Ramapoughs are victims of news media, legal system, too

A 2011 image from CBS2 coverage of Ford Motor Co. pollution in the Upper Ringwood section of Ringwood.

Editor's note: My first beat as a reporter at The Record was covering Ringwood and West Milford. When staffers were researching the "Toxic Legacy" series in 2005, they came across stories I did around 1980 on Ford Motor Co. dumping in abandoned mines.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Mixed-race members of the Native American community living in Ringwood have suffered discrimination throughout history.

But in the past decade, their treatment by the news media -- including The Record -- legal community and public officials is the most despicable.

Today, a 10-year retrospective of the newspaper's "Toxic Legacy" series contains a major error in reporting on a class-action lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. for decades of paint-sludge dumping and the resulting illnesses and death among the Ramapoughs (A-1).

Chump change

Staff Writer Scott Fallon refers to "a $12.5 million award for 633 current and former members -- far less than other pollution cases across the nation" (A-12).

In fact, whatever money the Ramapoughs received -- minus hefty legal fees -- was the result of a settlement, not an "award" from a jury.

Fallon doesn't mention the Ramapoughs' lawyers rushed into the settlement, citing the financial problems of Ford and the other Big 3 automakers during the recession.

Nor does he report The Record's editorial page urged the Ringwood residents to take the deal, and not continue their long struggle for justice.

Checks ranged from $4,368 to  a maximum of $34,594, The Record's Mary Jo Layton reported in December 2010: "How much is a life worth?"

Ford and the lawyers laughed all the way to the bank. Unlike GM and Chrysler, Ford didn't need a bailout from the federal government.

Sloppy editing

The flawed reporting and sloppy editing of today's story on the Ramapoughs have become commonplace at The Record of Woodland Park. 

Another example appeared on Saturday's front page, showing the editors' ignorance of even the most momentous of issues.

Editor Martin Gottlieb or his minions could have crafted a climate-change package out of a large photo of English miners and a story on electric cars in New Jersey (see today's Opinion front).

Instead, the photo appeared by itself, leaving thousands of North Jersey readers wondering what the end of coal mining in England had to do with them.

Just shocking

And the story on the anemic sales of all-electric cars had holes big enough for a Tesla Model S to race through.

Fallon, an environmental reporter, wrote this story, too, and claimed the drawbacks of electric cars are "the limited range and lack of charging stations in New Jersey and elsewhere" (Saturday's A-1).

He never mentions the typical electric car, with a range of 85 to 100 miles, is ideal for the tens of thousands of senior citizens whose daily driving involves food shopping, visiting doctors and volunteering.

And though he reports the sleek, luxurious Model S has a range of more than 200 miles, he doesn't tell readers Tesla is the only manufacturer with a nationwide network of fast, free Superchargers that make long-distance travel a breeze. 

Health-care bias

Saturday's front page also carried the pejorative "Obamacare" in the lead headline when the words "Health care" would have fit and showed objectivity.

And once again, Staff Writer Lindy Washburn forgets to remind readers Governor Christie's refusal to set up a health-care exchange in New Jersey has slowed sign-ups in the Garden State.

GWB probe

The end of the state Legislature's probe of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal isn't Page 1 news (A-1).

Everyone is on the edge of their seats awaiting the identification of "unindicted co-conspirators" during the federal criminal trial of two Christie aides, now set for April.

In the court of public opinion, the GOP bully certainly was involved, despite all the protestations from The Record's editors, columnists, reporters and editorial writers.

Local news

Don't look for much municipal news in today's paper, but you'll find the editors are paying plenty of attention to retailers who are among the paper's biggest advertisers (A-1 and L-1).

Staff Writer John Cichowski continues to scrape the bottom of the barrel for his so-called commuting column with a discussion of short cuts around road construction projects (L-1).

Readers are wondering when the burned-out, error-prone Road Warrior is going to find his own short cut to retirement.

Leonia stands still

On L-3, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes runs another story on Leonia, but has never explored why this town is so poorly run or why officials have downsized the Police Department (L-3).

In August 2014, the lack of an officer directing rush-hour traffic at Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road, a major intersection, has been cited in the death of Leyla Kan, 60, who was struck in the crosswalk by a small school bus and dragged to her death.  

Nothing has changed.

In today's story, Leonia Police Chief Tom Rowe continues to bitch and moan over not having enough police officers to handle the crush of George Washington Bridge-related traffic.

Food phobia

Restaurant critic Elisa Ung's Sunday column continues to ignore the poor quality of beef, poultry and other food served in even expensive restaurants (BL-1).

Today, she complains about a far less compelling issue, small type and typos on menus. Maybe she needs glasses.

Weighty issue

Today, for a change, Real Estate takes a break from celebrating the greed of Realtors, home builders and owners to tackle a weighty issue, radon (R-1).

Local-news editors, reporters can't get act together

Friday morning at 10: A major backup on a quiet street in Teaneck.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How did Editor Marty Gottlieb, a veteran of The New York Times, and an unknown number of reporters and sub-editors screw-up so badly on today's lead Page 1 story in The Record?

The big, black headline screams about a "midnight rampage" at Teaneck High School, but the text mentions students breaking into the school in the "wee hours" and a "2:11 a.m." burglary alarm.

Doesn't sound like "midnight" to me. How embarrassing. What went wrong? 

And why does this happen time and again -- major errors in headlines and photo captions, all the responsibility of six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton?

Big question

With more than 20 hours to work on the story -- and two sidebars -- no one at the paper asked or answered an obvious question:

Where were the parents of the 62 students when they left their houses in the "wee hours" and traveled to the school to commit the vandalism?

Sleeping, no doubt, like Houlton and the other editors. 

And why doesn't the Woodland Park daily name the 24 students facing charges who are 18 years old?

Sanitizing Ford story

But the problems with today's edition don't end there.

Another front-page piece that goes into great detail, yet still manages to have big holes in it, is the profile of Paramus High graduate Mark Fields, who will become the first Jewish CEO of Ford Motor Co., started by a notorious anti-Semite.

Deep in the text on A-9, Staff Writer Richard Newman, who is a business reporter, mentions the Ford plant in Mahwah closed in 1980.

But Newman says not a word about the despicable company history of dumping paint sludge in Ringwood mines and woods, perilously close to North Jersey's major water supply.

The dumping inspired "Toxic Legacy," an investigative series by The Record, and a lawsuit against Ford on behalf of the Ramapough Mountain People, members of a mixed-race community who were sickened by the sludge and then duped into settling the case.

Ford destroyed the environment is their Upper Ringwood enclave, yet the story praises the current CEO with "shepherding to market a new lineup of ... fuel-efficient vehicles ...." (A-9).

Ford is environmentally responsible, this whitewash from the business staff seems to be saying.

Failed strategy

On today's Local front, Englewood officials say they are hoping new apartments will help expand the downtown economy -- a strategy that has already failed miserably (L-1).

The city plans to knock down the Lincoln School, which was more than 100 years old when it was closed in 2008, and a city firehouse on Williams Street to make way for the new apartments, which will receive a 15-year tax break.

The story doesn't mention that a plan to turn the elementary school into a community center was rejected by city officials, likely because it is located in a minority neighborhood.

Is it that good?

I once tried takeout from Rose's Place in Fair Lawn, which The Record rated three stars, and felt that although the food was good, the portions were small for the price.

And Rose's didn't match my standard for Lebanese fare at time: Vine Valley on Main Street in Paterson, now long closed.

Today, Staff Writer Elisa Ung gives three stars to Rose's of Englewood (BL-20), but I'm not sure that will be enough to lure me away from my current favorite for Middle Eastern food, Paterson's Aleppo Restaurant.

Columnist trashes 'drunken Indian' killed by park officer

Image via Wikipedia
Well-known people of Irish descent.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK -- Leave it to Columnist Mike Kelley to play the race card in commenting on the award of nearly $2.3 million in damages to the family of a Ramapough Mountain Indian who was shot dead by a white park ranger in 2006.

Kelly resorts to all of the stereotypes about Native Americans and their supposed problems with alcohol in his hate-filled, blame-the-victim column in The Record's Local section today (L-3). 

How this man calls himself a journalist is beyond me. Look at his phony smile in the column photo and tell me he doesn't look like the typical person of Irish descent who likes to take a nip now and then. 

Kelly calls the mixed-race victim, Emil Mann, "rowdy" and "tipsy," and says "booze" may have "blurred his judgment and helped get him killed."  

Honest Indian

The columnist completely ignores statements at the civil trial that Park Police Officer Chad Walder "made up the story about the scuffle [with Mann] and ambush to justify the shooting."

This isn't the first time Kelly has sided with law enforcement in the shooting of an unarmed suspect. He wrote a 1995 book about the fatal shooting of black teenager Philip Pannell by a white Teaneck police officer in 1990.

Witnesses said Pannell, 16, was shot in the back.

For many years, The Record barred the word "Indian" and its style book mandated the use of "Native American." However, under Production Editor Liz Houlton, who now supervises the news copy desk, anything goes.

Outside of Kelly's outrageous attack on the reputation of a dead man, there isn't much in the Woodland Park daily today.

Jock-strap news

Interim Editor Doug Clancy squanders more space on Page 1 of the Bergen Edition to report on the latest developments in the Wayne Hills High School football scandal -- a story that belongs in the Passaic-Morris Edition.

Staff Writer Colleen Diskin goes to nursing homes and assisted living centers in writing about the longer life expectancy of men -- making it sound as if all old people are just waiting to die (A-1 and A-12).

Diskin is another pampered member of the big butt sisterhood nurtured by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes. (See previous post, The newsroom's big butt sisterhood.)

Press corps pussies

Leave it to Michael Fremer of Wyckoff to do what the entire Washington press corps (including staffer Herb Jackson) has failed to do in the raging debate over taxing the wealthy -- a battle that has paralyzed Congress.

In a letter to the editor on A-22 today, Fremer puts the debate in perspective:

"All we've gotten from the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy are deficits, greater income disparity and the weakest job creation in the post-World War II era. In fact, President Obama's so-called failed stimulus resulted in greater job creation in three years (almost 2 million jobs saved or created) than did Bush's tax cuts in eight."

Locals are yokels

In Sykes' Local section, Hackensack reporter Stephanie Akin was sent to cover a hearing in Franklin Lakes Municipal Court (L-1), meaning there is no Hackensack news in the section for yet another day.

In more senior citizen news, a 67-year-old driver rear-ended another car in North Arlington (L-2), and a 75-year-old woman was run down by a car in Ridgewood (L-3).

Sykes has asked Diskin to find out which nursing home or assisted living center these two end up in, assuming they survive, and to interview them for her next story on old people.

When editors lose their courage

Image via Wikipedia

What secrets are hidden by Orthodox Jews in Borough Park?

You know the editors of a local newspaper have lost their way when letters from readers and OpEd pieces expose official incompetence or corruption more than the paper's own editorials and columnists.


Three letters to The Record's editor today blast Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan for giving a $53,000 raise to a "crony," who is already making $121,350 (A-18).


His job is to head an office that fights waste. What a farce.


D.C. gridlock


Four other letters comment on the sickening partisan gridlock over extending the nation's debt ceiling. 


The Record has printed one story after another filled with Republican he said and Democratic she said, but Herbert Jacobs of Teaneck says, " ... Republicans are ready to plunge the world into another Great Depression unless they get their way."


Hear Scott W. Stahlmann of Ramsey: "House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., the tea partiers and the right-wing fringe are trying to sell America with another 'big lie' ...."


It's time for President Obama, Stahlmann continues, "to stop negotiating and come out swinging. Raise revenue [by] taxing the wealthiest, close the corporate loopholes, reduce military spending and foreign aid, and leave Social Security and Medicare alone."


Rupert's cube


Another letter, this one from J. Andrew Smith of Bloomfield, calls Rupert Murdoch's empire a "God-awful propaganda machine that redefines bottom-feeding for conservatives."


An OpEd piece exposes Governor Christie's attempts "to allow municipalities where the wealthiest New Jerseyans live to continue to keep out working families" by imposing large minimum lot sizes (A-19).


Stuffed shirt


Compare all this compelling reading to what Editor Francis Scandale had to say at the screening of an HBO documentary, "Mann v. Ford" on the decades-long struggle of the Ramapough Mountain People against Ford Motor Co.


Scandale took a break from golfing to moderate a panel discussion with the filmmakers and said not a single quotable word (L-1, L-6).


In fact, the cowardly editor left it to one of the filmmakers, Micah Fink, to put the saga in perspective: "It's a very powerful story. There are basic themes of injustice, racism, poverty ...."


How could Scandale be at a loss for words? He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries on The Record's "Toxic Legacy" series in pursuit of a Pulitzer Prize, but failed to win one.


There's also no mention today of how The Record's editorial page quickly abandoned the community when the largest civil suit in New Jersey history was settled -- netting Ringwood residents a maximum of $34,500 a person -- and urged them to take it and move on.


Today's front page


The newspaper's tarring and feathering of BCC President G. Jeremiah Ryan may lead to his firing, even though he spent "significantly less" than his annual $50,000 expense account and raised $3.8 million last year for the community college (A-1).


What the paper calls an "investigation" included a scurrilous attack on Ryan for buying "top-shelf liquor" for himself and donors. 


This from editors who once labored under a now-reformed drunk, Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, and who now work for his spoiled children, investors in an Englewood wine bar. How rich.


Orthodox Jews


The grisly A-1 story on the murder and dismembering of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky by a member of his ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, delicately avoids any discussion of homosexuality among unmarried Hasidic men.


On A-4, a photo caption doesn't say whether the giant sand dragon shown won the contest in Belmar on Wednesday.


Go fish


In Better Living, the owner of Pearl Restaurant in Ridgewood doesn't explain why he serves artificially colored farmed Atlantic salmon when wild-caught salmon is abundant and cheap this summer (Starters, F-1 and F-8).

Democrats fix Christie screw-up

Image by law_keven via Flickr

Squirrel is consumed in Upper Ringwood, The Record reports.

You'd think The Record of Woodland Park would have used a banner headline on Page 1 today to report on a deal with federal officials to nearly cut in half the $271 million bill for the Hudson River rail-tunnel project killed by Governor Christie.

But the compromise -- worked out by the state's two Democratic U.S. senators, not our Republican bully of a governor -- plays second fiddle to new revelations about Ford Motor Co.'s toxic dumping in Ringwood -- a story that readers thought was dead and buried after the paper ran A-1 takeouts on a legal settlement Sunday and Monday.

Now, readers learn, lead has been found in the food chain from 2006-09 samples of plants and animals commonly eaten by the residents, who call themselves Ramapough Mountain People. They live off the land, much of which is a Superfund site.

Mary-come-lately

Has anyone asked Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton why the results of these tests are coming to light now -- more than a year after high-profile lawyers accepted a measly $12.5 settlement from Ford, rather than take the residents' illnesses and deaths before a jury and let the triers of the facts decide if they were caused by the automaker's pollution?

The standards of proof in a civil lawsuit, such as the one filed against Ford and the borough of Ringwood, are far lower than "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is needed in a criminal case. The lawyers kept $2.3 million, and the rest was shared by 633 plaintiffs.

Law and otter

I have seen little on the legal dimensions of this story. Editor Francis Scandale apparently never asked reporters to consult an independent expert to assess the decision by lawyers to make a deal with Ford, which continues to deny any responsibility for what happened to residents since the dumping of paint sludge began in 1970.

Sykes printed a stomach-turning recipe for bear meat on Sunday, but I don't see anything in the paper today on how to cook squirrel, mice, shrew or frogs.

Tunnel vision

Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez took credit for limiting the financial damage left in the wake of Christie's unilateral decision to kill the rail tunnels.

"I have been working since the day Governor Christie unwisely killed the project to clean up this mess and reduce the cost to taxpayers in our state," Lautenberg said.

It's typical in embarrassing moments such as these that the normally voluble Christie has nothing to say, nor do we know whether the state is still paying $485 an hour to a politically connected D.C. law firm the governor hired to fight the Feds' demand for $271 million already spent on the project.

 

Renovation news

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Staff Writer and Interior Decorator John Cichowski delivers an L-1 evaluation of the Motor Vehicle Commission's new Lodi office. There are rumors Chick actually left the office to do this story.

Doesn't the first black fire chief in Teaneck deserve better play than L-3 and doesn't Chief Anthony Verley deserve a photo bigger than a thumbnail? 

Don't forget gas

Let's hope the retired pilot who was the first customer to pick up a Chevrolet Volt remembers to put gasoline in the tank of the car, which is misidentified again as "electric" (Business, L-7).  The Volt is a plug-in hybrid with batteries, electric motor and gasoline engine.

Now the filler is on the front

Image via Wikipedia

Now, the desperate editors of The Record of Woodland Park can't come up with enough news worthy of the front page, so today they use a big element of filler on the U.S. Senate Democrats' to-do list. Though there are New Jersey references in the piece, don't readers really need one on the state Legislature?


The only other story worthy of Page 1 is by Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, who reveals that AIDS patients are another group being screwed by Governor Christie's austere budget. How did this fall through the reportorial cracks?


What is the sentencing of Otis Mann doing on A-1, and why does the reporter call him a tribesman and refer to tribe members? I don't believe the Ramapough Mountain People have been recognized by the U.S. as a legitimate Native American tribe. Workers being laid off by the Turnpike Authority? Why is this on what all in all is a pretty lousy front page?


On the front of Local, the story of a giant oak tree facing the ax in Teaneck is written by an Ax, which leads me to ask whether head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and her assignment minions shouldn't be the ones facing the ax? They always seem to have their reporters -- including Monsy Alvarado, Shawn Boburg and Jean Rimbach -- barking up the wrong tree.


I urge them to turn over a new leaf and branch out to coverage of Hackensack. Remember Hackensack, Deirdre? It's where The Record was founded in 1895, where it prospered for more than 110 years and, famously, where you fell on your well-padded derriere trying to cross a snowbank, leading to a long period of convalescence.


The lead story on the Local front -- "First aid officer charged in crash" -- appeared Monday on Jerry DeMarco's Cliffview Pilot.


Page L-2 has a piece on Paterson's new mayor, but I have yet to see one on Hackesnack's new mayor, nor is there any other Hackensack news in the paper today. 


Tuesday, July 6, 2010


There was no Hackensack news in last Tuesday's paper either, but there was a Tenafly budget story, reporting a $7.6% tax hike on residents, including Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who lives in a $3.65 million McMansion he bought with a company mortgage several months before layoffs began.


In Better Living, a story by free-lancer Abigail Leichman carried the headline: "A MOTHER-DAUGHTER DUMPLING DYNASTY," and the third paragraph describes fried, baked or boiled "dumplings" called kubbeh or kibbeh.


I grew up eating kibbeh made by my Sephardic Jewish mother, who was born in Syria, and to call the fried version -- made with bulgur -- a dumpling is simply wrong. We referred to them as torpedos (see photo on Page F-6).


Unfortunately for Leichman and anyone else who writes about food for The Record, the features copy desk is notorious for all the errors it misses or creates, especially in food stories. This was the case when I wrote for the section from 1999-2006 and self-described foodie Liz Houlton ran the copy desk and, sadly, still is the case now, when the young food writers make numerous, uncorrected errors.