Sloppy, incomplete reporting is continuing to cheat readers

WBGO-FM, the 24-hour jazz station in Newark, celebrated the "Rhythm Review" -- which broadcasts classic soul and rhythm-and-blues every Saturday -- with a 30th anniversary dance party on Wednesday night at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Remember Bethany Koval, the Fair Lawn High School student who described herself as an "Israeli Jew" amid the social media uproar over her saying Palestinians are being mistreated?

Well, she is back on Page 1 of The Record today, and readers finally learn that description may not be accurate, if they manage to plow through thousands of words and get deep into the story on the continuation page (A-8).

More troubling than that is here is yet another Record story about the hate campaign against Koval that doesn't quote any of the thousands of North Jersey Jews and Israelis themselves who believe peace with the Palestinians is long overdue.

Deep on A-8, Staff Writer Hannan Adely finally tells readers Koval's father is Catholic, and her mother "was raised Jewish" and converted to Catholicism.

And Koval is quoted -- possibly for the first time in months -- as saying her connections to Israel "are uncertain and came from genealogical research she had done on her mother's family."

End of editing

The blame for all this fudging is Deirdre Sykes, who was promoted to editor in January after a decade or more of mismanaging the local-news section.

Sykes and her minions have simply given up on challenging reporters and columnists, who are encouraged to write on and on to fill space.

No editor challenged Staff Writer John Cichowski's description of a big ethnic supermarket in Clifton as Irv Gerber's "favorite farmer's market" (Road Warrior column on Wednesday's L-1).

In winter? Sorry. Corrado's Market on Main Avenue is a supermarket, not a "farmer's market," and the addled Cichowski is a laughing stock.

Frank Sinatra Jr.

The placement of the story on singer Frank Sinatra Jr. tells you Sykes doesn't care one way or another that he died of cardiac arrest at 72 and his famous father died of a heart attack at 82 (A-8).

This could be an opportunity for The Record to emphasize that heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the nation -- in contrast to all the artery clogging food the paper's Better Living editors promote day after day.

Local news?

Here's a salute to Staff Photographer Kevin R. Wexler for the gorgeous photo of Agnes Kyei and newborn son Elijah Adu Gyamena at Hackensack University Medical Center (L-1).

They share the page with lots of police and court news, and news about the police.

Today's Local section continues Sykes' boycott of Hackensack news.

No charges filed in year-old Hackensack pedestrian death

On March 9, 2015, an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria, driven by a detective sergeant for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, struck and fatally injured Hue Dang, 64, a Vietnamese-American woman who was crossing Jackson Avenue in Hackensack, above, only a few blocks from her apartment.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The death of a Hackensack pedestrian more than a year ago is being called a "tragic traffic accident."

"There is no basis for criminal charges," a spokeswoman for acting Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal said today. 

Spokeswoman Maureen Parenta said a long investigation by the Union County Prosecutor's Office agreed with Hackensack police, who were the first to look into the death of Hue Dang, 64.

She was struck and fatally injured as she was walking in or near a crosswalk on Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street, a couple of blocks from Route 80.

The driver, John Straniero, a detective sergeant in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, was on the way to his Wayne home.

Straniero, 50, retired last Nov. 1 after 27 years with the office.

The woman's family has filed a notice that it intends to sue Straniero.

Syrians upstaged by immigrant haters Trump and Christie

The Daily News predicted in January 2014 that Governor Christie's run for the GOP presidential nomination was doomed, but The Record of Woodland Park stood by his side even after seven other New Jersey newspapers condemned the governor's endorsement of racist Donald Trump and called for his resignation.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Deirdre Sykes, The Record's new editor, is sending horribly mixed messages to readers on Page 1 today.

Readers can only guess why Sykes gives better play to immigrant haters Donald Trump and Governor Christie than to a series of moving interviews with North Jersey Syrians on the fifth anniversary of the civil war in their native land (A-1).

Ban on Syrians

A photo shows front-runner Trump and Christie looking awfully comfortable in ex-slave state North Carolina, where the billionaire businessman's Klan supporters flourish.

Left unsaid, of course, is that Trump wants to bar all Muslims from entering the United States, and Christie sought to ban all Syrian refugees, including children, first from New Jersey and then the rest of the United States. 

In fact, after Christie called for the ban last November, The Record's editors waited a week or so before interviewing law-abiding merchants and other Syrians in Paterson, not far from the Woodland Park newsroom.

Presumably, that was to show readers not all Syrians are terrorists, as Christie seemed to suggest.

Today's editorial on Christie joining the Trump campaign again sounds like it was written by a doddering old man (A-8).

"On March 3," the hemming and hawing concludes,  "he [Christie] said he was fully committed to serving the people of New Jersey.

"There is much evidence to the contrary, governor. Much evidence to the contrary."

That has about as much impact as a wet noodle.

Unions win big?

Staff Writer Christopher Maag continues to give Christie a pass when the governor says NJ Transit fares will have to be raised again to pay for a new contract with rail workers (A-1 and A-10).

Nowhere does the paper's chief transportation reporter mention that Christie's deep cuts in state subsidies forced the state agency to hike fares and cut service last October.

Also, the front-page headline calls the unions "big winners," but only later does Maag report the rail workers haven't had a raise for five freaking years.

Maag doesn't think that's such a big deal because he also has been denied a raise by the Borgs, the wealthy owners of the paper.

Local news?

Three stories from state and federal criminal courts in Hackensack and Newark dominate the local-news section today.

Another story on L-1 reports the Clifton Board of Education is giving Muslim students a day off to observe Eid al-Fitr, the first of two holy days marking a sacred month of fasting.

Former employees of The Record might recall the Borgs refused to give Jewish employees a day off to observe Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism, when fasting also is required.

Rail nightmare was averted, but commuters still face ordeal

Completed in April 2014, NJ Transit's new Anderson Street Station is more of a shelter, open to the elements on two sides, and with inadequate heating and few creature comforts.

Still, the station is a vast improvement over the two bus shelters and ticket machines commuters were provided after the original station house burned down on Jan. 10, 2009.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A tentative contract agreement may improve the lives of NJ Transit rail workers, who threatened to strike on Saturday.

But North Jersey commuters still have to contend with crowding on SRO trains and in their Penn Station waiting room in Manhattan, and frequent service disruptions.

The Record's A-3 reaction story today and Saturday's banner headline on Page 1 -- "Rail nightmare averted" -- ignores all of the problems rail commuters face, including higher fares and service cutbacks.

Nor is there any mention of Governor Christie's anti-mass transit policies, and the deep cuts he made in state subsidies, forcing NJ Transit to raise those fares.

Transportation reporter Christopher Maag, like his predecessors, apparently has never ridden a train to and from Manhattan during the rush hour, when seats are hard to come by, and reported on the quality of service.

And in more than a dozen years of writing the so-called commuting column, Road Warrior John Cichowski also has ignored train and bus service, distracted as he is by MVC lines, potholes, pedestrian deaths or road projects (L-1).

Half the story

In fact, a column and two major stories on today's front page are woefully incomplete.

Staff Writer Charles Stile's column sounds like a political battle over the state constitution between Christie and Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat (A-1).

But nowhere does Stile mention Sweeney's hand has been forced by the hundreds of vetoes the GOP bully has executed, including those against a hike in the minimum wage.

The A-1 graphic on local property taxes is missing towns where non-profit hospitals and other tax-exempt entities shift the burden to homeowners, such as Hackensack and Englewood, making it difficult for them to stay within the 2% cap.

And from the story on a lake cleanup, readers have a hard time deciding whether Pompton Lakes, state and federal environmental officials caved into corporate giant DuPont -- just like Ringwood did on Ford Motor Co. pollution.

Local news?

In Local today, stories about schools in Englewood, Saddle Brook, Edgewater and Leonia have Hackensack readers wondering why they rarely see anything in the paper on their schools (L-2 and L-6).

Readers also are puzzled why Englewood Schools Superintendent Robert Kravitz isn't being offered a merit payment for increasing white enrollment in the city's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black and Hispanic (L-2).

What's the point?

On the Opinion front, the first four paragraphs of Mike Kelly's column put readers to sleep.

OK. A Jersey shore native became "the first U.S. citizen to be convicted ... of trying to join the Islamic State in Syria and fight against his country" (O-1). 

"What is significant is how ordinary [Tairod] Pugh is," Kelly writes.

What is Kelly's point? Sadly, most readers will never turn the page.