Gary & Goliath

Nassau County residents are used to receiving warm and fuzzy, feel-good mailers from politicians, towns and organizations. But there was something different in the mail last week.

The ominous black brochure hinted at espionage and conspiracy. A blurry, pixilated photo of Newsday's Melville headquarters on a noir background is married with the caption, "They operate in total secrecy." Many might think the mailer is about the CIA and its underworld dealings in the name of national security.

But open the mailer and its purpose becomes clear. This is a message from what is arguably the most powerful labor union on Long Island, the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association (PBA), and it is the first salvo in the union's declared war against the Island's only daily paper, Newsday. A headline screams, "The People Have The Right To Hear Both Sides Of The Story."

"I'm all for an honest debate," says PBA President Gary DelaRaba. "But that takes information from both parties."

The mailing is extreme in its words. "The evidence is clear. Newsday uses their newspaper monopoly to control the public debate and to launch a jihad against us."

But Newsday editorial page editor James Klurfeld scoffs at the notion of shutting out the PBA. "To say we have a hidden agenda is ludicrous," says Klurfeld.

DelaRaba and the PBA have committed to a multimedia campaign against a Newsday editorial board that they feel has shut them out for the last time. Soon, Nassau residents will see print ads, television spots, and even a phone message decrying Newsday.

The fight reached this new level after the PBA submitted an op-ed piece to Newsday about the paper's tendency to support Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi's policies regarding the Nassau County Police Department. The paper declined to run the piece. So, the union decided to buy an ad, using the same information. Newsday again balked and said it would not accept the ad because it contained "inaccurate" information.

"Gary assumes the readers have knowledge [of this issue]," says Klurfeld. He adds that the editorial staff has "bent over backwards" to help DelaRaba craft a piece that would get his point across.

But that is not the case, DelaRaba says. "I can't be wrong every single time. Even the Knicks have to win a game every now and then," he says.

Klurfeld, using a sports analogy of his own, says the PBA campaign is just a
typical DelaRaba move. "It's a brush-back pitch to help divert attention from the real issue."

In a March 2006 letter to the PBA obtained by the Press, Alleen Barber, Newsday opinion editor, indicated the PBA was asked to submit a "letter to the editor" instead of an op-ed column. DelaRaba did not do that.

According to Barber, she was working with DelaRaba on "The Semi-Free Press and the Long Island Experience," a piece authored by DelaRaba that accused Newsday of being a "shadow government."

Barber says she decided not to run the piece, and offered DelaRaba a chance to submit a letter to the editor, which he declined. "I am quite open to having you slam Newsday for our support of Tom Suozzi and his stand on the PBA," wrote Barber in the March 29 letter.

But DelaRaba fired back in a May 9 letter, saying that Newsday had said that it "does not have to be accurate in [its] editorials because it is an opinion piece and accuracy does not matter."

"So my question to you is a simple one," DelaRaba wrote. "If you do not have to be accurate, why are we held to a different standard?"

"[Gary] and I have a different opinion of what facts are," says Barber. "We would never run a letter or op-ed with something we know is not true." Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at The Poynter Institute, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based journalism school, says that letters containing inaccuracies should not be published due to liabilities—and that police and newspapers are constantly
battling.

Newsday runs one op-ed in each weekday issue, and Barber says they receive five submissions per day, sometimes many more.

"Unfortunately, we have to say 'no' a lot more than we can say 'yes,'" says Barber.

When possible, Barber will work closely with the writer, trying to get the important facts and figures to come out in the piece. She says DelaRaba is not interested in that process. Instead, he devised a plan to place his fight in the public eye.

And his idea seems to have struck a chord. The mailer also urges residents to visit the Nassau PBA website to "get the real story," and the response from the public was immediate. In two days, there were more than 300,000 visits to the website, plus an avalanche of e-mail, according to PBA 1st Vice President James Carver. While some of the e-mail criticizes the cops, for the most part, people are supportive of the union in its fight against the paper. "Nobody wants to fight Newsday," says Carver. "They are
worried about the wrath."

"They [Newsday] are the school yard bullies," says DelaRaba. "We will not back down from them."

It Hasn't Always Been This Bad

DelaRaba is a towering presence, with a booming voice and imposing swagger. It becomes clear very quickly that someone would probably have been in for a long night if DelaRaba had caught them breaking the law, back in his patrol days.

DelaRaba has become known as a colorful and powerful personality since becoming the PBA president in 1988. He became a Nassau cop in 1971, and joined the PBA executive board in 1976. He has made many friends and many enemies. His press conferences have become legendary, as has his very public feud with Suozzi. But despite his detractors outside of the union, DelaRaba is recognized as one of the most savvy union leaders in the state. Elected to another four-year term this year, he is not up for re-election again until 2010.

DelaRaba says that recently he went through eight years of Newsday editorials, and found that in the last four years, the tone has changed, casting an overwhelmingly negative light on the PBA. The paper, says DelaRaba, claims that the union has used scare tactics and self-serving information to lobby for more cops and higher salaries.

Despite the outcome of this latest battle, some of the Island's well-known pundits believe that there has to be a compromise at some point. "These are two immovable regional forces. Newsday and the PBA will be living with each other until glaciers return to Long Island," says Gary Lewi, executive vice president of Manhattan-based Rubenstein Associates, Inc. Public Relations. "They can fight and feud, but at the end of the day, these two institutions will need to find a means of communicating with each other."

But the PBA is not alone in its criticism of the Newsday editorial board, and specifically of Klurfeld.

"I don't think it's defensible to not publish a letter based on the claim that some of the facts are incorrect, considering the theory of American journalism, the free press," says Karl Grossman, noted investigative reporter, professor of journalism at the State University of New York at Old Westbury and longtime Long Island commentator. Grossman, who also worked with Newsday's Klurfeld almost 40 years ago, adds, "Let all the sides come out."

DelaRaba also weighs another lofty issue: Will his rank and file (the Nassau PBA has 2,000 members) agree with his use of union funds to attack Newsday?

"We [the union] never get 100 percent agreement in the membership," says DelaRaba. "We welcome the challenge from the members, and want to hear the complaints." In the past, the dissident opinions have come from members who were upset that the union advertised in Newsday.

"Newsday does not treat the Nassau cops well," says NCPD Officer Tom Greer. "They always point the finger at the $100,000-a-year cop. But what they don't say is how much time and how much work you put in to reach that level. Stop the spin. Walk a mile in our shoes."

"This is a very common fight, between local police departments and a local newspaper. Happens all the time," says ethics leader McBride, a former police reporter. "It is very common in American cities across the country for the police department to think that it is not getting a fair shake from the newspaper."

She stresses, however, that the primary loyalty of the newspaper and its opinion pages should be to advocate for the community's interest.

"It's his money, let him do what he wants with it," laughs Klurfeld.

All The News Not Fit To Print

Newsday, which has been ensnared in controversy for the past few years due to its circulation scandal which rocked the publishing industry, is no stranger to allegations of resorting to bully tactics and strong-arming those they oppose. Similar tactics, some allege, have also bled into its editorial pages.

In 2003, the Press reported a charge by Suffolk Democratic Party Chairman Richard Schaffer that Newsday's Klurfeld tried to influence the Democratic Party's choice of candidate for Suffolk County executive ["Levy Wins Despite Newsday's Threat," Sept. 11, 2003]. Newsday, according to Schaffer, was pushing the candidacy of Democrat William Cunningham, the Nassau deputy county executive and the choice of his boss, Suozzi. Newsday ran multiple editorials praising Cunningham and denigrating his Democratic opponent, Steve Levy, throughout the primary race. When Schaffer refused to throw the party's
support behind Cunningham, Klurfeld made the threat that "this means war."

Other local officials have also alleged that Klurfeld flexed his muscles to push his agenda.

"[Klurfeld] said to me, 'You are talking to somebody who buys ink by the barrel,'" Minority Leader Legis. Peter Schmitt (R-Massapequa) told the Press ["Newsday: Game Over," Dec. 30, 2004]. "I said to him, 'I got your threat loud and clear. Buy two barrels. Use one to take your best shot at me and take the other one and stick it up your a**.'"

In that story, experts across the country, from journalism professors to ethics
specialists, condemned Klurfeld's tactics. And DelaRaba is saying Klurfeld is bullying once again.

Klurfeld says the PBA campaign "is a shot at Suozzi. That is definitely what it is," and that the notion that the editorial page is a messenger for Suozzi is ridiculous. "I think we have been very fair, and very tough [on Suozzi]," Klurfeld says. "Overall, he has done a good job. We have been critical of him at times, and we have not been particularly supportive of his gubernatorial bid."

Veteran reporter Grossman finds validity in the PBA's charge that Newsday's
editorial board backs Suozzi.

"What they're [PBA] saying here is that somehow there's this connection between Suozzi and the editorial board. I mean, that's obvious. I mean, Suozzi appears very much to be Newsday's favorite son," says Grossman.

But DelaRaba says he is not fighting Suozzi—at least not now. "Tom Suozzi is
irrelevant," says DelaRaba. "He pulled the wool over everybody's eyes, and now the chickens are coming home to roost."

According to Grossman, all this is nothing new. Grossman believes that Newsday has a history, pretty much since its founding 66 years ago, of overstepping the usual role of a daily newspaper: reporting on the news.

"This is part of the culture of Newsday," explains Grossman. "Not just to cover Long Island, but to be a player in terms of how things happen...to intervene, to impose itself in the affairs of Long Island in a way that's sharply different than most daily newspapers in the United States, certainly in the last 100 years."

But Grossman says one doesn't have to take his word on the matter—one can take Newsday's own words for it. Grossman points out that Robert F. Keeler, a current member of Newsday's editorial board whom Grossman calls a "great reporter," has written about some of Newsday's paper's own past actions. Keeler is the author of Newsday: A Candid History of the Respectable Tabloid.

Two major cases in point, says Grossman, are Newsday's historical stance on Long Island's development policies and nuclear energy, as evidenced through its many pro-nuclear editorials, and the paper's actual creation of specific organizations designed to further its vision of an industrialized Island.

In Keeler's book, says Grossman, the author explains how Newsday basically
created what became the Long Island Regional Planning Board after a series
of articles by a Newsday reporter. In Grossman's own book, titled Power Crazy, the journalism professor explains Newsday's complex role as judge and jury for the future of Long Island's power sources, and outlines the paper's support for nuclear energy, which resulted in its weighty support for the now-defunct Shoreham nuclear power plant and the Long Island Lighting Company (now LIPA)—again told through the words of a Newsday reporter. To further Newsday's pro-development agenda, says Grossman, the paper created the Long Island Action Committee. Grossman sees parallels between Newsday's pages on these issues and the PBA's current charges.

Klurfeld says that period is "ancient history. And, I was running the Washington, D.C., bureau at that time."

"It was a different business. Times have changed. Papers operate differently," adds Klurfeld.

 

 

 

"Nobody wants to fight Newsday.
They are worried about the wrath."
—Nassau PBA 1st V.P.
James Carver

Mixed Messages

One of the biggest examples DelaRaba offers of what he calls "Newsday's hypocrisy" are the conflicting messages sent by the editorial page and the news section.

"We were accused of scaring people [about escalating crime] in a Newsday-
written editorial, but then they run a front cover scaring the hell out of people about home invasions [Oct. 17, 2005, Newsday, "Unsafe at Home"]," says DelaRaba.

Another example was a Newsday op-ed piece decrying the $100,000 salary many cops receive. "But then they run articles and a front page story about how hard it is to live on Long Island, even if you make $100,000. Which is it?" asks DelaRaba.

"I have no say, no control, no interest in what happens in news," says Klurfeld. "We do our very best to build a wall between news and opinion."

But as much as history shows Newsday's bullying, so, too, does it show that its approach is not always effective: Levy won despite Klurfeld's threats and editorials, Shoreham never operated, Newsday's former publisher is gone and some former employees are now behind bars. Will Newsday be successful in squelching the voice of the PBA? If history does repeat itself, it probably won't.

"In the end, our job [the editorial board] is to give people information through opinion," says Klurfeld. "I tell our writers, you have a license, like 007. Everyone on the editorial board has been a top-notch reporter. They know they have to do their homework and be
accurate."

But DelaRaba thinks the paper misses the boat.

"The Newsday editorial board has to stop the smear tactics," says DelaRaba. "They are like movie critics on life. Sit down, watch the show, and then say how you would have done it better."

By Michael M. Martino Jr with Chris Tworowsk
Posted Thursday, June 1, 2006