The dark side of horse racing, redux

After a longer hiatus than I planned, I'm back on the blog, but with limited input,as I'm increasingly preoccupied with attending to the needs of a close friend who is entering the terminal stage of bone cancer.

What prompts me to leap back into the fray now is today's Times-News glaring front page package on the casino and Downs racetrack, and its celebration of man's inhumanity to equines.I've said this before, so rather than re-invent the wheel, I'm reprinting below my blog from last October on this subject.

It follows:

In yet another puff piece over the weekend celebrating Presque Isle Downs racetrack -a salutary run-down on the abbreviated 25-day first season of horse-racing - the Erie Times-News trumpeted the track’s financial and related successes over the past month, and its potential for even greater gains during next-year’s attenuated 100-day racing season.

“Racetrack’s trial run bodes well for 2008,” the headline blared in Saturday’s online edition. (That was changed in the Sunday edition to “Was track a runaway success?”) It was followed by Reporter Bob Jarzomski’s equally irrepressible lead paragraph: “In horse-racing parlance, Presque Isle Downs and Casino burst out of the gate with a clean break.”

But there was no mention of the Sport of Kings’ tragic darkside, which the local news media have ignored or played down, the cruel and inevitable deaths of some of the noble animals which feed the financial frenzy infecting their owners, promoters, bettors, camp followers and fans. There is reason for concern.

Despite the installation at the Downs of costly artificial Tapeta racing surface designed to reduce traumatic racetrack accidents, at least three horses died here during the 25-day season’s 200 races, injured in mishaps, then “euthanized,” a less than comforting euphemism. That is not an insignificant number for such a truncated season.

But we know very little about how, why or under what circumstances these elegant equines met their demises. The local news media dazzle, indeed overload us with celebratory details festooning casino and racetrack operations: millions of dollars waged; hundreds of thousands paid out; tens of thousands attend; hundred thousand dollar purses won; millions tithed to local governments; tons of local hay utilized; hundreds of hometown cheesecakes and other pastries consumed, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

But the news media are curiously silent when it comes to downside facts and figures. What exactly happened to the three horses which died or were put down here last month? Did they sustain terminal injuries during training or racing? Or were they barn deaths, perhaps from overdosing? How old were they? Were they too young to tolerate the stresses of competitive racing? Or were their deaths attributable to some imperceptible, as yet unknown, anomaly in the engineering of the new racetrack?

Growing scientific evidence tells us horses bred for racing are too young at two or two 1/2 years - when many of them hit the tracks for the first time, their muscles and structural bones still immature and underdeveloped - to withstand the pace and pounding. Yet overzealous owners, hungry for returns on their high investments in horseflesh, put them out on the tracks before they’re physically ready. Sometimes it pays off. Too often it ends in disaster.

Extrapolated over next year’s projected 100-date season, this year’s fatality rate of thoroughbreds at Presque Isle Downs suggests an increase to at least a dozen horses’s deaths in 2008, perhaps leading as well to some serious jockey injuries, possibly deaths.

It’s usually difficult, even impossible for horse doctors to pin down the cause or causes of equine breakdowns on the tracks, sometimes because they are invisibly rooted in earlier training or racing activities as one or two year-olds, when tiny bone splints or imperceptible hairline fractures arise in their slender, fragile leg bones, silent ticking time bombs lurking there, waiting to explode on the track when they’re three-year old colts, as in the case of the industry’s late and beloved Barbaro.

One influential racing writer, Bill Finley, wrote tellingly in the New York Daily News back in 1993: "The thoroughbred race horse is a genetic mistake. It runs too fast, its frame is too large, and its legs are far too small. As long as mankind demands that it run at high speeds under stressful conditions, horses will die at racetracks."

Nothing, I’m convinced, will dampen the ancient and universal craze for horse racing. Indeed, it seems to be on an implacable upswing everywhere. Richard Abbott, state commissioner of horse racing, told a Times-News reporter recently it’s too early to say the deaths of three horses here in a brief 25-day season sets a pattern or precedent for the coming and ensuing seasons. He was quoted as saying: "Obviously, we're distressed” by the injuries (reluctant, apparently, to use the word “deaths”). “Unfortunately,” he said, “that's a part of the sport."

That doesn’t mean every effort shouldn’t be undertaken to reduce the injuries and deaths to an absolute minimum. For starters, at the very least owners should be required to wait until horses reach physical maturity – at least three years - before putting them on the tracks.

But horse owners and their surrogates won’t go the extra steps to reach that goal unless and until an aroused public outside the racing community demands it. And that’s not going to happen so long as the news media suppress and sugarcoat the ugly realities of horse racing, while glorifying its fantasies.

Merry Christmas

For the information of anyone who has missed my regular blogging, please be advised that I'm increasingly preoccupied with seasonal activities with little time left for posting new items. It's likely there'll be little action on this blog at least through the holidays, although serious issues with the unsavory editorial and journalistic practices of the Erie Times-News continue to pile up. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Joe LaRocca

Much ado about nothing

Remember the anguished wail the Erie Times-News sounded over Summit Township's refusal to give one of its reporter's, on the spot, a copy of its voluminous application for a $14 million grant from the Presque Isle Casino's gaming revenues to cover new infrastructure costs in the township arising from casino activities?

Well there's been a resounding silence from the Times-News since. Seems like its complaint, to quote the Avon bard, was "Much ado about nothing."

Acording to a township spokesperson, a response from the county is expected by year's end. As a reminder, here's my post on the contretemps from Oct 12, 2007, entitled "A lachrymose epistle."

The Erie Times-News mounted its sanctimonious high horse again today with yet another whiny editorial complaining about the Summit Township development authority’s entirely appropriate method of handling one of the newspaper’s reporter’s request for a copy of a voluminous application by the Presque Isle Casino in Summit Township.

The application was for a $14 million county grant to help pay for infrastructure improvements such as roadways, utilities and others necessitated by the installation of the Downs horse racetrack there. At the recent night meeting, the authority voted to forward the completed application to county officials, whose approval of the grant would be required, for their consideration and action.

Despite the newspaper’s lachrymose epistle, its highhanded approach to seeking public information from a public agency at a nighttime meeting of the agency violated all the rules of civil conduct, justifying the low esteem in which newsfolk in general, and those at the Times-News in particular, are held nowadays.[1] The prevailing news and editorial practices of the Erie Times-News indicate why.

As a newspaperman with more than 40 years experience at several newspapers in four states including, among them, The New York Times and, many years ago, The Erie Morning News, I’ve dissected today’s sophomoric Times-News editorial to demonstrate its vacuity.

Editorial: “But when Erie Times-News reporter John Guerriero, acting in the newspaper's role as public watchdog, asked to see the application, the authority said no. It refused a request to allow the public immediate access to a public document.”

Response: This is incorrect.The state law on public records, applicable to municipal subdivisions like Summit Township, provides that public agencies must allow citizens access to public records “during regular business hours.” The meeting in question was held after regular business hours. Nevertheless, the authority did not refuse the reporter’s request to see the application, In fact, the authority’s secretary offered to let him look at it. But he unreasonably insisted on having a copy given to him on the spot. In order to obtain a hard copy, he was told, he would have to submit a request in writing and, if its release were determined to be legal, he would be given a copy after paying reasonable administrative and copying costs, as provided by state law.

Editorial: “This ultimately cost the Erie Times-News $65.50 to get a copy of the document. This would cost you the same, but you can stop by the newspaper to review the document. No charge.”

Response: This is exactly what the authority did, though it wasn’t required to do so by law. It offered to allow the reporter to see the application free of charge at the night meeting. It went above and beyond the legal requirement to accommodate him.

Editorial: “It (what the the authority did) also arrogantly violates the spirit of the law.”

Response: In fact the authority’s action upheld the letter of the law and exceeded its spirit by offering to allow the reporter to see the application without charge at the night meeting, even though it wasn’t required to do so, and its staff and members were fully preoccupied with the urgent business of the meeting. Editorial: “You would no longer have to justify to a public official or bureaucrat why you wanted a public document.”

Response: In fact, existing state law prohibits an agency from asking anyone why he or she wants a copy of any public document. The authority did not ask the Times-News reporter why he wanted a copy of the application.

Editorial: “The new law would begin with the presumption that records held by public agencies are public records.”

Response: The law already ascribes to that presumption, and clearly states what the legal exceptions are to that presumption.

As a multiple award-winning investigative journalist for more than 40 years, I’ve had my battles with public agencies over the release of public information and documents. Despite legal strictures, agency personnel usually have the discretion to waive some or all of them, and can often honor a reasonable request on the spot.

I’ve found that 99 percent of the time, if a reporter approaches agency personnel in a civil manner, they will be more likely to accommodate a request without requiring one to jump through all the legal hoops.

I’ve also tussled with legislative bodies over reforms of freedom of information legislation, and have learned the hard way that it’s a losing battle. The tension between government and those seeking information in its hands will always be with us, with government always holding the upper hand. Reporters and other players seeking access to information in the hands of government and its faceless minions must learn to play by the rules as they are, because the prospects of every changing them are remote or nil.

[1] For example, a new survey from We Media and Zooby Interactive found that 72 percent of survey respondents indicated they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism today, primarily because of lack of trustworthiness.

STILL WANTED: A real public editor

In the guise of a "public editor's" column in today's Erie Times-News, Kevin Cuneo gives us yet another house advertisement heralding the makeover of the paper's weekly Showcase tabloid insert. In retaliation, here's a reprint of my Oct. 21, 2007 post on the subject.

In a recent column, writing as the Erie Times-News’s “public editor,” so-called, Kevin Cuneo introduced by name the “people who represent newspaper’s readers" (Sept. 16, 2007) by serving as volunteers on the Reader Advisory Board. He wrote that they are “the kind of people…who love their daily newspaper, consider it an important part of the community and are never shy about suggesting ways to make it better."

It’s hard for me to believe the board members, who supposedly advise, consult with, discuss and help the editors guide the newspaper's news and editorial content, had anything to do with today’s farcical offering by Cuneo (Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007).Once again, in the guise of the paper’s public editor, Kevin donned his cap as promotions and public relations director to outline a desperation gimmick to increase the company’s declining advertising lineage and readership.

Kevin calls it the “know all about it” program designed to “deliver the details faster and easier than ever before,” (conceding for the first time ever I’m aware of, that the newspaper is less than perfect), apparently a play on the newsboy cry of old, "read all about it." More resembling an in-house ad than a column, today’s “public editor” offering gobbles up about 30 column inches of precious space on the op-ed page which should have been devoted to a serious discussion of public affairs, not to huckstering.

With one broad stroke, Cuneo not only corrupted the position of public editor, but the integrity of the newspaper’s op-ed page as well.If the Times-News reader advisory board is going to serve any useful public service,it could start by urging the newspaper to replace Cuneo with a real public editor who takes the position seriously.

Wrong hed, wrong lede, wrong story

Newspapers are infamous for often writing headlines which don’t match or contradict the ensuing article. The Erie Times-News and the Associated Press trumped that anomaly today by putting together both a headline and a lede paragraph which said just the opposite of the rest of the story.

It exemplifies the folly I discussed in my Nov. 15 post entitled "The news media and gas prices: a self-fulling prophecy" which dealt with news media's attempts to predict the news, rather than simply reporting it.

The headline written by a Times-News rim rat over the AP story reads: “Gas prices fall in Erie, but another rise may be ahead.” The head was virtually echoed by the lede paragraph, written by the AP, which reads: “Gas prices in Erie fell to as (sic) low as $3.09 yesterday, but the low cost may be short-lived.” ( I sicced the preceding sentence because the bizarre syntactical construction “to as” is, to say the least, a superfluous redundancy.” Either “fell to $3.09,” or “as low as $3.09” would suffice).

The article then went on to say: “The Associated Press is reporting a surge in oil prices after a fire broke out late Wednesday at a pipeline carrying crude oil from Canada to the Midwest. The fire in northern Minnesota killed two workers and resulted in the shutdown of five pipelines, sparking concerns that supplies could be interrupted.”

The preceding paragraph would appear to be heading in the direction of the sense of the headline and the lede. But the very next paragraph clearly limns the inherent contradiction. It reads:

"A spokeswoman for owner Enbridge Energy told the AP that (sloppy writing here: “that” is redundant) the company has oil stored along the line and at refineries, the pipelines could be closed for several days without disrupting the flow of supply (my emphasis).

Hence, it's illogical to assume, as the Times-News and the AP falsely did, that lower prices would rise again based upon the information provided. Just the facts, please.

Mob hysteria fuels runway project

Reprint from Nov. 10, 2007

A viral mob hysteria has overtaken Erie county council and executive Mark DiVecchio, egged on by the development-at-any cost crowd and its mouthpiece, the Times Publishing Co., as they prepare to spend some $26 million on runway expansion at the Erie airport to expand services already underutilized by Erie’s anemic air passenger market,which should be directed towards more traditional and critical county needs.

Much of the new-found gaming revenues is earmarked by county politicians for the runway project, despite the fact that nearly half the county’s residents outside city and Millcreek/Summit boundaries will derive little or no benefit from it. Most of the relatively few who use air passenger services at all, prefer to drive to Buffalo, Cleveland or Pittsburgh where a more convenient and timely array of flights await to serve them.

Any benefit to them from this wasteful expenditure is negligible or non-existent.While the county executive and all council members share in the political depravity inherent in the airport runway scheme, the principal culprit is county councilman Kyle Foust, the leader of the runway pack, who is shamefully sacrificing his east county constituency on the altar of his congressional ambitions by pandering to Times-News editorialists and their sycophants.

Proponents claim the runway project is needed to fuel future economic growth which will enhance the entire county. But no one has produced a single credible survey or study to support their contention, nor anything resembling a cost-benefit analysis. Rather, county officials are flying, so to speak, by the seat of their pants.

Unmitigated hogwash

This is a reprint from October 12, 2007

I want to thank Kevin Cuneo, the Erie Times-News’s alleged “public editor,” for making it so easy for a self-appointed critic like yours truly to do my job. Cuneo’s weekly dissertations in his Sunday column purporting to exercise his role in that regard are sitting ducks.The traditional role of public editors is to represent and advocate for the readers’ points of view, not the newspaper’s. Cuneo consistently does just the opposite. Today’s column is a classic example.

Entitled “Keeping secrets almost always the worst policy,” it represents the newspaper’s point of view, not the reader’s, and should have appeared, if at all, as an editorial in the left-hand column of the editorial page, not as a personal column on the op-ed page. It underscores Cuneo’s failure to adhere to the basic tenet which should guide a public editor, namely that he or she’s supposed to be an advocate for the reader, not the newspaper. In that regard, Cuneo’s column gets an F today.

His opening sentence is equally spurious: “It's a point of pride at the Erie Times-News that the newspaper always stands in the center of the arena and fights for citizens' rights.” Unmitigated hogwash. From that self-serving and readily rebuttable statement, Cuneo segues into a petulant ad hominem attack on the Summit Township Industrial & Economic Development Authority (STIEDA).

One of the authority’s members had submitted a Letter to the Editor published last week justifiably chastising the Times-News for distorting the facts in a story and editorial on the authority’s handling of the Presque Isle Casino’s application to the township for $13.8 million from the county’s share of the casino’s multi-million dollar take.John Guerriero, the reporter who wrote the story, had erroneously reported that the authority had denied his request for a copy of the casino’s application.

In fact, in strict accordance with state law, a member of the authority told Guerriero he would have to submit the request for a copy of the application in writing.If, upon review by counsel, it were determined to be a “public record” not protected by law for proprietary or other legal reasons, a copy would be provided to the Times-News upon payment of a fee to cover reasonable administrative and copying costs. That’s exactly what ultimately happened. All on the up and up.

Among other things, the policy protects the authority and township in borderline cases against the possibility of being sued should the confidentiality of the documents sought to be released be required by law.Nevertheless, the Times-News editorialist, in a puerile hissy fit, called the authority’s behavior “outrageous (twice), wrong, galling, arrogant, exasperating,” epithets which more accurately describe the newspaper’s behavior.

The errant editorial also complained that at a previous meeting “the authority unanimously approved a policy against doing such a thing” (releasing public records without legal review).That was, in fact, a plus. It put the news media and others on notice that the authority might sometime in the future invoke what is already allowable under state law, so observers may be prepared for just such an eventuality.

The fact that the Times-News reporter was caught unawares simply demonstrates he hadn’t done his homework.Enter “public editor” Cuneo. In the Letter to the Editor of the Times-News from the chairman of the STIEDA explaining why the authority required a written request for the casino’s application, and chastising the Times-News for misrepresenting the facts, Board Chairman Brian McGowan wrote: “The written request helps STIEDA know exactly what documents are being requested, and it benefits the requester in the case of denial, so he or she can seek the remedies under the act if desired."

“Denial?” Cuneo wrote. “These are public records. How on earth could they be denied to anybody who requests them?” What Cuneo and his cohorts at the Times-News need is a seminar on the state’s public records law. They would learn, among other things, that not all “public records” meet the criteria for release to the press or anyone else. There are many which do not.

The law states, for example, that public records:

(1)“shall not mean any report, communication or other paper, the publication of which would disclose the institution, progress or result of an investigation undertaken by an agency in the performance of its official duties, except those reports filed by agencies pertaining to safety and health in industrial plants (this is known as the investigatory exception);

(2 ) it shall not include any record, document, material, exhibit, pleading, report, memorandum or other paper, access to or the publication of which is prohibited, restricted or forbidden by statute law or order or decree of court (this is known as the statutory and judicial exception);

(3) or which would operate to the prejudice or impairment of a person's reputation or personal security (this is known as the personal reputation and security exception,)

(4) or which would result in the loss by the Commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions or commissions or State or municipal authorities of Federal funds (the jeopardy to public funds exception).Whether the state’s public records law is inadequate (It is), or whether the casino should get the requested $13.8 million (No) are not the issues here; merely whether the authority was right or wrong in acting the way it did, and whether the Times-News’s reaction and Cuneo’s broadside were inappropriate.

Clearly, under the law as it exists, the authority did exactly what it should have done. And the Times-News did what no newspaper should do: abuse the power of the press to castigate blameless public officials who were merely doing what state law authorizes them to do.In a burst of feckless magnanimity, Cuneo wrote in his column today: “The Times-News has a copy of the application document. Anyone wishing to review it can call me. It cost the newspaper $65.50, but you can see it for free.”

So there, STIEDA! I guess he told you! Guerierro’s article, Brian Oberle’s editorial (assuming he wrote it as editor of the editorial page), and Cuneo’s column symbolize the culture of arrogance and expectation of special privilege that has prevailed for decades at the Times Publishing Co. from the top down, even when I worked there more than 40 years ago.

Their wishes, however arbitrary, are not to be opposed, they are to be readily gratified, or one risks being trampled in a virtual stampede of published invective.One minor point about the letter the authority wrote to the editor pointing out the errors in both the reporter's story and the editorial. Normally, letters to the editor which are posted on the online edition of the Times-News remain on the electronic Opinion Page for several days.

But this one was removed after only one day. Petty, petty, petty. Furthermore, there's no doubt in my mind that the authority's letter would have been one of, if not the best read item in the paper that day, and should have appeared on the next day's "Most read Stories" list. But it was deliberately omitted therefrom to spare the Times-News news and editorial staff further embarrassment.

A brilliant idea

Today's reprint is from Oct. 12, 2007.

A special interest group called the Pennsylvania Winery Assn. has advanced a proposal for the state to contribute $500,000 a year to it for the next four years, or $2 million, from the general fund, to subsidize a research and marketing campaign so that its member wineries can thrive, according to an article in the Erie Times-News.

The state already contributes $100,000 to the PWA. But that’s not enough, says North East grape grower and vintner Mario Mazza. “We are asking for something we actually can do something with.”Besides Mazza, the article quotes a spokesperson for the PWA, and two other affluent local winemakers and/or sellers, Doug Morehead and Tim Burch.

The spokesperson, Jennifer Eckinger told a local reporter the number of wineries in Pennsylvania has doubled in the past five years, and could double again with “improved grapes” and a “bigger market.” If the statewide industry doubled between 2002 and 2007 without a $2 million handout, the obvious question is, why can’t it double again without one?

Morehead, a second generation grape grower and vintner, told the reporter: "New York state's investment in the grape and wine industry has provided a return that would make Wall Street green with envv. Research is critical," Morehead said. The $2 million state grant “ would improve our wines and it would definitely speed up the growth we are seeing right now.”And, of course, further enrich them.

If a $2 million research and marketing effort is, as Morehead put it, “critical” to the growth of the state’s wine industry, why shouldn’t the winery owners themselves shell out what they say would equate to 10 cents for every gallon of wine produced, rather than seek a state subsidy?That way, if they like, the wineries could pass on the cost to wine consumers, rather than to the general population, most of whom don’t drink wine, Pennsylvania’s or any other’s.

Burch is quoted as saying: "It would be great if we could get this through. It would do us all a lot of good." Sounds like General Motors talking. Both my grandparents struggled through the Great Depression here in North East before their grape farms prospered during the 1940s and beyond.

The main reason they prospered stemmed not from any state government handout, but from a novel and brilliant idea a shrewd fellow by the name of Jack Kaplan hatched in the early 1950s when he haltingly organized grape farmers into an entity called the National Grape Cooperative.

It enabled them to control their own crop prices and destinies through a marketing arm known as the Welch Grape Juice Co., now Welch Foods, wowing the city slickers down on Wall Street. Doug Morehead’s father was a towering figure in that effort.

If the wineries deserve a state subsidy, why not the men’s store down the street, or the barber shop on the corner, or the hardware store down in the valley, or the restaurant off I-90, or the women’s boutique on Main Street, or the antique shop in the alley, or the book dealer in the strip mall, etc., etc?The Pennsylvania Winery Assn. doesn’t need a $2 million state subsidy to grow its industry. What it needs is a brilliant idea.