The media's power to deceive

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Would you look at all those $100 million dollar smiles on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today. Don't Governor Christie and Oprah Winfrey make a great couple? Next to them, the mayor of Newark and Facebook's founder are just beside themselves with joy.


Does young Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg (photo) know anything about New Jersey and what Christie has put state residents through since he took office in January? Does Oprah? If they did, would they really have the guts to smile in front of a nationwide TV audience about this huge donation to help Newark schools?

The news copy editor's heading over the photo makes me laugh. "A $100M GIFT WOULD MAKE YOU SMILE, TOO." We're not going to be getting any gifts. We're only going to get screwed by Christie and other politicians in one of the most corrupt states in the nation (despite all the indictments he crowed about in his years as U.S. attorney in Newark).

Editor Francis Scandale's decisions regarding A-1 photos -- dating to 9/11 -- will haunt him should he ever try to get a job at another newspaper.


Read the A-1 caption under the smile photo, read the A-3 story, read the A-11 editorial.

Why is the governor getting so much credit for this Facebook scheme, which might violate state education law? Why is there no mention of Christie's huge cuts in education aid, municipal aid, senior tax rebates, school breakfast programs for poor children and on and on, while the governor has given the elitist Borgs and other wealthy residents the tools to make them even richer? 


Christie just blew the state's chances at $400 million in federal education aid. Does this gift even come close to making up for that?


Does Zuckerberg know there are other segregated schools that could use his money, especially those that have been ignored by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.

Hey, kid, come to Englewood, where Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg has grown fat on his profits in an East Hill mansion and raised the two Tarnished Silver Spoons running North Jersey Media Group and destroying The Record's reputation.

It's in Englewood where Zuckerberg would see lousy schools in one of the wealthiest communities in Bergen County -- a city that recalls, sadly, a plantation, with the rich, white folks living on a hill and most of the blacks and Hispanics living on the wrong, red-lined side of the tracks.

Today's Local section hammers home the drastic decline in local news, with more than half of L-3 taken up by the gossipy obit of Eddie Fisher and no news from Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and lots of other important towns.


A 10-inch story on L-3 tells us the school board in Sykes' town has lowered milk prices. That's earth-shaking news.


Bitch, bitch, bitch. On the front of Better Living today, food writer Elisa Ung complains about the lines, the waiting, the prices, the lack of grab-and-go prepared food and more at Eataly, a new, 42,500-square-foot Manhattan marketplace for Italian food. And she was being paid to go there.


I could have saved her a trip into the city, and she could have at least told her readers about a saner alternative right here in North Jersey -- Jerry's Gourmet & More on South Dean Street near Route 4 in Englewood, where the parking is free and the free samples delight shoppers. 

Jerry's carries most of the imported products sold at Eataly, plus lots of prepared food, including restaurant-quality takeout dinners with fish or meat for a low $6.99. Does Eataly offer free samples?  Ung doesn't say. More great food reporting.