Showing posts with label Chief Justice Stewart Rabner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chief Justice Stewart Rabner. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Despite Christie, justice in New Jersey seems assured

Cross traffic is rare at this red light in the middle of nowhere. Stop signs would work fine. Welcome to the Bergen Town Center in Paramus. 


By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You have to read between the lines of today's lead Page 1 story in The Record to find out Democrats have put the kibosh on Governor Christie's evil plan to remake the state Supreme Court in his own conservative image.

The A-1 headline is awkward and the story is poorly edited, making readers wait until the continuation page for the real news:

"For years, Governor Christie has railed against [Chief Justice Stewart] Rabner and the court he heads, both in New Jersey and at appearances across the country, calling the justices activists and decrying their decisions that disagreed with his" (A-6).

"Their decisions that disagreed with his"? Sheesh. And in the photo caption on A-6, the sitting chief justice is referred to as a "nominee."

Rabner, 53, who was questioned by lawmakers on Monday, appears assured of renomination and tenure until 2030.

Right after he took office in 2010, the mean-spirited Christie got rid of the only African-American on the high court, then set out to eliminate affordable housing and state aid to the state's poorest school districts.

The GOP bully also put forward several turkeys as his own conservative nominees for the high court, but most of them were rejected.

A progressive court

Imagine a high court that catered to Christie's wealthy supporters, and followed the governor's mean-spirited agenda to eliminate all social programs and taxes on the rich. 

That's what we avoid with Rabner at the helm of a progressive court that for many decades has been at the forefront on product liability, housing for low- and moderate-income residents and other important issues.

Unintended hilarity

Again on the front page, would you look at the stark contrast between the photos of aging TV columnist Ginny Rohan and the preening Kardashians, bimbos who probably have spent millions on plastic surgery (A-1).

Rohan's column is silly. Why waste all this prime space on the supposed impact of the two-decade-old O.J. Simpson case on TV reality shows?


That distracts from the sad fact that most TV --including CNN and other news reports -- is just crap. Why doesn't Rohan try to explain that?


50% error rate?

As usual, today's Road Warrior column is filled with numbers, but many of them are probably wrong, given Staff Writer John Cichowski's advancing Alzheimer's disease (L-1).

Is his error rate 50% or higher? With no editing or fact-checking of his column, it's anybody guess.


In his Road Warrior column last Friday, Cichowski said the replacement of upper-level road decking on the George Washington Bridge would take a "few weeks," contradicting a front-page story on the same day that reported the duration of the work as 12 weeks or a few months (Friday's A-9).


"The Road Warrior confuses the hell out of everyone by reporting that the upper-level lanes will be closed overnight for this work, when, in fact, one lane will always remain open in one direction and all four lanes will remain open in the other direction," according to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers.


Cichowski also describes the road surface as "slabs of steel decking." That's also wrong.

"The steel deck panels support slabs of pavement," according to the Bloopers editor

See:


Disoriented Road Warrior can't find GWB




Monday, April 21, 2014

Ex-boxer 'battled' cancer -- and more newspaper fiction

Two of the unrepaired potholes on Hackensack's Euclid Avenue, near Summit Avenue, above and below, part of a veritable minefield left over from our brutal winter that slows drivers to 10 mph, but unleashes a stream of curses directed at city officials and The Record's local-news editors.




By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's front-page headline on The Record's story about ex-boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is confusing.

The trite main headline says Carter "loses his final bout," but the sub-headline notes he "fought years to clear his name and died a free man."

The writer assumes readers knew Carter had prostate cancer, which apparently was "his final bout."

Still, "final bout" is too close to "fought years to clear his name," and the headline writer failed to communicate Carter's death clearly.

Even more disturbing is The Record and other media always reporting that a subject "lost his/her battle" with the disease that killed them.

Judging from John Artis, Carter's friend and co-defendant in a triple-murder trial, it wasn't much of a battle.

"I'm sad he is gone, but relieved that the pain and suffering is over. There will be no more pain," Artis says (A-6).

More problems

This story has other problems of sloppy caption writing and lazy reporting.

On the continuation page, a caption notes, "Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter knocking out Italian Fabio Bettini in Paris in 1965 (A-6).

Yet the photo show both men in the ring, and no contact, hardly what you'd describe as "knocking out."

Even worse is the silly sidebar by Staff Writer Jim Norman, who was assigned to see what had changed at the Lafayette Grill nearly 50 years after the murders that led to the wrongful conviction of Carter and Artis (A-6).

Dissing Paterson

In keeping with The Record's slanted coverage of Paterson as a hell on earth, Norman claims "the neighborhood has changed over the nearly half-century that has left much of Paterson crumbling into dust."

Where has this reporter been? 

Hasn't he ever visited the Eastside's glorious mansions; the city's Great Falls or the bustling Middle Eastern bazaar known as South Paterson?

Shame on Norman and shame on the Woodland Park daily for continuing to mine all of Paterson's negativity while ignoring the Silk City's many attractions.

Other questions

Another front-page story today -- on the death of 76-year-old Dolores Bellina in a Carlstadt house fire -- never asks or answers a natural question:

Did the woman, who lived alone, smoke (A-1)?

Governor Christie's decision on whether to keep New Jersey Chief Justice Stewart Rabner is still about five weeks away, according to Staff Writer Charles Stile's column on Page 1 today.

Stile has written this column about Christie's image numerous times by just changing names and situations, but fails to deliver what every reader wants from a columnist: 

A strong opinion.