With Christie, cops and more, editors won't place blame

On Tom Hunter Road in Fort Lee on Friday afternoon, the danger from sloppy municipal snow clearing was clearly evident on what is normally a two-way street, leaving no room for vehicles to pass each other, above and below. Behind the car were several more vehicles that had to squeeze past the school bus. This scene was repeated on many of North Jersey's narrow and not-so-narrow streets.

A story on The Record's Local front today -- "Wacky weather hangs on" -- makes no reference to how drivers and pedestrians have been put in harm's way by incompetent plowing and clearing in North Jersey weeks after the first big snowstorm.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's editors seem to tremble before authority, whether it's Governor Christie or the Police Department in Paterson.

An editorial today is only mildly critical of Christie's extensive out-of-state travel in pursuit of the White House, but praises the GOP bully for "a series of first-term accomplishments, including bipartisan deals with the Democratic-controlled Legislature" (A-13).

Christie's many policy failures, including Sandy recovery and the state economy; his record number of vetoes and his use of traffic to retaliate against Democrats are nowhere to be found.

Crime City

Then, in the second part of a series -- "IN HEROIN'S GRIP" -- Staff Writer Rebecca D. O'Brien only hints at Paterson's lack of resources and police manpower (A-1, A-6 and A-7).

For some reason, O'Brien doesn't mention the layoff of 125 officers in 2011, blamed on Christie's state aid cuts to poor cities and Paterson's own budget constraints.

Typical of how The Record criticizes authority, O'Brien quotes Charles Florio, a Ridgefield Park developer who owns 130 properties in the city.

"He blames the poverty, the addicts and the lack of police," the reporter says of Florio (A-7).

Later, Florio says, "at the end of the day, you have no police presence" and "police often take hours to respond to complaints about trespassing."

"They don't have the manpower or money to do real police work," Florio says.

This is a variation of how Trenton reporters politicize any criticism of Christie by quoting Democrats, and rarely ask readers for their opinion.

To better demonize Silk City, O'Brien reports:

"The Paterson of vibrant neighborhoods ... often exists in memory."

That amounts to a big lie, given Paterson's mansion-filled Eastside and South Paterson, a Middle Eastern bazaar of bakeries, food stores and restaurants.

Selling papers

Editor Marty Gottlieb's only interest is to sell newspapers, judging from more front-page play for an ISIS video showing beheadings, this time of Coptic Christians in Libya (A-1).

A full page in Local today is devoted to a house ad claiming The Record is North Jersey's "trusted sources for news, sports and entertainment" (L-7).

A photo shows part of a woman's face, but she looks too young to be a reader.

Sheepish

Hackensack readers are accustomed to sporadic news, but why does Staff Writer Sachi Fujimori freeze out Lotus Cafe in her story on Chinese New Year (BL-1)?

The Hackensack Avenue BYO is offering a four-course Year of the Sheep menu for $29.95 per person, including an appetizer, soup, main course and dessert.

Entrees include filet mignon, flounder, a half duck, jumbo shrimp or shredded roast duck served with buns.

Christie columnist perpetuates bully's middle-class myth

Black cars and limousines bringing top athletes, celebrities and other guests to the launch party for The Players' Tribune, an online site published by Derek Jeter, late Saturday night on West 26th Street, near 12th Avenue, not far from where CBS newsman Bob Simon was killed after his speeding Lincoln Town Car limo crashed last Wednesday. Today, The Record's so-called commuting columnist tackles auto safety and Simon's death, posing a speculative, "What if"?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The real danger of Staff Writer Charles Stile's flattering columns on Governor Christie is that nine times out of 10 they are played on Page 1 amid "objective" news stories, but never labeled "Opinion," a sure way to mislead readers.

Today, many familiar with Christie's multiple vetoes of a tax surcharge on millionaires and raising the minimum wage surely threw up their breakfasts when they came to this sentence on the questionable ethics of his corporate-sponsored travel:

"The travel flap undercuts his image as an ordinary Jersey guy with middle-class tastes and ambitions" (A-1).

To avoid being a laughing stock, Stile needs to say in his first sentence what he has never said: 

Christie's "brand" and his elaborate public relations campaigns are a complete sham as he pursues his White house dreams and leaves New Jersey in shambles.

Demonizing Paterson

The front page today is dominated by the first of a three-part series, "IN HEROIN'S GRIP," a second installment of Staff Writer Rebecca D. O'Brien's untiring coverage of the role of Silk City in a suburban epidemic (A-1, A-8 and A-9).

The demonizing of Paterson began under the last editor, Francis "Frank" Scandale, who actually published a map showing readers where they could buy drugs in the city.

I just wonder how many readers are going to get through all three parts, which appear to be another attempt by Editor Marty Gottlieb to win a Pulitzer Prize.

The Record supplements this one-dimensional portrayal of the city almost daily with stories about official corruption, failing schools and unbridled gun violence.

Today, the introductory paragraphs invoke "the fatal shootings of 12-year-old Genesis Rincon in July and 14-year-old Nazareh Bugg in late September."

Yet, I have never seen The Record go after the Police Department, led for many years by a white police chief, for its apparent inability or unwillingness to stop crime perpetrated mostly against minority residents.

Slum landlords and banks that red line are other subjects the Woodland Park daily won't touch.

Air bags, windbags 

Despite Road Warrior John Cichowski's hand-wringing over the lack of rear curtain air bags in Bob Simon's limo, the CBS newsman's failure to buckle up is probably what led to his fatal injuries last Wednesday on 12th Avenue and 30th Street in Manhattan (L-1).

Cichowski assigns blame for unsafe limos on just about everyone but Ford Motor Co. and other manufacturers, who fight government-mandated safety improvements tooth and nail to avoid reducing their profits.

Unbelted in the back seat, Simon was hurled forward when his speeding limo struck unmovable steel stanchions, suffering "blunt-force injuries to his head, torso and extremities," according to the medical examiner.

Side curtain air bags likely wouldn't have stopped Simon from being thrown forward into the front seat, dashboard and windshield at the same high speed the limo was traveling before its sudden deceleration.

'Where am I?'

In his Feb. 8 column, Cichowski repeated the same mistake he published on Aug. 10, 2014, claiming a Bergen Avenue house next to Route 17 in Waldwick is five blocks south of another house, when it is really five blocks north.

The error was corrected last year by the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"In his Feb. 8 column, the forgetful Road Warrior repeated the same clueless nonsense that I previously corrected with his Aug. 10, 2014, column.

"Road Warrior indicated that a Bergen Avenue crash accident in Waldwick was five blocks south of another resident’s house on Dora Avenue.

"Bergen Avenue is five blocks north of Dora Avenue.

"He indicated the Waldwick resident was worried her corner house was in “exactly the same position” as the Bergen Avenue corner property that sustained damage from the Route 17 accident.

"The Dora Avenue home is set back at least 50 feet further from the main traffic lanes of Route 17 than the Bergen Avenue home.

"It does not border the southbound side of Route 17, like the Bergen Ave. home, since there is an entire exit ramp road to Sheridan Avenue between the Dora Avenue home and Route 17."

See: Clueless Road Warrior forgets past errors


Is that kosher?

It's just like Staff Writer Elisa Ung to focus on the 65 bottles and 12 tap beers available at Teaneck Doghouse, a kosher sports bar and restaurant (The Corner Table column, BL-1).

Ung is unwilling the uncover what I call the kosher-food scam, charging much higher prices for -- in this case --  beef hot dogs, burgers and sausage egg rolls, but not delivering meat that has been raised naturally. 

New poll on Christie suggests he may very well be history

On a brisk morning in Paramus, the outside temperature of 10 degrees was tolerable, but the biting wind chill wasn't.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A new poll on Governor Christie's record low "favorability" rating could be just the excuse Editor Marty Gottlieb, Columnist Charles Stile and Staff Writer Melissa Hayes need to take their swelled heads out of their oversized anuses.

Typical of how The Record plays anti-Christie stories, the poll on the GOP bully being viewed "unfavorably" by a majority of New Jersey voters -- for the first time since early 2010 -- is on A-3 today.

Precious space on Page 1 is reserved for yet another in a endless series of speculative stories on how one of Christie's policies will affect his White House dreams (A-1).

Meanwhile, the Woodland Park daily has taken little notice of how the Garden State has become choked with weeds since Christie's ascendancy.

Port Atrocity

Thanks to the governors of New Jersey and New York, patronage, cronyism, conflicts of interest and favorable treatment have been hallmarks of the Port Authority for decades (A-1 today and Thursday).

But The Record's editors have spent little time reporting the bi-state agency's only response to increasing traffic congestion at the Hudson River crossings has been to raise tolls, not to expand mass transit.

$541 v. $460,000

Two 20-year-old Paterson women facing robbery and related charges for allegedly shoplifting $541 from Lord & Taylor in Paramus could face jail time (L-2).

So, it's strange that former Ridgewood employee Thomas Rica was given probation for his systematic theft of $460,000 in parking-meter revenue.

Today's L-1 story on Rica's non-custodial sentence and how his thievery went undetected for so long is likely the first time since the crime came to light last year The Record has bothered to ask village residents for their reaction.

Reporters and their assignment editors are much more comfortable calling up so-called experts, consultants, prosecutors, lawyers, poll directors and just about anybody else except readers and other North Jersey residents.

That certainly has been the case since Christie took office and started waging war against the middle and working classes.

No editing

Staff Writer Chris Harris, who has been covering the Rica case from the outset, apparently gets no editing.

How else to explain Harris calling Rica's methodical theft of quarters a "crime wave" (L-1).

Also, Harris reports Rica stole "more than a million quarters," but an editorial puts the loot at "almost 1.9 million quarters" (A-8).

The story and editorial also can't agree on whether the original theft was $460,000 (story) or almost $472,000 (editorial).

Hackensack news

A story on Aldi seeking to build a supermarket at 480 Main St. in Hackensack, on the site of a vacant Sears appliance store, is good news to nearby apartment residents who now rely on the grocery section of Target, which doesn't offer meat or fresh fish (L-1).

Another story on the Local front today, about residents opposing a four-story apartment building near downtown Leonia, includes a map (L-1).

But what's the point of running a map, beyond filling space, if Broad Avenue, Leonia's main drag, isn't labeled?

Indoor picnic

I wonder whether freelance Restaurant Reviewer Julia Sexton will ever realize the artery clogging lobster poached in butter, foie gras pate and creme brulee she sampled at Picnic on the Square have long been out of fashion with the older readers who make up the bulk of her audience (BL-14)?

Instead, she says the 34-seat Ridgewood restaurant, the second from Executive Chef Christine Nunn, is inappropriate for "thrifty diners."

I read the review before glancing at the byline and realizing Sexton seems to be channeling The Record's chief restaurant critic, Elisa Ung.

There is no discussion of salads or low-mercury fish or whether the kitchen is willing to prepare food without butter and heavy cream.

And I'm puzzled by Sexton finding " a large pile of arugula, avocado and mango" under a carpaccio of bluefin tuna "superfluous." 

That sounds delicious, and I wonder if Picnic serves another raw fish, such as fluke, which isn't overly exploited and has far lower levels of harmful mercury.

Sexton, who is the restaurant critic for Westchester magazine, visited Picnic three times for the 2.5-star review, and took at least one guest.

That's a ton of money for North Jersey Media Group to spend for such an uninformative report to readers.

Editors keep focus on TV and off newspaper's decline

The sun is setting -- at least for now -- on falling gasoline prices, and that pleases climatologists and environmentally conscious drivers of hybrid and all-electric cars, and saddens all the people trapped into making payments on their gas-guzzlers.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In today's front-page coverage of Brian Williams and Jon Stewart, The Record focus on the flaws of TV news and satire, and avoids any examination of the many problems at the Woodland Park daily.

One of those is the shoddy job The Record does in covering accidents, such as the one that took the life of longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon (A-1 and A-6).

Simon, 73, survived wars, an earthquake and captivity, but died in one of the most meaningless ways possible -- in a car crash on 12th Avenue in Manhattan, a notorious speedway.

The Associated Press story The Record uses today was just slapped into the page.

And the editors did nothing to address unanswered questions, especially whether Simon was wearing his seat belt and just how fast the limo was going when the driver hit another car and lost control.

"The Town Car was so badly mangled rescuers had to pry open the roof to extract him [Simon] from the rear of the car," the New York Post reported.

Here is an AP video of the wreck.

Brian Williams

Marty Gottlieb, editor of The Record, continues to cover the inaccurate reporting of suspended "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, knowing full well that one of his own reporters has committed far more errors, including deliberate falsifications (A-1).

On Jan. 25, Staff Writer John Cichowski, also known as the Road Warrior, capped all of the inaccuracies he's committed in more than a decade of columns.

That's when he ran a photo of a Route 4 bridge in Teaneck supplied by a reader, and claimed a major supporting column had a "gash" in it -- even though no such safety flaw was evident in the photo.

Of course, none of the bridges closed before and after that column included any on Route 4.

Jon Stewart 

In Staff Writer Virginia Rohan's assessment of Jon Stewart, the satirist from New Jersey who announced his departure from "The Daily Show," The Record doesn't come close to discussing his major shortcoming (A-1).

Stewart and his team focused on politicians and TV, especially Fox News Channel's racist coverage of President Obama, and rarely referred to the decline of such newspapers as The Record.

Rohan refers to Stewart's "faux news program," but the events he riffed on weren't fake at all.

I recall Stewart's coverage of a Tea Party rally in Washington that used a large photo of corpses to compare Obama's Affordable Care Act to World War II concentration camps.

What was remarkable was The Record's front-page coverage of the same demonstration didn't even show the photo or mention the outrageously inaccurate comparison.

Ridgewood thefts

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli is rejecting an audit that showed nearly $850,000 in Ridgewood parking-meter revenue disappeared -- far more than former village employee Thomas Rica admitted stealing (L-1).

The prosecutor does put his finger on Ridgewood lacking "security controls and systems" for "many, many years."

Congratulations to the unnamed copy editor who wrote a bright headline on the jump page (L-6):

COINS: Prosecutor gives no quarter