A front page full of big losers: Christie, Trump, Tung, Stile

On Friday, a Superior Court judge in Hackensack imposed a life sentence on a Manhattan man who murdered Robert Cantor, 59, of Teaneck on March 6, 2011, for having an affair with his estranged wife.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How is the backing of the worst New Jersey governor ever supposed to help Donald Trump in his bid for the GOP presidential nomination?

You won't find the answer on The Record's front page, which is devoted today to Trump, Governor Christie and other big losers (A-1).

Christie and Trump have a few things in common, including hate speech -- the governor against Syrian refugees and the billionaire against Mexicans.

Political satirist Bill Maher said a photo of Trump and Christie in Texas looked like a presidential ticket.

"I'm sure Hillary Clinton ... was thinking, 'I'm sure I can make America hate me slightly less than these assholes.'"

The front page of the Daily News. The Record's bland front page labeled the endorsement of Donald Trump as "Christie's new cause," and reported the GOP bully is back on the campaign trail.

Sui Kam Tung

No one except Editor Deirdre Sykes and Staff Writer Allison Pries is surprised at the life sentence imposed on another loser, love-triangle murderer Sui Kam Tung, who shot Robert Cantor, 59, of Teaneck and then set his body on fire in March 2011.

Today's Page 1 story makes no reference to Pries' trashy jailhouse interview, splashed across A-1 on Friday, repeating Tung's hollow claims of innocence, all of which the jury heard before finding him guilty in December.

Tung, 52, who has been jailed for four years, will remain in custody during his defense attorney's futile appeal of the conviction and 68-year sentence.

Charles Stile

The Record's chief political columnist, Charles Stile, makes another desperate stab at describing Christie, a chameleon and dirty trickster who enforced his conservative agenda by executing more than 500 vetoes in the last six years.

How can that loser Stile possibly describe Christie as a former moderate?

Municipal aid

Taxpayers in Hackensack and the state's 566 other municipalities get some bad news today -- Christie's proposed voodoo budget keeps state aid flat for the sixth year in a row (L-1). 

Eight reporters worked on the story, but none answer the question posed by Patricia Murphy on North Jersey.com:

"How has Christie's non-stop record tax cuts, in the billions, for businesses affected the state aid for municipalities?"

The Oscars

Hollywood continues to fail us with films like "The Revenant," "Brooklyn" and "The Big Short" (BL-1).

Historical movies are just fluff, often made to impress other directors.

Sadly, the film industry continues to ignore how the Koch brothers' billions are poisoning elections, the insane political partisanship in Washington, the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, and all the other madness celebrated by the news media.

Second looks

North Bergen became the eighth town in the state to sue a tax-exempt hospital since Christie vetoed legislation last month that would have preserved their non-profit status, according to Thursday's front page.

But Staff Writer Lindy Washburn didn't bother asking officials in Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and Ridgewood why they aren't taking legal action against non-profit hospitals in their towns.

A story that led the Local front on Wednesday dramatizes the ridiculous salaries paid to the nearly 70 police chiefs in Bergen County.

Palisades Park Police Chief Ben Ramos receives $174,557 a year -- just under Christie's $175,000 salary.

In July 2010, Christie placed a cap ranging from $125,000 to $175,000 on the salaries of school superintendents.

But the GOP bully never squawked about the pay of police chiefs, some of whom were making $200,000 or more a year.

The Record just shrugged.

Here's another snow job from the imperious editors

Courthouse Cafe & Diner opened recently near the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, but the owner set his closing time for 4 p.m., when the city's quiet Main Street goes into hibernation.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Year after year, property taxes rise and the quality of snowplowing drops as municipal crews in Hackensack and other towns seem unwilling or unable to properly clear streets, crosswalks and bus stops.

In decades of covering winter storms, The Record has never sent out reporters to review how well or how poorly towns do on providing safe streets after a storm.

But today, a huge patch of the front page is devoted to a monster snow-melting machine and other measures in anticipation of bad weather for the Super Bowl in February.

That's next year -- in case you missed the whopper of an error in the first paragraph of today's story, which calls it "this year's Super Bowl."

The clueless John Brennan, a reporter who once covered sports, or one of his editors created the error, and six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton missed it.

As always, the joke is on the reader for thinking The Record is a serious local newspaper.

Christie follies 

Governor Christie's fiscal mismanagement and impractically strict no-tax policy on millionaires becomes clearer every day, as readers can see from today's A-1 story on Moody's Investors Services downgrading the state's $32 billion debt.

But the GOP bully, who is superb at managing the news, told reporters he had no comment and to get lost.

Native American news

The Local front carries a follow-up to Wednesday's Page 1 story on a new Hollywood film that smears the reputation of the Ramapough Mountain Indians  (L-1).

I cringed at Wednesday's story, which seemed to delight in repeating all of the racial slurs and insults hurled at the Ramapoughs in the past 200 years.

Given all the crap churned out by Hollywood, readers have to question why The Record and other newspapers devote so much space to movies and pretend to look at them critically.

The Record's Better Living entertainment tabloid on Fridays is top heavy with news of the movies, always devoting the cover to the latest trash from a director whose only goal appears to be outdoing other directors.

And what's with this kick for recreating and distorting the past, such as the Quentin Tarantino bloodbath called "Django Unchained"?

Hackensack news

Kathleen Gehm, 63, of River Vale has been cleared of a driving while intoxicated charge in the death of prominent Hackensack businessman Jerome S. Some, 87 (L-1).

As with so many pedestrian deaths, Gehm is apparently saying she didn't see Some before she ran him down on Prospect Avenue as he crossed the street to attend a meeting  at Bel Posto, a restaurant opposite his high-rise.

Building renovations forced relocation of the meeting to the restaurant.

Jerome Some's family members quoted in today's story weren't asked if they are going to file a negligence and wrongful death suit against Gehm. 

In a second Hackensack story today, officials say they are shutting down the city's Human Services Department for an anticipated annual savings of $400,000 a year (L-1).

Don't hold your breath, if you live in Hackensack and expect a property tax cut as a result.

Mentally defective

You have to wonder about the intelligence of some gun-rights advocates, such as Scott Bach of Newfoundland, a member of the National Rifle Association and head of a group of New Jersey rifle and pistol clubs (L-3).

Bach is criticizing Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop for suggesting gun manufacturers who want to do business with the city's Police Department commit themselves to gun-safety measures.

Bach -- who I doubt is related to the classical composer -- said the mayor joined the Marines after 9/11 and is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, then added this total non-sequitur:

"So you've got to wonder why he is not getting it."

Getting what? 

That we should all buy guns because another Hitler is set on exterminating 12 million more people or Muslim terrorists are going to fly planes into The Modern, the 47-story residential tower going up in Fort Lee?

Maybe Bach just doesn't have any confidence in the police to protect him from criminals and other trigger-happy elements in society.

Hollywood, editors ignore today's racist backlash

Compare this comfortable bench for Coach USA commuters at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, above, to the spring-loaded implements of torture NJ Transit provides in another part of the terminal, below.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor


Picking up The Record's report today on new movies about racial issues in the 1950s and 1960s, readers must be wondering what the editors and Staff Writer Jim Beckerman are smoking (A-1 and BL-1).

They completely ignore the continuing racist backlash to the 2008 election of President Obama and implementation of his Affordable Care Act, which is still under attack by Tea Party crackpots like Steve Lonegan, former pipsqueak mayor of Bogota (A-1 on Friday).

"It's as if America in 2013 was just beginning to address, rather than finally laying to rest, the racial issues that tore the country apart 60 years ago," Beckerman says, ignoring the present in a desperate search for an angle.

What about all of the voter-suppression proposals in North Carolina and other states with a large number of minorities? Don't they count as "racial issues."

News biz films?

Hollywood directors are famous for period pieces that twist the past even as they expose decades-old injustices.

Many readers are wondering when Hollywood is going to make movies about newspapers:

Their greedy publishers, big and small; and their editors and reporters, who will sensationalize and distort anything for a story, such as today's silly promotion of three new films (BL-1).

More screw-ups

Judging by 3 detailed corrections on A-2 today, Production Editor Liz Houlton and her snoring  copy editors are unable to perform their main job: keeping errors out of the paper.

Of course, all of the errors -- published and unpublished -- were missed by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her crack staff, including Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza.

Errors are bad enough, but what about omissions, such as the lack of information on the cause of a one-car accident that killed Erin Quinn, 18, a Wayne woman who was driving to college on Thursday (L-6), according to a death notice on L-5 today.

Forced busing

I'll let NJ Transit investigate a black customer's complaint "that he was racially profiled," but I have to question Alonza Robertson's judgment in taking a bus from Rockland County to Paramus to shop at a Nike outlet on a Sunday, when just everybody else knows all stores are closed (L-1).

For many years, The Record ignored NJ Transit's systematic discrimination against minorities, forcing them to ride decrepit, decades-old local buses, while the agency regularly replaced rolling stock on Manhattans runs. 

An emphatic two thumbs down for Roger Ebert

More than 10 NJ Transit bus routes were disrupted by the closing of the Anderson Street Bridge between Hackensack and Teaneck due to emergency weight-limit restrictions, above. Since the September closure, The Record hasn't interviewed a single bus rider on how their commute has been affected, but has carried the Road Warrior's endless hand-wringing over every tiny inconvenience faced by North Jersey lead-footed drivers.

With greedy publishing families like the Borgs and scandals involving fabricated quotes and even entire stories at such prestigious publications as The New York Times and Washington Post, you'd think Hollywood would have exposed the dark side of newspapers long ago.

You'd be wrong, of course, and critic Roger Ebert spent more than 45 years analyzing films without ever mentioning how directors have done exactly the opposite -- they go out of their way to glorify the press.

Hollywood might shy away from blasting the press because critics like Ebert, who worked for a big newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, could make or break them.

And you know the only reason Editor Marty Gottlieb put Ebert's obituary on the front page of Friday's paper is because he was a fellow newspaperman.

The Record's Friday entertainment tabloid once carried Ebert's reviews, but they ended several years ago, in an apparent cost-cutting move.

He's no Jeff Page

Gottlieb also seems to be indulging another fellow newspaperman, Staff Writer John Cichowski, whose Road Warrior columns are paved with inaccuracies.

On Friday, the Road Warrior's annual pothole column appeared on the Local front -- symbolizing the deep whole he continues to dig for the paper's credibility.

Local yokels

Five pages of Friday's Local was devoted to higher-education news, but head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes still needed a photo of a non-fatal accident to fill the local-news section (L-7).

Her deputy, Dan Sforza, spent the day out of the office, measuring potholes for Cichowski.

Rutgers brouhaha

Today, for the third day in a row, Gottlieb presents more screaming Page 1 headlines and blanket coverage of Rutgers University and its abusive basketball coach, Mike Rice.

Meanwhile, readers have had to listen to WBGO-FM radio news or search for stories on Trenton budget hearings to find out how Governor Christie intends to screw the middle and working classes again by short-changing mass transit and affordable housing. 

Crossing readers

Today's story on a Fort Lee crosswalk ticket blitz took readers by surprise -- coming after a March 22 Road Warrior column that warned about the use of plainclothes officers in a similar Teaneck crackdown this month (L-1).

But so far, drivers haven't seen any such blitz on Cedar Lane.

Sykes and Sforza couldn't find room for Hackensack news today, but did find space for the Dean's List; photos of a minor SUV and car fire, and a motorboat being pulled from a river; and for a story on road repairs in Edgewater (L-2, L-3 and L-6).

New to My Blog List 

(on the right of this page):

Hackensack Scoop
The County Watchers 
  

New Jersey is going down for the count

Why aren't Hollywood directors interested in the saga of a young publisher who puts personal gain ahead of his newspaper's responsibility to cover Hackensack and many other towns? The dumpsters in the parking lot at 150 River St., The Record's old headquarters, above, are a fitting symbol of how Publisher Stephen A. Borg has abandoned the city where the paper was founded more than 115 years ago.

The Record's upbeat coverage of Governor Christie can't hide the sad reality: 

Battered by Superstorm Sandy and facing a deficit of up to $2 billion, the great state of New Jersey is on the ropes (A-1 today and Monday).

Is there any doubt Christie has mismanaged the state and cut middle-class programs to balance the state budget?

And it's all to preserve lower tax rates on the millionaires who support him -- an issue on which even his fellow hard-line Republicans in Congress have yielded.

Pitty the poor senior

Monday's front page continued The Record's policy of stereotyping seniors as frail, sickly and helpless. 

If not the police, who are they supposed to call when they fall?

Readers don't get to know all those well-heeled, globe-trotting seniors who live full lives until they die and show up in one of Jay Levin's local obits. 

Acting stupid 

Today's and Monday's coverage of the Golden Globe Awards ignores how Hollywood appears to be stuck in the past, making films about such events as the Iranian hostage crisis, emancipation of the slaves and the French revolution.

Where are the movies about newspapers and the selfish people who own and edit them?

Too bad Jodie Foster's Golden Globe speech stole all the attention away from winners Ben Afleck and others whose acceptance speeches made them sound like blithering idiots (Better Living cover).

It demonstrates how most actors are only as good as their scripts.

Out of order

Monday's Page 1 carried a rare Hackensack story that isn't only about the legal problems of former Police Chief Ken Zisa.

Staff Writer Jeff Pillets focuses on questionable behavior and apparent conflicts of interest involving Richard Malagiere, attorney for the city zoning board and former legal counsel to the Board of Freeholders.

In the past three years, Pillets reports, Malagiere has received at least $822,000 for advising the zoning board and for defending Zisa in a series of civil law suits.   

Gunning for readers 

It's good to see Mike Kelly writing today and Sunday about the nation's shameful record on controlling gun violence, but readers can do without the overly dramatic prose and the eye-glazing length of his columns (A-1 today, O-1 on Sunday).

Here is vintage Kelly: "American history is rich with stories of ordinary people mounting extraordinary efforts to change the way we live." 

Or this: "The Locieros offer a counterpoint from their Hawthorne living room, where a large portrait of their daughter keeps watch and a clock tolls every hour [italics added]."

Hey, Kelly, no she doesn't and no it doesn't.  

Fuzzy journalism

Political Columnist Charles Stile reports on how Christie is blurring the line between his official role as governor and his candidacy for a second term (A-1).

But isn't that what the editors, reporters and columnists at The Record have been doing since the GOP bulldog took office 3 years ago: 

Blurring the line between covering him and praising him, despite evidence he is the state's worst governor ever.  

Little local news

Thanks to head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, there hasn't been much to read in Local lately beyond Law & Order news.

But today, L-1 carries two Hackensack stories, including a discussion of whether city zoners will re-appointment Malagiere. 

The second story, on the death of two elderly women in a crash with a second vehicle on Polifly Road, doesn't say whether any charges are pending or even whether police are investigating (L-1).

Readers are told, "Police said they had no other details to release Monday night."  

So, Sykes and Sforza told the reporter to go to police headquarters on State Street today and stand outside with his hand out.


Paved with errors 
 
Sunday's Road Warrior column on the Pulaski Skyway was filled with errors, according to a concerned reader who e-mailed management:

"General Pulaski and advocates of history, traffic, and the truth are turning over in their graves or gravel beds about mistaken reporting by the Road Warrior [John Cichowski] in his Jan. 13 column about scheduled construction work for the Pulaski Skyway.

"The Road Warrior reporting once again damages The Record's integrity, which becomes more and more costly to repair the longer these misleading and false reports are allowed to continue in the Road Warrior columns without any corrections."

To read the full e-mail, go to the following link:

Road Warrior surrenders to accuracy again