The Plain Dealer and its Love Affair With
George Voinovich
by Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole
A headline in The Plain Dealer the other day read, “Jobless rate rises in Ohio.” The article contained some disturbing news. The unemployment rate here in June rose from 5.6 percent to 5.8 percent in a month with a loss of 14,300 jobs. We were being told the recession/depression was over.
Further shocking, the report noted that in Cuyahoga County the unemployment rate went from 6.2 to 6.8 from May to June. Even more jolting, Cleveland’s unemployment rate rose from 11.8 to 12.7 percent.
In addition, more disturbing news came from George Zeller on the latest weekly unemployment claims. UP again. Bad for Cleveland. Worse, says the senior researcher of the Council for Economic Opportunities, for Columbus, our supposed “recession-proof” capitol city.
“So,” writes Zeller, “all this talk…about the economic recovery does not apply to Cleveland. There has been no economic recovery in the labor market in Cleveland. We continue to lose jobs, even in July 2004.”
That said, a statement by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, speaking for the Dems, noted that Ohio, with less than 4 percent of the U.S. population, accounts for some 20 percent of the U. S. job decline during the George Bush’s presidency!
What bothers me about The Plain Dealer is what I see – or don’t see – in its coverage of the people responsible for the plight of Cleveland, of Cuyahoga County and Ohio. Say it loudly, “Republicans.”
One of the principal architects of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and Ohio economic policy in the last several decades at each level is none other than Senator George Voinovich. Never has a politician, however, gotten an easier ride from the news media as this guy has.
Voinovich has always been the invisible politician when it comes to news media criticism, particularly where The Plain Dealer is concerned. Hear no evil, see no evil, and say no evil, PD editors aver.
You may not know it but Senator Voinovich is running for another six years on the public payroll in November. If elected, he’d be on your tab for 43 years. You may not know this but he has opposition: Eric Fingerhut, a former Democratic congressional representative and presently a state senator. You may not know it because the only daily newspaper in town doesn’t seem to know it either. You don’t see much of Fingerhut’s challenge in the pages of the PD.
That’s the least conspiratorial way to put it. Otherwise, you might have to say that the Plain Dealer, a closet Republican newspaper, does not want too many people to know that someone is running against one of its favorite corporate politicians.
Now I didn’t cover Voinovich when he was governor. He, as usual, had it easy, riding a Bill Clinton economy. What did he do to look out for the future? I do know that you can blame all the state’s problems on the present governor. That’s because it always take time for policies and actions to either succeed or fail. Ohio has been failing for some time. So the last Governor may have placed the banana for the present Gov to flip himself on his ass. Knowing enough about how newspapers work I can also with confidence say that the PD let Voinovich off easy on scandals perpetrated by his closes associates in Columbus.
It takes a certain persistence by a newspaper to penetrate the public mind. With Voinovich, the PD never had the stomach to be very critical in 43 years.
Voinovich’s tenure had to have started the long slide that Ohio now “enjoys” in economic decline. I feel safe in blaming Voinovich because I did cover him at Cleveland City Hall for many years. He was always a corporate stooge, who did the bidding of corporate interests, not public interests.
Voinovich was always genial. Well, almost. He didn’t like it when I accused him of using poor people after Ronald Reagan’s policies put thousand of low-income people in deeper poverty. Voinovich called all the media together because he had gathered – from employees – some canned and boxed food “for the poor,” his version of compassionate Republicanism. He wanted some credit and the TV cameras, in particular, gave it to him. It was one of those times the thin-skinned politician teared-up; emotional that anyone would question his motives. It didn’t happen often.
In fact, Voinovich, usually when passing along City Hall corridors, was always pleasant to me, inquiring about my health and asking how I kept trim. Important political talk.
Let’s get back to The Plain Dealer.
Week after week, there’s almost nothing in the PD about the Senate race. Are we to believe that the PD doesn’t think the race is important? Are they short staffed with the 400 editorial workforce claimed by Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton. Are we to think that they believe Voinovich is such a sure winner that the newspaper should ignore the race? Is that a good reason for ignoring an important election?
The paper won’t ever admit it but it’s a Republican newspaper. You can bet that it will endorse George Bush for re-election. How it will rationalize that decision should be fodder for college journalism classes.
I can tell you the reason right now. Alex Machaskee. He’s the PD publisher who doesn’t have character to be embarrassed by having his photo in his newspaper as he’s “honored” by one organization after another, usually corporate or corporate-owned non-profits. Machaskee’s a corporate shill and has been for many years.
Clifton, meanwhile, gets over-excited about public officials who shy away or refuse to give public information to him and his newspaper. Citizens and readers ought to be rather upset with Clifton and his newspaper for NOT giving us information about the Voinovich-Fingerhut race.
Clifton last summer wrote a column entitled, Public has a right to open debate. Well that’s novel. Does he ever extend that beyond his demand for information from political office-holders? I’ve no argument with his demand for open records. Indeed, I endorse it and applaud him for his vigor in demanding such treatment. But public officials are not the only ones with responsibilities to the public.
“Until that public warns its secrecy-cherishing officials that hanky-panky won’t be tolerated, it will continue to be disregarded, uninvited and taxed to death,” wrote Clifton in the column bemoaning private, rather than open meetings, by the County Commission.
Likewise, the public should not tolerate a newspaper that avoids coverage of an important Senate race in a state degrading before our eyes under that leadership.
The newspaper, however, serves up all kinds of non-essential puffery. It is almost as non-essential to read most of the Plain Dealer as it is to watch local television news. (This is not to take away from much fine reporting done in the PD by some who, unfortunately, don’t have control over editorial decisions and direction.)
Political reporting at the PD essentially is the domain of the editorial page boss Brent Larkin. As such just about nothing of political significance gets exposure in the PD without his imprimatur. Larkin, even with his dedication to the party line, seems to have gotten lazier and lazier. He produces less and he doesn’t allow others much leeway in giving the PD readership some insight into what’s going on.
What the PD will do is somewhere around election time, give us some coverage of Fingerhut and others, likely in a one-day avalanche of political coverage. Too little, too late. Not good enough. The easy way out. Definitely and deficiently bad journalism and pitiable civic responsibility.
Too bad we don’t have strong civic/activist organizations to tell the Plain Dealer that if this brand of fake journalism doesn’t stop, the day of the election would be the day people cancel their subscriptions for non-performance.
Clifton wrote that one has to “Insist that it (public discussion in private) stop and it will. All it takes is your vote.”
All it takes, I believe, is the cancellation of enough Plain Dealer subscriptions to get some reality in the Plain Dealer.
from Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole Roldo@Adelphia.net (:divend:)