By Joel Thurtell
Fair to poor.
That’s what I think of the February 5, 2010 Detroit Free Press editorial about the need for a new bridge across the Detroit River.
By the way, those are the same words an engineering firm, paid by billionaire Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun, used to describe the condition of the Ambassador.
I fear my judgment of the Free Press may not be harsh enough.
Fair to poor?
Nah, they flunk.
How else to characterize an editorial–indeed, a newspaper–that pretends Matty’s done an “excellent job of operating the Ambassador”?
How could they credit Matty with doing an “excellent job” of “operating the Ambassador” when engineers judge the span to be in “overall fair condition,” but its deck, over which thousands of tons of traffic travels daily, is in “poor” condition?
The editorial is an example of the sly sucking up to power that a newspaper can do only if its editors and reporters shirk their responsibility to delve into a subject and present it fairly to themselves and their readers.
Why, I wonder, won’t Michigan’s oldest newspaper assign some competent staffer to keep track of Moroun?
Or at least assign an editorial writer to read the reports of other media, including The Detroit News which shares a roof with the Free Press, or the Metro Times or across the river, the Windsor Star, which does a superb job of covering this scoundrel.
Then, whoever undertook writing such a screed for the Free Press would at least not be ignorant that the deck of the bridge the Free Press thinks Matty has done an “excellent job” of “operating” is in “poor” condition, and that no less a personage than U.S. Rep. John Dingell, who went to court to have the report released, has lambasted Moroun for his shoddy performance.
One wonders why the Free Press, so prone to head for court when it comes to uncovering documents about Matty’s crony, the disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, has not felt any duty to inquire into Moroun’s operations.
Armed with a little knowledge, such an editorial writer also would have known better than to construct a sentence that says, “Moroun’s prospects for building a so-called replacement span next to his 80-year-old bridge are equally dim, as Canada continues to fight that plan for environmental reasons.”
By reading its competent newspaper competitors, that Free Press writer would have known that it is not just the Canadians who have stopped Matty building his “twin” bridge in its very tracks.
That Free Press writer would have known–had he or she done some homework–that in fact the city of Detroit has evicted Matty from the very territory he needs for that new bridge but doesn’t own.
That Free Press writer would have known that Matty was trying to expropriate a city park through an exercise of theft known as squatter’s rights.
That Free Press writer would have known that Matty had begun work on his new bridge not only without owning the park land on the U.S. side that it would cross, but that he lacked the U.S. permits needed to begin the unapproved construction he had put underway.
That Free Press writer would have known that the Michigan Department of Transportation had sued Matty, once again the squatter, who had constructed gas pumps and a duty-free store on city of Detroit land. MDOT wanted them removed. Knowledge of the state’s lawsuit and a forthcoming judgment might have prevented the Free Press from committing the foolishness of printing its claim that Canada alone stands in Matty’s way on the very same day (February 5, 2010) that a Wayne County circuit judge ordered the billionaire to demolish his duty-free store and gas station because, doggone, he doesn’t own the property he built them on.
The store and gas station are integral parts of his now moribund plan to build the new bridge for which he lacks permits and property for footings.
Not just the Canadians, but the City of Detroit and the U.S. Coast Guard and now a federal judge have stuck a spoke in Matty’s hitherto runaway wheels, with a push from Congressman Dingell.
This is a prime example of the phony journalistic even-handedness that comes from keeping your reporters and your readers ignorant of facts that Free Press honchos for some reason don’t want to share with the public.
Problem for the Free Press: Others have done the reporting, which makes any editorial effort to sow murk and confusion easily rebuttable.
Why would a newspaper want to proceed as if inconvenient facts don’t exist?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
Obviously the Free Press editorial writer(s) didn’t bother to listen to their own columnist (Mitch Albom) and his interviews with Moroun’s right-hand man, Dan Stamper
— http://www.wjr.com/Article.asp?id=1686787&spid=6553
and State Rep. Rashida Tlaib — http://www.wjr.com/Article.asp?id=1686790&spid=6553 (WJR 760).
Michiganders should listen to the two interviews and then decide for themselves. The problem is that Stamper (today’s equivalent of Hitler’s Goebbels when it comes to manipulating facts) must have been born in a lying-in hospital, as untruths emerge from his mouth as naturally as the rest of us breathe. The rest of us, that is, who don’t live in the proximity of Moroun’s bridge, where the exhaust from backed-up diesel trucks spews noxious matter all over the vicinity, causing asthma, heart and lung problems to area residents on both sides of the river. A new publicly owned bridge built Downriver in a more sparsely inhabited area would enable the people of Ste. Anne’s and Delray to breathe more easily. A second bridge Downriver would allow the thinning of cross-border traffic, doing away with the necessity for diesel vehicles to idle for countless minutes and even, in some cases, for hours in residential areas. (At one point, the city of Windsor had to put up portable toilets on homeowners’ lawns because the trucks were so backed up for so long and the drivers had nowhere to relieve themselves.)
Two court rulings against Moroun and his bridge company this week expose a few of his illegal and illicit machinations. Of course, he will undoubtedly file appeal after appeal after appeal winding into eternity — it’s been said that he “lawyers people to death.” I can see students answering the question, “Why do you want to become a lawyer?” with the response: “Because with Moroun and his Ambassador Bridge Company around, I know I’ll always be able to get a job.”
Filing lawsuits and appeals is a cottage industry where Moroun is concerned.
And why not? It’s a free country, isn’t it?
Problem is that while Moroun’s representatives claim (incorrectly) that his bridge wouldn’t be financed with taxpayers’ money, it is we, the taxpayers, who must pay the expenses and salaries of federal and state attorneys who must fight the lies of Moroun and the Bridge Company in court or else allow him to get away with figurative murder. (And maybe it’s more than figurative: The lives of many children with asthma and many elderly with heart problems are made miserable and some even shortened because of the diesel exhaust from his bridge.)
Since Moroun puts the toll money from his bridge into his own pockets, he would take money from our children and grandchildren — by continuing to put the toll money from whatever bridge he would “twin” into his own pockets. Whereas, with a publicly owned bridge, once the construction expenses were paid off by the bridge tolls, future toll money would go into the public treasury, lowering our taxes and providing for infrastructure work, education and other necessities of our descendants’ lives.
One individual should not have a chokehold on the economy of two countries. Maybe that’s one of the reasons this week’s ruling denied Moroun’s claim that his bridge is “a federal instrumentality” that gives him and his bridge carte blanche to be exempt from the rules and regulations that publicly owned bridges are subject to. Like safety regulations. And homeland security regulations. And hazardous matter transport regulations.
If anything is an indication of the fecklessness of today’s news media, it is the fact that they either don’t bother covering the Moroun story, or else they lean so far over backwards to be “balanced” that they are, in effect, UNbalanced.
“Now, we’ve been told, Chancellor Hitler, that your government has been putting people into concentration camps and torturing them and starving them and working them to death or gassing them and burning their bodies. We’ve been told that before burning them, you take their eyeglasses and shave their hair to use in your war effort.”
“That is an outright falsehood. We put people in camps to give them someplace to live; we give them food, we give them work, we shave their hair to protect them from lice, and when they die — of natural causes — they don’t even have to worry about paying for funeral expenses or for a burial plot.”
And that’s how neutral, “balanced” reporting works . . .
Joel,
A small clarification – the judgement handed down Friday – ordering the bridge company to remove some structures, and to build the plaza the way they agreed to build it – was from Wayne County Circuit Court – not the Federal District Court. Secondly, there was a suit filed in Federal District Court on Friday by the Federal Governemnt requesting a cease and desist order to prevent the bridge company from continuing to claim it is a “federal instrumentality” whenever it tries avoid some government regulation it finds inconvenient.
Hugh — Thank you. Duly corrected.