Star Ledger

I thought the Star Ledger got the union concessions and staff buyouts it needed to avoid putting the paper up for sale. But after watching the Ledger Live’s first-ever “lie detector challenge,” I would have sworn the Ledger had been acquired by the Trentonian.

Have we reached the point where quotes given to a news reporter may be subject to a lie detector challenge?

The recent “he-was-trying-to-pacify-me-with-money” and “not-in-a million-years” exchange between senate leaders Alex DeCroce and Dick Codey  stoked the latest flare-up controversy over the Democrats’ $120 million give-away grant program.

The real issue in this round is whether the Ledger’s lie detector challenge is a stunt designed to make some news or is it an appropriate role for the Fourth Estate?

Playing off Thursday’s Philadelphia Inquirer headline, New Jersey’s newspapers can’t exactly wash their hands of the “business as usual” culture that allowed the so-called ‘MAC account’ to flourish for two years.

If you look at past news stories about the MAC accounts, a.k.a. Property Tax Assistance and Community Development Fund, the coverage did not exactly live up to Woodward and Bernstein standards.

Case in point.  Daily reporting coming out of Wayne Bryant’s federal corruption trial would now leave readers to believe that nobody in state government had final responsibility for overseeing the distribution of more than $120 million in ad hoc budget funds. That’s contrary to how it was once reported.

At times over the last two weeks, the testimony offered by one witness even contradicted what he had previously told reporters.

So it raises the question, how was the slush fund characterized by the press in past reporting?