Not yet open, Clifton Market has made its first sale: the news media.
I hope that reporters’ boosterism won’t keep them from doing due diligence on the finances for the proposed grocery.
Neither Cincinnati City Council nor this mayor’s administration can be trusted to do this before deciding whether to give taxpayer money to the proposed successor to the IGA store on Ludlow Avenue.
After Mahogany’s went bust, The Enquirer exposed inept city grants and loans, but it was too late. I neither support nor oppose the Clifton Market plan; a few friends and neighbors support it. I admire their optimism.
What bothers me is the absence of skepticism in The Enquirer, CityBeat, WVXU and other news media. Backers’ assertions are accepted as facts. Doubters are rarely quoted.
Here are questions I haven’t seen raised or answered in the news media:
Why did the IGA close, and if the same or similar problems face the proposed new store, how do backers plan to solve them?
Why couldn’t Steve Goessling — an experienced suburban grocer — make good on his plan and investment to replace the IGA?
How will backers of the proposed store solve the problems that killed the deal for Goessling?
Why have activists gone back to early donors — $200 shares — for more money?
Who in the proposed management has a successful record in this frighteningly low-margin business?
How will the new Corryville super Kroger affect Clifton Market projections?
• It’s increasingly clear that pursuit of New York Times reporter James Risen in a CIA leaks case had nothing to do with prosecuting the suspected whistleblower.
The Obama Administration and Holder Justice Department hoped to intimidate journalists to whom leakers offered embarrassing classified information. It’s part of the Obama Administration’s general opacity while making insincere promises of transparency.
It also reflects our government’s increasing prosecution of journalism as a crime, something historically more common abroad under authoritarian rule. After years of threatening Risen — and his firm refusals to violate his promise of confidentiality — Obama/Holder dropped threats of prosecution and went back to their secondary target: the whistleblower.
Federal prosecutors won their case without Risen’s cooperation. Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee, was sentenced recently to 42 months in federal prison. Prosecutors said he gave Risen classified details of a secret mission to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Risen included them in a book.
No one missed the irony that Sterling will go to prison but former general and CIA Director David Petraeus escaped prison after he was convicted of disclosing classified information to his mistress.
• If you love Fox News, this will be reassuring. Your virtue and that of your children has been protected. For the rest of us, it’s OMG!
The story was the $179 million-winning bid for Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” painting at a recent auction. New York’s Fox 5 News digitally blurred the women’s breasts. The station ran its screen-bottom banner across the crotch of one figure.
Dari Alexander, the show’s anchor, introduced the story, assuring viewers, “We decided to blur some of the nude portions of the paintings so we could show it to you on air.”
• American Family Radio host Sandy Rios suggested the fatal Pennsylvania train wreck can be attributed to Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian’s sexual orientation.
Bostian, according to conservative news sites, once lived in San Francisco and campaigned against California’s ban on same sex marriage.
As reported on HuffingtonPost.com, Rios said, “I’m not inferring that this accident happened because he was gay. But I do think it’s an interesting part of the story, and I bet it will be edited out. … I don’t know but I think it is something to be discussed and I think it’s a factor and I doubt you will hear it anywhere else.”
HuffPost said Rios is a Fox News contributor and director of government affairs at the American Family Association.
Some websites are stating that Bostian is gay, citing, among other things, what he told Manhattan’s The Midtown Gazette in 2012: “It’s kind of insulting to have to beg people for my right to marry. I feel like we shouldn’t even have to have this fight.”
GotNews.com, which claims to be the first to report Bostian’s name after the crash, called him a “gay activist.” Many Twitter users reacted negatively to Bostian’s sexuality, claiming he may have been a “diversity” hire by the government-funded Amtrak or more susceptible to mental illness because he is gay.
• With all of the talented reporters available to major TV networks, why did ABC News make Democratic political operative George Stephanopoulos its chief anchor? He’s pretty enough and he’s well-connected, but he’s no journalist.
Other than his fading good looks, his failure to appreciate the ethical expectations familiar to real journalists and those valued political ties have blown up in his and ABC’s faces.
Journalists are supposed to avoid outside alliances that could compromise the independence of their work. I had an editor who wouldn’t vote in primaries because he would have had to identify with a political party. When The Enquirer gave me the environment beat, I quit the Sierra Club.
We weren’t unusual; that was typical of our colleagues’ understanding of how to avoid conflicts of interest.
Stephanopoulos was caught giving $75,000 to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. That’s chump change for an ABC News chief anchor, and the problem isn’t whether he hid or revealed it. The donation was the ethical transgression; being less than candid about it is a sideshow.
If he keeps his job, it’s ABC’s way of saying, “Big deal. Get over it.”
Real journalists were sharp in their attacks. The Daily Beast reported these comments:
Former ABC News colleague and weekend anchor Carole Simpson damned “a coziness that George cannot escape. While he did try to separate himself from his political background to become a journalist, he really isn’t a journalist.”
Stephanopoulos was a top aide to the Clintons during the White House years. His confrontational ABC News interview with Clinton Foundation critic Peter Schweizer further riled Simpson: “I wanted to just take him by the neck and say, ‘George, what were you thinking?’ Clearly, he was not thinking. I thought it was outrageous and I am sorry that again the public trust in the media is being challenged and frayed because of the actions of some of the top people in the business.”
ABC News has been silent, but another former colleague, commentator Jeff Greenfield, said ABC News might bar Stephanopoulos from covering the 2016 campaign. Stephanopoulos’s self-made mess, Greenfield said, is “an indication that very smart people are sometimes very foolish.”
Contact BEN L. KAUFMAN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2015.