At The Record, more slanted and sloppy reporting on Nov. 7 election, mass transit

In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, left, and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno are going head to head in the Nov. 7 election to replace Governor Christie. Photos: U.S. Department of State and N.J. Governor's Office.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Dustin Racioppi of The Record's State House Bureau must be the last reporter in New Jersey to state flatly that Governor Christie had no "part" in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal.

In a Page 1 preview of tonight's election debate between Democrat Phil Murphy and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, Racioppi continues his slanted coverage in favor of Guadagno.

"Murphy, who has led the contest in all polls, has recently started tying Guadagno" to the Bridgegate scandal, "even though neither she nor Christie had any part in it," Racioppi claims.

In the court of public opinion, Christie long ago was convicted of masterminding the political-retaliation scheme against Democrats two months before he ran for re-election in 2013.

We still don't know if he was named as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment of two of his allies, who were convicted, thanks in large part to the testimony of the governor's crony at the Port Authority, which owns and operates the bridge.

And Christie spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds to hire a law firm that issued a widely recognized whitewash of the governor's role.  

Ethanol trains

On Sunday, The Record's transportation reporter alerted readers alarmed over potentially explosive crude-oil trains to another hazard -- rail shipments of flammable ethanol.

But nowhere in the front-page story or on the continuation page did Staff Writer Curtis Tate mention Teaneck, a Bergen County town that has been at the center of the protests after officials learned about oil trains passing through the township.

Amazon bid

On Tuesday, the Woodland Park daily and other news outlets provided major  coverage of Christie's offer of $7 billion in tax incentives to attract Amazon's second headquarters to Newark.

But all of the news outlet failed to mention Newark is a good fit for the e-commerce behemoth, because the city already has an Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market on Broad Street.

Amazon has been cutting prices to make the natural foods supermarket chain more attractive to shoppers.

The Newark store's mission is to improve community and individual health.

Portal bridge

In the past 15 years, the transportation editor, columnist and reporters at The Record have shown an anti-mass transit bias time and again.

No one at the Woodland Park daily has embraced the expansion of mass transit in North Jersey as the only way to cut growing traffic congestion, air pollution and premature deaths from auto emissions.

The editors could be kowtowing to the automakers and auto dealers who buy millions of dollar of advertising every year in The Record and other newspapers.

In a Page 1 story on Saturday, Tate made sure his first paragraph alerted readers to the high expense of replacing the Portal Bridge, a 107-year-old Hackensack River span "that has become a major bottleneck on the nation's busiest commuter corridor."

He reports the $1.5 billion project "could still take decades and tens of billions of dollars to complete, with funding sources yet to be identified."

Slanted reporting, voter apathy may deal fatal blow to Murphy bid for N.J. governor

Democrat Phil Murphy, left, and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno during the first of two debates before the Nov. 7 election to decide who will replace Chris Christie, the worst governor in New Jersey history (photo from The Associated Press). 

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

With less than a month to go before New Jersey elects a new governor, we may be seeing a rerun of the 2016 presidential election.

The news media seemed to have bent over backward to help the Republican candidate demonize the Democrat, and score an upset after lagging in the polls. 

There was hardly any media pushback when Donald J. Trump lied about his opponent or called her "crooked Hillary."

Now, the coverage of the New Jersey contest between Democrat Phil Murphy, who was ambassador to Germany in the Obama administration, and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno hardly seems even-handed.

Combine that with Democratic voters who might stay home on Nov. 7, because they are confident  Murphy will win the election, as the polls are predicting, and his campaign could be in trouble.

Turnout in the 2013 election, when Christie defeated Democratic state Sen. Barbara Buono and won a second term, was the lowest for a gubernatorial election in New Jersey.

Thousands of Democrats didn't even bother to vote.

Slanted reporting

Murphy and Guadagno debated Tuesday night, and the lead paragraph in The Record of Woodland Park on Wednesday noted she attacked him "as an out-of-touch and cowardly liberal destined to ruin New Jersey's economy."

But nowhere in his story does State House Bureau reporter Dustin Racioppi quote Murphy, who accused Guadagno repeatedly of making up facts or lying outright about him and his proposal to tax millionaires, wealthy corporations and marijuana users.

Harvey Weinstein

She called Murphy a "coward" for not speaking out earlier about Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer and major Democratic donor accused of sexually harassing women, but never used the phrase "cowardly liberal."

That was the reporter's own demonization of Murphy, consistent with his earlier slanted stories about the gubernatorial campaign.

In fact, the reporter ignored Guadagno's apparently baseless accusation at the debate and on Twitter that Murphy took campaign contributions from Weinstein; he only quotes the Democrat saying he "didn't get one dime from this guy."

And Racioppi seems to base his first paragraph claim that Murphy is "destined to ruin New Jersey's economy" on GOP ads alleging he'll raise taxes on the middle class by $1.3 billion (that has been revised to $5 billion, as well as higher tolls, in the latest TV spots).

Racioppi doesn't bother pointing out they are total fabrications by the Guadagno campaign.

See: GOP ads in New Jersey lie like Trump

The mail-in ballot for the Nov. 7 general election in New Jersey includes two public questions, below.

One asks for approval of $125 million in bonds to provide grants to public libraries.

The second question would prevent the governor from using monetary damages or fines against those who contaminate the environment for any other purpose than "to repair, restore, replace or preserve the state's natural resources."

WNYC-FM

The report on Tuesday night's debate filed by Karen Rouse of WNYC-FM, New York and New Jersey Public Radio, also appeared to be one sided.

Rouse claimed Guadagno scored a number of "zingers," and said Murphy's responses ran long and were cut off by the moderators.

Rouse is a former education reporter for The Record.

For an impartial report, see the story filed by Michael Catalini of The Associated Press:

Murphy, Guadagno trade jabs

over Weinstein, Christie, Trump

More errors

A letter to the editor of The Record on Tuesday complained a black-and-white photo of Governor Christie in a house ad showed him "as a mean-spirited ogre. A very unflattering photo."

Frank Venditti of Old Tappan contrasted that photo with one of Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin advertising the gubernatorial debate.

The Doblin photo "is one of a very distinguished and knowledgeable man. It is very flattering."

But someone goofed, and ran a photo of President Trump speaking at the Las Vegas Police Department with Venditti's letter.

PABT

PABT is the acronym for the Port Authority's midtown Manhattan Bus Terminal, which is bursting at the seams handling 270,000 daily trips, many of them by North Jersey commuters.

The Record's Opinion Page on Tuesday carried a column by two state senators, urging the agency to add two floors to the terminal instead of building a new hub one block west of the site.

Structural engineers back the plan, which would expand the terminal for more than 30,000 additional commuters, preserve access to 11 New York subway lines and allow rebuilding of the existing six floors.

My question is, Why haven't I read about the "build in place" proposal in the news columns of The Record?

Food for the 1%

Even though only 1 percent of Americans have Celiac disease, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz devoted more than three full pages in last Friday's Better Living tabloid to "great gluten-free eats."

But in the process, Davidowitz promoted restaurants or shops that serve artery clogging red meat raised on harmful human antibiotics, calamari with cured bacon linked to cancer, and sugary cookies and crepes.

In N.J. race for governor, GOP ads using the same kind of lies that elected Trump

Jimmy Margulies, former editorial cartoonist at The Record of Woodland Park, on the standard excuse after a mass shooting like the one that killed 58 and wounded nearly 500 in Las Vegas on Sunday night -- "Now's not the time to discuss gun control."

In "LET THEM FLOW FREE," Cartoonist Joep Bertrams portrays President Trump's crocodile tears as bullets.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Governor Christie's lieutenant during the nearly 8 years of mayhem they caused in New Jersey can't afford to run for the job on the issues.

So, Lieutenant Gov. Kim Guadagno's attack ads are employing the same type of lies Republicans have used for decades, most recently in Donald J. Trump's campaign for president.

The Nov. 7 gubernatorial election is a little over a month away, and Democrat Phil Murphy is leading in the polls.

Let's hope Democratic voters, confident that he will win, don't stay home in droves, as they did nationwide when Hillary Clinton was called the clear winner before the Nov. 8 election.

2013 election

Christie was elected to a second term in 2013 in the lowest turnout for a gubernatorial election in state history. 

Thousands of Democrats sat out the election.

In 2010, his first year in office, Christie eliminated state funding for family planning. And he's vetoed higher taxes on the wealthy and a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

To tame the Democratic majority in the state Legislature, the GOP bully also used nearly 600 vetoes to kill a wide range of other bills they approved, including tighter gun control.

He was elected in 2009 on his promise to lower property taxes, but the 2% cap he pushed through only slowed the increases, and New Jerseyans still pay the highest levies in the nation.

2017 campaign

In a Monmouth University poll released on Tuesday, Murphy was ahead by 14 points.

Property taxes are the top issue for New Jersey voters, and Guadagno has staked her campaign on a promise to lower tax bills, if elected governor, just as Christie did.

But governors have little control over local property taxes, which are set by municipal and school officials and assessors in each of the state's 565 home-rule communities.

And they are even higher in places like Hackensack and Englewood, where large tax-exempt hospitals shift the burden to home and business owners.

"A whopping 85 percent of voters said they haven't heard of a property tax plan from either candidate, according to the poll," Observer.com reported.

"And 70 percent said if they did see a proposal to lower property taxes, they would dismiss it as a campaign ploy."

Attack ads

"The 15- to 30-second spots touch on familiar talking points," Observer.com said of the ads both sides are running: 

"Democrats portray Lt. Kim Guadagno ... as an alter ego of Gov. Chris Christie, the least popular governor in the country.

"Republicans paint Democrat Phil Murphy as an out-of-touch millionaire [and liberal] bent on raising taxes."

In a TV pitch to middle-class homeowners, Guadagno falsely claims Murphy "already said he will raise your taxes," including "higher sales taxes."

But Murphy's $1.3 billion tax plan targets only millionaires, corporations and pot smokers, if he is successful in legalizing marijuana.

"Murphy's tax plan does not include an increase to the sales tax," Observer.com reported.

'Same old playbook'

The Murphy campaign's first and only ad so far links Guadagno to Christie, and his administration's school funding cuts and corporate tax breaks.

"The Christie playbook failed New Jersey," Murphy says in the ad. "Now Kim Guadagno wants another try."

The Record, my local daily newspaper, reported the Monmouth University poll on Wednesday.

On Monday's front page, Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi reported the candidates' positions on luring Amazon's second headquarters to New Jersey.

But Racioppi, as he has been doing for weeks, quoted liberally from an attack ad, but didn't bother asking for a response from the Democrat's campaign.

The ad said Murphy's call for a $15 hourly wage shows he is "really loaded, really liberal and really doesn't get New Jersey."

Las Vegas

To hammer home how the print edition of The Record plays second fiddle to NorthJersey.com, I couldn't find a word about Sunday night's Las Vegas massacre in the paper delivered to my home on Monday.

Instead, the front page was dominated by hysterical residents of wealthy Saddle River complaining about coyotes.

"Daily, I am terrorized by these animals," one woman claimed.

Then, after a solid day of massacre coverage on TV and radio, The Record devoted all of Tuesday's front page to the story.

How to fill space

On Page 1 last Friday, Columnist Mike Kelly wrote a tribute to a woman who was killed trying to catch a train in NJ Transit's Hoboken Terminal a year earlier, leaving behind her husband and 18-month-old daughter.

Of course, the death of Fabiola Bittar de Kroon deserved recognition, but Kelly struggled mightily to fill the columns he usually devotes to his subjects, and yet this seemingly endless piece had big holes in it.

He traced her last steps after she dropped her daughter Julia at a preschool. 

"Witnesses say De Kroon kissed Julia as she always did when she bid goodbye to her daughter," Kelly wrote.

Later, he noted a few Hoboken residents "still talk about Fabiola de Kroon, saying they continue to feel a personal and professional kinship with her."

Sociology lesson

He goes on to give a sociology lesson, reporting "more than half of Hoboken's 53,000 residents are in their early 30s," and "like De Kroon, almost 55 percent juggle professional careers and the challenges of starting and raising a family, according to Census figures."

Kelly also interviewed a worker in the coffee shop the victim frequented, the mayor of Hoboken, a pastor, the police chief and a commuter.

But I couldn't find any quotes from the dead woman's husband, Daan de Kroon, nor whether he has filed a wrongful death suit against NJ Transit, alleging the railroad's negligence caused the train crash that killed the innocent bystander.

A jury can award tens of millions of dollars in damages based on her age and her potential earning power, as well as for the loss of companionship suffered by her husband and daughter. 

Food coverage

In the absence of a weekly restaurant review, The Record's food coverage goes from bad to worse.

Today's Better Living cover declares:

"CELERY IS THE NEW

'IT' VEGETABLE"

On Wednesday, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz listed fall dishes on the menus of nine North Jersey restaurants in what sounded more like advertising than food reporting.

Last Sunday, Better Living listed 29 places in New Jersey to pick your own pumpkin.

And in last Friday's Better Living tab, the "EATS ON THE CHEAP" feature recommended the mystery meat and other dishes served at 11 casual places.

The same restaurants appear often in Better Living, including Kimchi Smoke, Bobby's Burger Palace, Mighty Quinn's Barbeque and Juicy Platters.

In a listing of halal restaurants a couple of weeks ago, Davidowitz deferred to a Paramus resident with a YouTube series, but the piece omitted Aleppo, the best Syrian restaurant in Paterson's South Paterson neighborhood.

Muslims can cook

Davidowitz visited five halal restaurants recommended by Sameer S. Sarmast, a Muslim of Indian descent who lives in Paramus.

And she notes New Jersey has the second largest Muslim population in the United States after Michigan.

"A lot of them, as I hope you and I will learn over the years, can really cook," she says.

Trump compares mothers of black athletes to dogs, ignores suffering in Puerto Rico

Cartoonist Randall Enos commenting on President Trump's harsh treatment of African-American pro football players who refuse to stand during the National Anthem, above.

This is from cartoonist Randy Bish. Trump says he's too busy with "this NFL mess" to deal with threats from North Korea that "a rocket attack against the United States is inevitable."

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've updated this post with excerpts from letters to the editor of The Record, commenting on President Trump.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

President Trump is the undisputed King of Insults, but his bitter, racially charged attack on black pro football players is the lowest blow of all.

At another one of his campaign-style rallies on Friday, Trump said of players who kneel during the national anthem:

"Wouldn't you love to see one of those NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now? Out. He's fired. He's fired.'"

The phrase "son of a bitch" was loaded, given Trump's appearance on Friday in the Deep South, his appeal to racists, his defense of white supremacists; and the nation's history of slavery, when white owners deliberately broke apart black families.

A "bitch" is a female dog, so a son of a bitch is a bastard or an illegitimate child.

"Trump ranted about a wide range of issues as usual," Salon.com reported after the Friday night rally, "but singled out NFL players who have chosen to protest police brutality against blacks by not standing for the national anthem...."

Trump's Katrina

An opinion piece in The Daily Beast is calling the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico "Trump's Katrina."

"As a dam cracked in Puerto Rico, spreading fear across an already devastated island, Donald Trump was in Alabama, calling a black NFL player a 'son of a bitch,'" Joy-Ann Reid says.

"During a 90-minute rant that veered from incoherence to the raw belligerence we've come to know in the Age of Trump, the madman who is president went after sidelined NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick without calling him by name.

"Trump visited Texas, making a petting zoo of black evacuees and writing his name on a wall," The Daily Beast said.

Yet, Trump hasn't followed through on his promise to visit Puerto Rico, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

The likely reason is that Trump doesn't need the support of residents of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, also hit by the hurricane.

They are U.S. citizens, but they cannot vote for president.

Increasing traffic congestion in North Jersey is among the biggest untold stories in The Record of Woodland Park. Above, rush-hour traffic in Paramus moving sluggishly toward the George Washington Bridge on Monday morning. At Hudson River crossings, toll-booth waits of 60 minutes and 90 minutes are not uncommon.

Afternoon rush-hour traffic crawling along Route 80 west toward Paterson and Wayne. Delays aggravate air pollution and cut worker productivity.

The Record

Trump's racially charged attacks on black football players didn't make the front page of my local daily paper on Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

On The Record's front page on Sunday, the editors ran the first part of a three-part series on NJ Transit, the state's mass-transit agency.

But the series is a colossal waste of space, because no attempt is made to explain why the agency has been unable to provide enough rush-hour seats for bus and rail commuters in the past decade.

The main headline:

"WHERE ARE ALL THE ENGINEERS?"

That should have been:

"WHERE ARE ALL THE SEATS?"

Readers on Trump

In a letter to the editor published today on 8A, Karen Chase of Westwood comments on the war of words between Trump and North Korea, and the "double-dog dare you bombast at the United Nations."

She says "dangerous" heads the list of "negative adjectives" being used to describe Trump.

In another letter, Patricia Adubato of Nutley refers to Trump's retweet of an "edited video showing [him] hitting Hillary Clinton with a golf ball."

"Americans should not accept this behavior. It is time to wake up and hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions as president and leader of the United States."

In a third letter, Eleanor Peed of Park Ridge says:

"It is the height of hypocrisy when a draft dodger in the White House berates football players for exercising First Amendment rights."

Kelly on Clinton

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Columnist Mike Kelly continued to obsess over Hillary Clinton, asking coyly, What if she is right about Russian meddling in the 2016 election that she lost to Trump (Opinion front).

But Clinton is far from the only one to make those charges, so Kelly sounds out of touch with multiple investigations, including the main one by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and another by the U.S. Senate.

Governor's race

Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi continues to politicize the race to replace Governor Christie (1A on Monday).

His lead paragraph notes Democrat Phil Murphy overestimated the cost of his plan to offer tuition-free community college. His staff said the proposal would cost half of the $400 million cited by Murphy.

That sounds like a good thing, but Racioppi doesn't think so, saying the original estimate "undercut" the plan, and that it became "ideal campaign fodder" for his challenger, Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

With only about six weeks until the Nov. 7 election, Racioppi continues to quote liberally from the Guadagno campaign's attacks on Murphy without doing any fact checking or asking for rebuttal from the Murphy campaign.

Nor has he reported where she stands on a host of crucial issues.

They include raising the minimum wage, taxing millionaires and wealthy corporations, restoring full funding to NJ Transit (which the Christie administration cut by more than 90%), and expanding bus and rail service.

Wegmans flops

Despite all the pre-opening hype in The Record, a total of only 200 people lined up for Sunday's 7 a.m. grand opening of the 108,000-square-foot Wegmans supermarket in Montvale (Local front on Monday).

Instead of running photos of crowded aisles, the Woodland Park daily had to stage photos of small groups of cheering customers and employees.

Fearing a repeat of the mob of 24,000 that showed up for the opening of another Wegmans in Hanover, Montvale's mayor warned shoppers not to camp out in the store's parking lot.

But only 400 to 500 people entered the store in the 15 minutes after the doors opened, the newspaper said.

The opening of a Wegmans in Bergen County is about a decade overdue.

And a new Wegmans in a town on the New York State border is a non-event for residents of Hackensack and many other parts of Bergen who are happy with a wide selection of supermarkets and warehouse clubs much closer to their homes.

'My favorite paper'

Bob Leafe, a professional photographer in Hackensack, has been using a community message board called HackensackNow.org to catalog numerous typos, errors and other production problems in The Record.

His well-read entries appear under this heading:

My favorite paper is not having a good day

Make sure to vote today so we don't get another GOP bully like Trump in N.J.

This New York Daily News cartoon -- "GOV THROWING HIS WEIGHT AROUND, EXPECT DELAYS -- captured the pivotal role Governor Christie played in the politically inspired September 2013 lane closings on the George Washington Bridge. But it also exposed how the state's news media largely avoided talking about his weight, even as late-night TV comedians made him the butt of jokes.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

I thought I had written a clever headline for today's post on the New Jersey primary election, but then realized we already have a GOP thug in the Governor's Office.

In fact, that's why voting in today's Democratic and Republican primary election to pick gubernatorial candidates is so important:

New York billionaire Donald J. Trump -- a racist, serial liar, con man and tax dodger, among other things -- scored a shocking victory in the Electoral College, because tens of millions of Americans didn't bother voting last Nov. 8.

Voter apathy also guaranteed a second term for Governor Christie in November 2013, less than two months after the George Washington Bridge lane closings, in what was the lowest turnout of any gubernatorial election in state history.

Political conspiracy

It wasn't until the following January that the Record of Woodland Park and other news media uncovered the Christie-inspired political payback behind the lane closings for five days during the morning rush.

And using his skills as a former corruption-busting federal prosecutor in Newark, Christie managed to erase all evidence he had been involved -- even "losing" his phone for two years -- and blamed the conspiracy on his allies, leading to the convictions of three of them.

Still, he was found guilty in the court of public opinion, and the Bridgegate scandal put the kibosh on his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination or as Trump's running mate in 2016.

Guess how much Governor Christie weighs

If like me you didn't open your sample ballot until this morning, you'll find there are a lot more choices for both Democrats and Republicans than what has been reported in the news media.

Polls are open until 8 p.m. today.

Today's election

Every vote today is practice for giving Christie, the worst governor in state history, the boot next January, when his second term ends.

If you're a Democrat, the primary ballot lists six candidates for governor in the November general election, not the four that appeared in The Record's Voting Guide on Sunday, "GOVERNOR'S RACE 2017."

There are five Republican candidates, including Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, not just the two listed in same guide.

On the Democratic side,  there are also uncontested primaries for the state Legislature, Bergen County freeholder and state Democratic Committee.

Those same contests are contested on the Republican portion of the ballot.

Fund raising

The Record has called the Democratic primary for Phil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and U.S. ambassador to Germany, based largely on his tremendous lead in raising campaign funds.

Another Democratic candidate, Jim Johnson, labeled Trump's first few months in office a "thugocracy," and pledged to protect New Jersey from the president's immigration, criminal justice and other policies.

The Woodland Park daily and other news media have reported there is little interest in today's election, and turnout is expected to be low.

This morning, WNYC-FM, New York and New Jersey Public Radio, even sent reporter Karen Rouse, who once worked for The Record, to a polling station in Edison, which had a population of 97,687 in 2000.

Rouse reported only 20 voters showed up in the first hour.

At around 10:30 this morning in Hackensack, where more than 22,000 people are registered to vote, I saw only two other voters at the polling station in the Fairmount Elementary School, above and below. In May's Hackensack City Council election, roughly 18,000 of the city's registered voters didn't bother to cast ballots. Turnout was even lower in April's school election.

Fresh wild salmon arrives at Costco