Page 20 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • May 28, 2014 Reporting is not prognostication Never underrate the power of print. I recently found in my mailbox a newspaper story that read: Down Payment on Turf Field Added to Municipal Budget. I was astounded, because I was at the meeting where this addition suppos- edly took place, and that was not what happened. In fact, the Glen Rock Council agreed to introduce an ordinance that would add the first payment on a proposed turf field to the municipal budget: $100,000 from the recreational sports group and $150,000 from the taxpayers. The ordi- nance is slated for adoption on May 28. It was not adopted at the meeting in question because to do so would have been illegal and extremely unpopular with those who spoke at the introduction. Then I read the disclaimer: “The session took place after the ( other newspaper’s ) deadline.” In other words, it was a prognostication, and not reporting. The other paper printed what they had expected to happen -- but it did not happen. Some months ago, a different news outlet reported that the village manager of Ridgewood would be fired that week. The village manager was not fired that week. He was fired, as I recollect, about four months later, following (disputed) attempts that were reportedly made to smooth things over. This first predicted firing, which did not happen at the time, was a prognostication and not report- ing. As Nixon said of newsmen in general, I nurture a seeth- ing resentment. Every once in awhile, somebody calls to ask why I didn’t report a particular incident. If I’m lucky, the response is that the incident never happened. A more cynical response might be, “Because it hasn’t happened yet, but it looks like the fix could be in for it to happen.” “The fix” is not part of responsible government, any more than prognostication is part of responsible reporting. Voting should mean something. The fix flopped two weeks ago in Ridgewood. When Michael Sedon, a newspaperman, filed to run for village council -- in fact, within hours of the time Sedon’s nomi- nating petition was officially accepted -- somebody sent an anonymous e-mail to his day job in Staten Island urging that his filing be investigated as a conflict of interest. At least that is what the e-mail supposedly said, since nobody will show it to Sedon. The attorneys at Sedon’s newspaper investigated and declared that there was no actual con- flict of interest but that there might be a perceived con- flict of interest. The editor reportedly told Sedon to decide whether to give up is job or his candidacy. He gave up his job. Sedon asked for separate state agencies to investigate. They tossed the issue around like a hot potato. Meanwhile, candidate James Albano was winding up a League of Women Voters Candidates Night when a woman from the audience asked Albano if it was true that he had voted in only two non-partisan Ridgewood elections in the last 12 years, and if the tax-exempt status of the Ridgewood Baseball Softball Association had lapsed on his watch as president of the group. Albano and his supporters say he was “set up.” Albano, a likable man with many friends, admits that while there was absolutely no fraudulence intended, both charges made at the meeting were actually correct. He lost the election by a wide margin. The charges were made on the TV program that cov- ered the forum, which took place in front of more than 100 people in the audience. Of the five or six news outlets that cover Ridgewood, only two, including this one, appear to have covered the charges. The e-mail sideswipe at Sedon’s job received about the same amount of coverage, as far as I could see and as far as my spies report. Hopefully, everybody in Ridgewood reads this paper. If they did not read it, word-of-mouth must have done one terrific job. Sedon and Susan Knuden were said by some to have won with vote counts massively higher than Alba- no’s because they opposed the Valley Hospital expansion as proposed, but this could be a convenient misinterpreta- tion. I was present while Albano was being even tougher on the Valley Hospital expansion than Sedon and Knud- sen. Albano received applause from the audience for his toughness. His one big difference with Knudsen and Sedon was that he supported a 90-foot baseball diamond at Schedler Park and Knudsen and Sedon did not. Yet I do not see the election as a referendum on whether sports groups should control land use. I think the election was based partly on dismay over the attempt by somebody who has remained anonymous to make sure Sedon did not appear on the ballot by foul means rather than fair. The other factor was the “set up” that appeared on council-coverage TV and in this newspa- per’s coverage. Back in Glen Rock, we have another accomplished fact that is not yet accomplished and not yet a fact. Unless the prognosticator claims to know the heart and mind of every council member, the prognosticator cannot state that the artificial turf field is a voted reality. If this trend persists, here or elsewhere, it can verge into “disinformation” -- deliberate misrepresentation of facts. We have not gone there yet. Let us hope we never do. The word I hear is that the Glen Rock recreational sports groups are delighted with the council’s decision to fund 90 percent of a project they themselves were originally going to pay for themselves, and that substantial elements of the rest of the public are quite upset and not at all satisfied with the explanations they received at the meeting in question. As a reporter, I do not attempt to influence voters either way. I simply point out that this proposed project was pay- it-yourself until 2014, and has suddenly shifted gears to where a constituency of about a quarter of the population may now have the other three-quarters taxed about $5 mil- lion for a project the sports groups feel is essential, other people feel is detrimental, and most people simply shrug off. The good news is that if every kid plays five sports a year and plays computer games, the next generation will have forgotten how to read anything more detailed than a stop sign. These signs already appear to pose a problem for some. News flow control is a national problem. Some TV news programs tell the people what they think people want to hear, and other networks tell the people what they think the people need to hear. Except during the Olympics, we keep our TV tuned to PBS, except during the Olympics. They have fascinating shows -- with one of the most fasci- nating things being the odd facts that never crop up. “The American Experience” did a great job on how Robert Kennedy, humanized by his brother’s murder, became a courageous advocate of civil rights. Omitted was the fact that, in his younger days, at least as I remember, RFK was a dedicated special advisor to Senator Joseph McCarthy, one of the most reviled men in American his- tory. The fact that RFK dropped McCarthy -- who shortly drank himself to death --could have shown just how much RFK was humanized. The recent PBS documentary “Zeppelin Terror Attack” shows the use of gigantic German dirigibles to fire-bomb London during World War I. The documentary was clearly British-made and never mentions an awkward fact: The zeppelins were first designed for civilian use as floating cruise liners long before the war and only converted to military use as emergency bombers a year into a British naval blockade of Germany. The British blockade starved 775,000 German civilians to death and was continued for months after the armistice for another 100,000 deaths after the fighting had stopped. The British people lost 557 to the zeppelins, which started attacking a year after the starva- tion blockade began. The blockade was not mentioned at all in the documentary. “Nazi Mega Weapons” features British, German, and American historians visiting isolated spots in Europe, mixed with documentary footage of some of the most stag- gering and ruthless construction projects in history. No comparison is made to the Panama Canal, which resulted in about 4,000 dead laborers, mostly black workers from the Caribbean, whom “American Experience” responsi- bly mentioned. The focus is kept tight, but in the episode “Supertanks,” one error is that the mighty “German” tank shown was actually a Czech-made TS-38. Meanwhile, the arch-villain of the piece is shown creeping around in the mud of the trenches as a soldier in World War I -- a recurring image as he timidly checks out the British tanks. But the villain wears an M-35 (World War II) helmet as opposed to an M-16 (World War I) helmet. The cut of his mustache is also wrong for his appearance at that time and place. This series, however, is objective and generally accurate. In another episode, Werner von Braun’s defense-resis- tant V-2 rockets pointlessly kill 2,000 British civilians in London in terror raids near the end of the war. Churchill and company then approved attacks on Dresden and other “soft” targets that kill about 200,000 German civilians. This series is not to be missed. It tells both sides. One has to wish that network/newspaper news coverage were as impartial as a couple of the better documentaries. Telling both sides is important. What is more important is not to report events that have not happened. Letters to the Editor School’s Living Lessons program was an inspiration Dear Editor: Today I had the immense privilege to serve as a volun- teer at Franklin Avenue Middle School’s Living Lessons program. Living Lessons brings special guests who share their stories of courage and perseverance, and triumph over tragedy – including Holocaust survivors, parents of young victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Col- umbine survivors, 9/11 heroes, survivors of the Rwandan genocide, Team LeGrand, and James and Jan Clementi -- to speak to our children about the life lessons they have learned about how to overcome extreme obstacles and adversity, find a way to make it good, and pay it for- ward. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to hear these special people give such powerful messages of love, hope, forgiveness, and inspiration as they shared their incred- ible journeys. Kudos to Principal Joe Keiser for developing this pro- gram, to the committee who helped put it together (Felice Yeshion, Alisha Carti, Kristen Nihamin, and Lauren Trudeau), to our teachers, staff, volunteers, PTA, FLEF, FLEA, Municipal Alliance, and every guest who took time to allow for this powerful day. I wish every member of our community and every student in New Jersey had the opportunity to experience this program. We can all learn so much from these inspi- rational stories and the people who are willing to share them. Wade Schwartz Franklin Lakes Young athlete (continued from page 17) revealed last week. As far as the discus is concerned, Zuidema notes that he strives to throw 150 feet, for an aggregate of 350 feet in his two chosen events. If he achieves these goals, he would be within the top three athletes in the state. When Zuidema sets a goal, he is clearly driven to meet it. As a junior, he earned first place at the Bergen County Meet of Champions with a javelin throw of 189.6 feet. On June 1, 2013, he took second place at the State Group competition held in Egg Harbor with a javelin throw of 183.3 feet. At that time, he was already considered one of New Jersey’s Top 10 javelin specialists – and he said his goal was to reach 190 feet.