Slanting the news to please a wealthy publisher

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The Record's story on the Wal-Mart sex-bias case reads the minds of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Did State House Bureau staffer John Reitmeyer cover the same legislative hearing on Governor Christie's new budget as other reporters?

One news outlet quoted state Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff as saying Christie won't sign a budget that contains a tax surcharge on millionaires.

But you have to plow through Reitmeyer's Page 1 piece in The Record today and turn to the jump page (A-8) before he even mentions such a tax, and he does so only in paraphrasing one of the Democrat lawmakers who have been battling the governor.

Selling out to Wal-Mart

I watched two major TV news reports Tuesday night on the sex-bias suit against Wal-Mart, a Record advertiser -- CBS and PBS -- and neither predicted how the Supreme Court will rule on the plaintiffs' request for class-action status.

But in an A-1 brief , L-1 refer and the major piece on the first Business page (L-7), Editor Francis Scandale chose a slanted Associated Press story sure to please Wal-Mart, other wealthy business owners and his multimillionaire boss, Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

The AP reports the high court "appears ready to block" the lawsuit. Compare that to The New York Times, which reports the court "appeared closely divided" during legal arguments Tuesday.

As if The Record's slant isn't bad enough, the sub-headline is totally inaccurate, saying the justices are expected to "block claim of sex discrimination," even though that issue is not before the court.

Newsroom sex-bias

The spin on the Wal-Mart suit is no surprise coming from Scandale, who, with Features Director Barbara Jaeger, paid $70,000 a year to a new, 30-something male food editor in 2006, thousands of dollars more than the woman he replaced -- a respected food journalist who had 10 times his experience. 

Shouldn't the Port Authority spend $1.8 billion no longer needed for a new rail tunnel on improving mass transit -- not on the road and bridge repairs demanded by Christie (A-3)?

Huh?

Can reporter Karen Rouse, who covers transportation meetings and surveys, balance her checkbook? On A-8 today, she reports turnpike toll collectors "average about $65,000 a year ... but that could be cut to $10 to $12 an hour if the agency goes private." 

An editorial dismissing some residents' aesthetic objections to solar panels on utility poles doesn't mention these are the same people who have buried relatives with cancer and other diseases linked to North Jersey's notorious air pollution (A-20).

On L-6, in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Staff Writer Nick Clunn reports on a debate over building apartments next to "a 10,000-mile-long [gas] pipeline" between New York City and the Gulf Coast.

Surrounded by wolves

Don't miss the touching tribute to readers, editors, even his wife at the end of the Your Money's Worth column, which Staff Writer Kevin DeMarrais started 17 years ago March 27 (L-8).

I'll give him a pass -- in view of how he's a lone voice for the consumer among too many reporters and editors at the Borgs' Woodland Park daily who have long ago sold out to Christie, wealthy advertisers and other special interests.

More clunky editing and headlines

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Teterboro Airport has two runways for the noisy aircraft that land there.

The sad story of Ridgewood's Tyler Clementi has spread far and wide, but his family's hometown daily newspaper continues to handle it with the competence of some crappy weekly. The headline over today's third-straight day of front-page coverage in The Record of Woodland Park is as clunky as ever:

"Emotions pour out"

Not only is the headline repeating the obvious, it duplicates words in a quotation printed just above it that came from the family of the Rutgers student, who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22 after his dorm mate outted him in an Internet video. Here is a far better headline:

"Call for compassion"

And for the third day, The Record's coverage contains almost nothing about the Clementi's roommate and a second perpetrator, and no comments from their lawyers or families about just what kind of people they are. The most telling comment I heard came from a student who appeared on television news. She said gay and lesbian students weren't "safe" in their own dorm rooms.

Another A-1 story -- about Palisades Park becoming the first New Jersey town to offer Korean language instruction in public schools -- fails to mention what a sea change this represents. No one at the paper seems to remember the bitter lawsuit Korean merchants filed when the town barred restaurants from staying open 24 hours a day -- a suit that was settled when restaurants agreed to close a few hours each night.

Today's Local section will help you catch up with police and court news you might have missed.  

All Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado could come up with is another story about cops, two of whom were charged with fraud in connection with an accident. One story she hasn't done is whether the quality of policing or public confidence in the department have been affected by suspended Chief Ken Zisa's legal troubles, all the lawsuits filed against him and the occasional rotten apple.

Another story she hasn't done appears in The County Seat, the weekly published by the Zisas, about an after-school haven for children who live in public housing. And apparently she could care less whether Hackensack can follow Teaneck's example and save $250,000 a year by merging the Police and Fire Departments.

Of course, those stories would take a little legwork, something that is discouraged by Deirdre "Loafs A Lot" Sykes, head assignment editor, who apparently spends more time menu planning than telling her local reporters to get out there and cover their towns. There is no Englewood or Teaneck news in the paper today.

Talk about bad editing. If so many lives were saved, why is the story about the runaway jet on L-3?

Nick Clunn's lead states unequivocally that an arrestor bed at Teterboro Airport stopped a jet from running off the end of the runway -- "saving the lives of nine people onboard and countless others on the ground." Countless? Even the business jet that hit cars on Route 46 and then a warehouse in 2005 didn't kill anybody.

Was it Clunn's assignment editor who wrote this fanciful lead paragraph? What about referring to concrete blocks as "a special cement"? Pathetic. What's wrong with arrestor bed? If the reporter or editor stopped spending so much time making things up to hype the story, we might have learned the names of the pilots and the passengers.

Now, will the paper do a follow to supply this information and ask the most important question of all: Was it pilot error, mechanical failure or overloading that caused this latest accident at Teterboro? 

I'm not hopeful. For years, Publisher Greedy Stevie Borg, Editor Francis Scandale and Sykes have turned their backs on residents who live near the airport and their concerns over safety and noise.

Blast from The Record's past: 

Steve Crabill was shopping at Fairway Market in Paramus on Saturday morning. He left the former Hackensack daily 10 years ago for The Star-Ledger, where he is business editor.

Correction

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In my previous post, I incorrectly attributed the Hackensack story that leads the Local section today to Monsy Alvarado, the woman assigned to cover River City. In fact, it was reported and written by Shawn Boburg, her cellmate on the nearly three-year probe of  former lawman Michael Mordaga (see post, "This will come back to haunt us, 12/23/09"). Sorry. I just didn't look at the byline.

On Tuesday, an Englewood story was reported and written by Nick Clunn, who is not the usual reporter covering that city. Unfortunately, Clunn forgot to report a crucial detail about the middle school there -- that it's segregated. In Boburg's story, the address of the building being discussed is omitted.

Crime news is all we've got

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The fatal shooting of a 5-year-old Paterson boy by a 6-year-old is certainly serious, as is a mother strangling her newborn. But they became front page news in The Record of Woodland Park today because the lazy, incompetent editors hope these headlines will sell papers, something the former Hackensack daily has had trouble doing for many years, and because they simply had no better stories for Page 1.

Maybe it was too cold for the reporters to leave their Garret Mountain newsroom. A really large photo of the Wayne mom flanked by her high-priced lawyers -- yes, two lawyers -- at her arraignment is such an obvious desperation move to fill up what once was The Record's premiere page. Now, anything goes.

The tabloid feel of today's paper continues in the Local section, where the full story of the mom's not guilty plea is the lead story at the top of the first page. Below it, half of L-1 is taken up by a report that Hispanics allege an assault at Englewood's middle school was racially motivated.

I would hope this attack would focus attention on segregation in that city's middle and elementary schools -- a subject the paper has gone out of its way to avoid for years, while reporting in detail efforts to integrate the high school. In fact, Staff Writer Nick Clunn, who is not the regular Englewood reporter, completely omits any mention the middle school is segregated. Shame on Clunn, shame on his editor.

A full page and a half of the eight-page Local Section is filled with Paterson or Passaic County news, including a fatal fire with two enormous photos showing the aftermath. The story has absolutely no information about the victim, except her sex. Don't look for any municipal, development, education or quality of life news about Hackensack (map), Teaneck or Englewood, despite their diversity.

In recent months, I have read two detailed stories about Ridgewood's downtown and another about Westwood, but none about these three core Bergen County communities, where a large number of the paper's readers live. Did The Record's pullout from Hackensack hurt Main Street merchants? Your guess is as good as mine.