Barbara Marino's Letter To The Ocean Star

Editor, The Ocean Star:

Oh my gosh! On the morning of Oct. 21, the top headline on page one of a large, local daily newspaper was absurd and conspicuously wrong in its placement.

The very headline is inaccurate, perpetrating a falsehood spread by Susan Rogers, a candidate running for mayor. While the headline reads “Point Pleasant, NJ, candidate charges board member attacked her son, 12, on Facebook,” the reporter states that the board member said she did not condone what was said! The board member, according to article, did not attack, cyber-bully or anything even remotely similar. Yet, the article continues its obvious mistakes with the first sentence, stating “politics in this town have become so nasty…” There is much wrong with that sentence, but two things for starters: one, it is Rogers who has engaged in salt-the-earth character assassination politics since the day she first appeared on the scene, but also it makes it seem that her adversaries are doing the same thing, when all that has come out from the campaign of Schroeder, Goss and Rusk has been on the issues.

I cannot believe that there were no other newsworthy stories for the front page. Let’s see if I can help. Page Ten, “Garden State lost 20,200 jobs in September”. That story relates to the whole state, not just a town and a town of people who know the truth about how dirty Ms. Rogers runs her campaigns. If the newspaper wanted to stay with the “harassing” issue, the article at the bottom of B1, “Brick man pleads guilty to threatening Latino groups” was much more newsworthy and definitely a true case of cyber-bullying. Why was it relegated to the bottom of B1? Was it because it did not involve Ms. Rogers and her attempt to arouse sensationalism making her a victim just before the election?

If Ms. Rogers was truly concerned with her son’s well-being, she would have quietly had the post removed and quietly addressed the issue with the person involved — who was neither the board member or Mr. Goss. Instead, she e-mailed the press — publicizing the issue for her own personal political ambition rather than considering the well-being of her son, and how so much press on this issue would affect the poor boy.

Mr. Goss’s comments are right on target — too bad his comments were tucked at the end of the article. Ms. Rogers’ using police power to harass her political opponent is unethical and an abuse of power. That is the real story here. Too bad we don’t have a newspaper to report it.

The above letter is my opinion and does not reflect any other’s views or the views of any other newspaper.

BARBARA MARINO
Howe Street, Point Pleasant