Bloodthirsty NRA just shrugs off deadliest mass shooting

An image of racist Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was on display in January at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, where armed National Guard members have been posted since 9/11, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You'll have to search for mention of the evil National Rifle Association in The Record's extensive coverage of the massacre at a gay club in Florida.

An unsigned editorial, referring to the shooting inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, notes:

"The slaughter  of elementary school children was a crime that cried up to the heavens for justice. The National Rifle Association shouted louder" (A-8). 

The reaction of the NRA is so predictable reporters didn't even bother to ask for a statement on a gunman using an assault-style rifle to kill at least 50 people and wound 53 others (later revised to 49 deaths).

Assault-style weapons were outlawed in 1994, The Washington Post reports on A-3 today, but the ban expired in 2004, and Congress apparently caved into the NRA and "opted not to renew it."

More security

After the 9/11 attacks on America, we spent billions on homeland security, including equipping local police departments with armored vehicles, weapons for SWAT teams and other terror-fighting equipment.

But in November 2013, the Paramus Police Department, though armed to the teeth, didn't arrive at Garden State Plaza until after a man with a rifle panicked scores of shoppers and employees by firing rounds into the ceiling before committing suicide in the basement.

In a bottom-line decision, the shopping center, the biggest in New Jersey, didn't employ armed security guards then and doesn't now.

Would more armed security guards at malls, arenas, schools and movie theaters have prevented some of the 14 mass shootings in the past decade (A-3)?

If Pulse, the gay club in Orlando, employed armed security guards, would gunman Omar Mateen have been able to take so many lives?

Offensive column

Veteran reporter Mike Kelly offends readers today with a column that uses plays on words at the expense of the people slaughtered in the gay club on Sunday (A-1).

"And now it's Orlando, Fla., and a nightclub with an ironic name -- Pulse," his Page 1 column begins.

"The latest mass shooting -- the deadliest in U.S. history -- is yet another beat in a disheartening national pulse...."

I'm confused. A mass shooting is a "beat" in a "pulse"? 

Then, Kelly claims "this sort of mass murder may just be America's new normal -- the new pulse of the national heartbeat."

First, the massacre is a "beat," then it's a "pulse." 

This kind of meaningless pushing around of words is typical of Kelly.

Maybe, Kelly's insensitivity toward the death of 50 people in a gay nightclub is rooted in the columnist's well-known homophobia, which was evident in his reporting from Asbury Park in 2000.

In a major piece for The Sunday Record, Kelly failed miserably as a journalist by not saying a single word about the urban gays who were leading the way in reviving the faded shore resort -- as reported by The New York Times' New Jersey section, which was published the very same day.

Clifton bigotry

The local reaction story on Page 1 today should have been given a prominent headline. 

Some readers might be shocked that at least one Clifton resident opposed the raising of a rainbow flag at City Hall, and "wondered whether flags for the Ku KLux Klan and ISIS might be next" (A-1).

The rainbow flag was popularized as a symbol of lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride and diversity in 1978.

Editors discover abandoned city

WHITNEY HOUSTON (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)
1963-2012

Half of The Record's front page today is covered by the same-old coverage of Camden -- in a rare instance of the paper sending a reporter and photographer to the impoverished city. 


But readers won't find the real story -- why Camden was abandoned by state government and the media decades ago. 


Columnist Mike Kelly plays crack houses, the flight of industry, crime, poverty and unemployment like violins -- but hasn't all of this been reported many times before (A-1 and A-6)? 


And doesn't North Jersey have its own Camden in Paterson? Why just cover breaking news there? Why not dig under the surface for why Paterson is allowed to fail.


Recall all the stories portraying Paterson as a center of drugs and prostitution that ran when Francis "Frank" Scandale was editor and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes was his bitch.


It's not surprising Kelly doesn't have the balls to explore why Camden's minority residents have been so totally rejected by society. 


Recall his repugnance at the influx of gay couples who were reviving Asbury Park when he was sent there with a photographer in 2000. He never mentioned the renewal in his extensive report.


Resort's obituary


Instead, his obituary for Asbury Park covered three newspaper pages in The Sunday Record on Aug. 6, 2000.


On the same exact day, an upbeat cover story in The New York Times' New Jersey section reported that urban homosexual men and women were leading the way in reviving the run-down resort, drawn by affordable, stylish homes and gay clubs. 


One photo showed two women on the beach with their arms around each other.

The two stories were like night and day, with Kelly reporting conditions that had existed for a decade or more, and The Times breaking the story of the resort's turnaround.


Total letdown

Today's Sunday edition of The Record is a total letdown, including another repetitive Local section from Sykes. 

After reading about the heart-breaking loss of singer Whitney Houston at only 48 (A-1), nothing else seems interesting or compelling, and the news and Better Living columnists sound stale.

It's lucky The Record had The Star-Ledger's excellent obituary of Houston to run on the front page -- displacing some of the briefs in the off-lead position -- because it's unlikely any of the weekend editors on duty Saturday night were up to whipping together such a piece.

Taking a break

Eye on The Record will return next week.

I'll be reading and publishing comments until then, and would like to hear first impressions of Editor Marty Gottlieb, who came on board three weeks ago.

Editor teaches Obama a lesson

Image via Wikipedia

An oyster festival in Asbury Park "will feature foods," The Record reports.

In  his speech to Congress, President Obama scolded Republicans for their "political circus" and chastised the media for their fixation on polls and the 2012 election as the nation's crippled economy limps along.


The Star-Ledger, The Times of Trenton, Asbury Park Press and most other New Jersey dailies put the president's call to action on the front page today, but Editor Francis Scandale wanted to teach Obama a lesson for questioning the media's judgment.


So, Scandale demoted Obama to Page A-8, and devoted most of The Record's front page to 10-year-old news about 9/11 -- in another example of how the editor's famously flawed news judgment is a disservice to readers.


Flights of fancy


Staff Writer Lindy Washburn did a great job on how a small Canadian town with a long runway became a refuge for 38 passenger jets when U.S. airspace was closed on 9/11 (A-1).


But does this decade-old story of international hospitality deserve nearly half of the front page and a full two pages inside? 


And are the unlabeled first 10 paragraphs of italic type on the front page a contemporary account from Gander, Newfoundland, or what?


Were other stories held to accommodate this behemoth?


The other elements on A-1 today are more flooding news and Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson's review of the billions of federal dollars spent on local security since 9/11, a story that consumes another three-quarters of a page inside.


Colorblind


The A-4 story on the swearing in of Anne Paterson to the state Supreme Court neglects to mention she was originally nominated to replace the only black justice, John Wallace Jr., whom Governor Christie declined to reappoint.


The A-11 story and photo of a "seemingly intoxicated moose" in Sweden is such a waste of space, the Woodland Park daily's wire editor must be tipsy, too.


Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin is well-acquainted with the Port Authority's historical disdain for mass transit, so why doesn't he say so in an editorial criticizing the bi-state agency for charging a state agency, NJ Transit, to use PA crossings and bus terminals (A-22)?


Lazy, hazy days


You know Road Warrior John Cichowski is desperate for material when he devotes an entire L-1 column to one driver's Top 10 list of irritating motorists.  


Either that or he refused to leave the office and do some reporting on commuting problems. 


Cichowski leads my Top 10 list of irritating editors and columnists.


On L-2 today, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes runs filler on a Teterboro Airport Aviation Hall of Fame expo, one day after a preview in Better Living.


Monsy Alvarado, the reporter assigned to Hackensack, wrote more than 20 inches today on a discovery motion in an assault complaint against the South Hackensack police chief (L-3).


Eat me


In her 3-star review of St. Eve's in Ho-Ho-Kus, Staff Writer Elisa Ung tells readers the beef she sampled was naturally raised, but is silent on the pork.


She ran out of room after wasting the first five paragraphs of the review on the chef's resume and his previous restaurants (Better Living centerfold).


A photo caption has the chef's name under his wife's image and vice versa.


On Page 22 of Better Living, an ad on the 34th annual Festival of the Sea in Point Pleasant Beach recalls the editors' recent error two days in a row,  confusing that town with the borough of Point Pleasant.


To save face, Scandale ran no corrections.


An item on Page 26 notes the oyster festival in Asbury Park "will feature foods."

Credibility gap widens

Image via Wikipedia
Images of Asbury Park.

Do the desperate editors expect long-time readers to believe anything in Staff Writer Michael Kelly's report on Atlantic City? In nearly three pages of The Record of Woodland Park today, starting on Page 1, Kelly comes close to writing an obituary of New Jersey's premiere resort.


How weird, because 10 years ago, almost to the day (Aug. 6, 2000), The Sunday Record also published a three-page Kelly story, and it sounded just like an obituary for Asbury Park, another struggling shore resort, with appropriately grim photos by the great Carmine Galasso.


Unfortunately, this story contained a glaring omission that raised questions about the reporter's credibility -- questions that have never been answered.


Times trumps Kelly


On the same exact day Kelly's Asbury Park story appeared, an upbeat cover story in The New York Times' New Jersey section reported that urban homosexual men and women were leading the way in reviving the run-down resort, drawn by affordable, stylish homes and gay clubs. One photo showed two women on the beach with their arms around each other.


The two stories were like night and day, with Kelly reporting conditions that had existed for a decade or more, and The Times breaking the story of the resort's turnaround.


The headline on The Times piece:

MOVE OVER, FIRE ISLAND, HERE COMES ASBURY PARK

The headlines on Kelly's story:

In love with a faded queen

Asbury Park's

survivors cling

to future hope

Forget the awful drop headline ("future hope"). 


In Kelly's story, there was absolutely no mention of homosexuals buying up homes and going clubbing in Asbury Park. Did the reporter's deep-seated conservatism lead him to ignore signs of revival and violate his journalistic pledge of objectivity? Did he allow his personal views of homosexuality to obscure the real story?

Kelly's language in both the Asbury Park and Atlantic City stories echo: Asbury Park is "a once-grand queen of the New Jersey shore now reduced to blighted remnants of old glory days." Of Atlantic City, he says, "This aging queen of seaside gambling and salt water taffy is gasping for life. It may already be too late."

It's too late, all right, too late for readers to salvage anything from Kelly's reporting, which was repudiated a decade ago. How The Record's editors missed the huge contradiction in his and The Times' Asbury Park stories is a puzzle, but if they did notice it, how he kept his job is the real mystery.

And it's not as if Kelly has made a great columnist, as his piece on the Opinion front today amply demonstrates. (That leering photo with his column is so unflattering, but Kelly doesn't see it.)

After pushing around hundreds of words on the release of the Pan Am Flight 103 bomber, Libya and BP, all he can mange at the end is a feeble, "Why was he set free?"  Don't readers deserve better? Don't they deserve his frank, ballsy opinions, based on his reporting and  journalistic hunches, not one rhetorical question after another?


More turkeys

What other turkeys have stories in today's paper? Well, also on Page 1, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson tries to scare North Jersey residents into believing their taxes are going to soar when tax breaks for the rich expire. Does anyone understand his mumbo-jumbo? Is the story credible?

Isn't this the same reporter who, covering a rally of 10,000 protesters, missed a huge sign comparing President Obama's health-care reforms to the Holocaust, complete with piles of emaciated Jewish bodies? His Nov. 5, 2009, story on A-1 made no mention of the sign.

Why is Road Warrior Columnist wasting readers time by rehashing the brouhaha over Puerto Rican birth certificates at New York City's motor vehicle agencies (L-1)? What's happening to commuters in North Jersey, John? Get out of the office once in a while, will you? Try riding the bus. There are many columns waiting to be written about them. 


Take clueless Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and minion Dan Sforza with you.


For Hackensack news, Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado gives readers her umpteenth story on the Police Department, which is seeking state and national accreditation. One benefit would be reduced litigation, but if that comes to pass, the reporter would be out of job, because that's almost all she has written about in the past 11 months.


This is the third story Alvarado has written about the police in four days.