Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg, The Plain Dealer has editorially endorsed and again slanted its news coverage for the Cuyahoga County sales tax increase for a medical mart and convention center. The most recent example is the July 28 Saturday Plain Dealer article titled “Petitions for vote on sales tax.”
Of course you could not ignore this news, since the Cleveland TV stations and radio stations have been broadcasting this news since Wednesday that Zack Reed and others will try to get enough petition signatures to put the county sales tax increase on the ballot. So finally you published this very important news July 28, but only as ONE PARAGRAPH to try to minimize it, rather than the full-length so-called news stories you have publihed in the past few weeks, in which The Plain Dealer has promoted the medical mart, and a new convention center and county sales tax increase to pay for both, as corporate welfare.
It is a catastrophe for Greater Cleveland that you became editor of the Plain Dealer, as your misleading editorials and slanted news reporting for this sales tax increase shows. A lot of pro-sales tax propaganda by your newspaper.
You are fortunate that the alternative news media in town, scant and sleepy as it is, have virtually ignored this big issue and the Plain Dealer’s slanted coverage of it. When and if they wake up, they will run you out of town. You are lucky that the weekly Sun newspapers of Greater Cleveland are owned by the same putrid company that owns the Plain Dealer.
This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2007.