Is racism behind why the election didn't go Obama's way?

Voters were not exactly lining up on Tuesday at Hackensack's Fairmount Elementary School.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

By almost any measure -- the economy, health care, environment, immigration, and boots on the ground in the Middle East and Afghanistan -- we're doing far better under President Obama than with his Republican predecessor.

Yet, the GOP was able to take control of the U.S. Senate and hold onto the party's majority in the House, ensuring another two years of gridlock until Obama leaves office.

Could the reason be grounded in low voter turnout, and white conservatives who still bristle at any mention of our first black president?

Apathy expected

Political analysts expected a low voter turnout in New Jersey on Election Day, WBGO-FM reported:

"Fairleigh Dickinson political science Prof. Peter Woolley expects fewer than 40 percent of registered voters in the Garden State will go to the polls because he says the state’s 12 congressional races really aren’t competitive.

“'People who are the strongest partisans or people who are the angriest are the ones who will come out. The broad swath of Americans who are not following all the issues closely are simply not going to know why they should turn out.'”

Today, Obama told a reporter turnout was as low as 15% in states where Republicans triumphed.

News judgment?

The Record played the Democratic sweep of Bergen County offices, including the defeat of the Republican executive, on Page 1.

But the report of a seventh term for ultraconservative Rep. Scott Garrett from a congressional district that includes Bergen County, where 70% of the voters live, is buried on L-3.

That fits with the editors basically dismissing Hackensack attorney Roy Cho and earlier Democratic challengers because they were unable to raise as much money as Garrett.

Unfocused reporting is cheating readers

Instead of fighting for a seat on a bus into Manhattan, Road Warrior John Cichowski chose a ferry for his "commute."

Horror master Stephen King was walking with his back to traffic when he was struck and seriously injured by the minivan of a distracted driver in 1999 near the author's summer home.

Two teenage girls walking with their backs to traffic in Kinnelon were killed by an intoxicated driver in 2006.

And, over the weekend, the 2010 Paramus High School valedictorian was jogging along a road in the Poconos when she was struck and killed by a pickup truck -- earning her two straight days of front-page coverage in The Record.

Pennsylvania State Police say Gabrielle Reuveni, 20, was running with her back to traffic. 

Focus on driver

Does The Record focus on this common error by walkers and joggers, and provide tips for readers on safe practices? No.

Instead, it slaps a trite headline on today's follow-up ("A senseless death"), and focuses on the apparently unstable driver -- though what his "rap sheet" has to do with the accident eludes many readers.

Sadly, Reuveni contributed to her own death. She was a victim both of the driver and of the media's unfocused reporting.

The message that should be reported is: Face traffic and live. 


Paper is in a jam

Also on Page 1 today, The Record threw "a traffic nightmare" and no one came.

Readers of the Woodland Park daily have been bombarded with horror stories predicting George Washington Bridge gridlock, but when Monday dawned, nothing happened. 

Of course, the paper long has ignored daily rush-hour gridlock in and around North Jersey, and how an inadequate mass-transit system provides little relief.

Ferry reporter

Today, Road Warrior John Cichowski reports he actually tried mass transit as his "contribution to this newspaper's coverage of Monday's expected traffic jam to end all traffic jams" (L-1).

Did he ride an SRO-only NJ Transit express bus into the city or board a train to Secaucus and switch to a second train into New York?

No. That would be beneath him. He took the most expensive way to get to Manhattan after driving -- the Weehawken ferry.

Not in the press release

Also on the Local front today, a story says NJ Transit doesn't know how much the agency is losing from the use of counterfeit bus and rail tickets (L-1).

But WBGO-FM's news report on Monday said the transportation agency is losing $3 million a year.

Selling low quality

On the Better Living front, leave it to Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung to help butchers at Fairway Market and other stores hide the antibiotics, growth hormones and other harmful additive used to raise beef cattle ("BEEF ON A BUDGET," BL-1).

I guess Ung and Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill haven't seen the August 2012 issue of Consumer Reports or the hundreds of other articles on how consumption of animal antibiotics makes drugs given to humans less effective.

"The declining effectiveness of [human] antibiotics is becoming a national health crisis," Conusmers Union has declared.

The magazine's policy and action arm said: "A whopping 80 percent of the antibiotics in the U.S. are used not for human health but by the meat and poultry industry to make animals grow faster and to prevent sickness in crowded and unsanitary conditions."

Don't hold your breath for town news

The Local news section today is dominated by a story about war criminal Joseph Kony.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her tireless minions deliver another fun-filled but ultimately disappointing Local section in The Record today. 

Rep. Steve Rothman, D-Englewood, met with the paper's unnamed Editorial Board, so that guaranteed him the lead position on L-1 -- just above a story about war criminal Joseph Kony.

The Kony story doesn't try to explain how the brutal Ugandan war lord has escaped capture since he was indicted for war crimes in 2005.

There's news for illegal immigrants, too, in the guilty pleas of two clerks who sold black-market driver's licenses (L-1).

Another photo-op

Sykes exploits another elderly driver's accident for a photo-op on L-3, blown up to fill the space of local news her desk failed to generate.

A story that should have been on L-1 is pushed back to L-3 to lessen the embarrassment for the Rev. James F. Reilly, who is in critical condition with burns he suffered in a fire early Saturday.

Reilly apparently fell asleep while smoking in the rectory of a Palisades Park church.

Hackensack news? Check back next year.

Tone deaf

On Page 1, Staff Writer Jim Beckerman reports "it's hard for customers to put their feelings about the closing of Ronnie I's Clifton Music into words."

Judging from the poorly written and edited story, Beckerman also had trouble putting his reporting "into words." 

Beckerman lists doo-wop and rock-and-roll radio shows, but omits WBGO-FM's "Rhythm Revue" and Bob Porter's "Saturday Morning Function."