traffic congestion and air pollution (L-2).