PLAIN DEALER'S IDEA OF "CITIZEN'S COMMITTEE"

Submitted by Roldo on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 13:33.

This is how distortion gets mistaken for reality. This is where propaganda outdoes truth.

The Plain Dealer this a.m. in its crusade for the Medical Mart calls the group that selected the Tower City site a “citizen’s committee.”

That’s really reporting very loosely with the truth - to describe a group that is entirely made up of Corporate/Corporate controlled individuals as representing the vast citizenry, thus the public. There isn’t a normal “citizen” on the committee because they are all related to the corporate community and its self-interests.

Below are the members of the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) Site Selection Committee. You tell me if they qualify to be called “a citizen committee?”

- Christopher Connor, CEO, Sherwin-Williams.
- Alexander Cutler, CEO, Eaton Corp.
- David Daberko, former chairman, National City Bank.
- Andrew Jackson, VP, Greater Cleveland Partnership.
- Henry Meyer III, CEO, Key Corp. also chairman GCP.
- Fred Nance, managing partner, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey.
- Tim Reynolds, president, Tribute, Inc.
- Dennis Roche, president, Positively Cleveland (Visitors & Convention Bureau.)
- Joe Roman, CEO, Greater Cleveland Partnership.
- Jerry Sue Thornton, president, Cuyahoga Community College. (Also a GCP member and on the board of directors of RPM Industries, Applied Industrial Technologies and American Greetings.)
- Kurt Treu, regional chairman, U. S. Bancorp.
- Les Vinney, former CEO, Steris Corp.
- Helen Williams, program director, Cleveland Foundation.

By describing the decision as one by a “citizen committee” we are being told that our peers have decided this. However, this is completely untrue. A small, select and biased group of business people have decided this for the community.

Even more disgusting, the decision is a $1 billion PUBLIC decision, using Cuyahoga County taxes.

Further, the entire Page One story is a distortion of the truth.

It quotes as an unbiased “expert” a long-time advocate of convention center business Bruce Harris. Now, Harris may not have any ulterior reasons to bless the Tower City site as the best. The question is, however, is this the best person for a newspaper to quote exclusively – WITH NO BALANCE AS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT SUGGEST OTHERWISE – since this has been his life’s work. Indeed, his passion.

Harris is going to be honored, in fact, at the “2009 Professional Convention Management Association Education Foundation Dinner Celebrating Professional Achievement” (that’s a mouthful) in April in Washington, D. C.

He is this year’s honoree, along with two others.

“The accomplishments of these three industry leaders are truly exceptional. They’ve dedicated their careers to advancing the meetings industry and their passion is unmatched,” according to the event’s president and CEO.

Now, isn’t it convenient for the Plain Dealer to headline this “expert” as a result of a private meeting between Harris and PD reporters, editors and publisher Terry Egger?

That tells me up to the PD publisher they don’t know at the Plain Dealer what a “citizen” is. Certainly, they don’t know what an unbiased source might be.

No wonder the paper’s such a cheerleader without the ability to serve the community without bias and self-dealing.

It’s also interesting that Harris tells the Plain Dealer that one of the greatest assets of this Tower City site is that visitors never have to set foot on a Cleveland street!

Here’s how the PD put it: “Because it is so well ‘connected,’ Harris said. Conventioneers and trade-show visitors could reach it from the airport, move to an adjacent hotel, eat and be entertained without venturing outdoors much, if at all.”

Now there’s a good reason to spend $1 billion to attract “business” to Cleveland.

Harris also is wrong that “hotels are blocks away” from the present Convention Center. The Marriott hotel is diagonally a block away.
How can you trust a publication with such distorted thinking?

( categories: )

An e-mail from a friend

An e-mail from a friend reminds me that other nearby hotels to the present Convention Center include the Sheraton on St. Clair and E. 6th, across from the Center. I might add the Hyatt at The Arcade on 6th and Superior, a city block away and there are others a few blocks away, including a Hampton Inn on E. 9th and Superior.

Also notice that the Pee Dee

Also notice that the Pee Dee in its editorial today uses not "citizen's committee" in its description of the site selection committee but "a committee of business and civic leaders." That giving a loose interpretation of what constitutes "civic" representation.

mixed metaphors, massaged message

"Here’s how the PD put it: Because it is so well ‘connected,’ Harris said."

He was talking about buildings and keeping your feet dry - but this actually applies to the players. The pd editorial page has passed the cheerleader stage - in sports, cheerleaders pay attention to how the game is going. Here we have a ventriloquist act with an assortment of talking dummies. Same words coming out of the mouths of different puppets.

I'm sure the pd is concerned for the future of the city - after all, their own existence depends on it. But, like Bush, they seem incapable of looking back, of recognizing prior mistakes and at least learning from them. They don't even need to do the research - Roldo and others have laid it out for them. Mesmerized by the animation, they confuse it with reality. When they do look for an 'outside opinion' they seek confirmation, not confrontation. And consultants deliver the answers you want. Their jobs depend on it.

This has damaged their paper as well as the region. Since it is no longer trusted as an impartial inspector - checking for body filler under the new paint job - eyes are going elsewhere to learn the facts. Fewer readers, fewer reporters, thinner stories and smaller papers. Notably, if the promised prosperity of earlier projects had paid off then we would now have more jobs and fewer foreclosures. Trickle down from the Cleveland power bower would have funded the schools and repaid the region. But it didn't. And it won't. They're playing with a marked deck.

Since the PD won't even recognize how they've been duped before there is no chance they will examine the present claims. We need some evidence based advocacy - not a few voices engineered to sound like an orchestra.

I'm sure Obama knows how worthless is our PD

I'm not at all worried that Obama will be fooled by the crap in the PD - he and his staff have been monitoring it for years... their last endorsement of Bush probabaly stirred Obama as much as the rest of us around the world... - so I don't expect the PD will have any influence on Federal fiunds, which is the most important thing right now.

Where the PD should be concerned is that nobody else is fooled by the crap in the PD any more, and there will be stronger replacements growing faster in the new economy.

Disrupt IT

Medical mart's credibility issue

I found the title of this PD editorial ironic - "Medical mart's credibility issue" - as the lack of credibility of the PD is core to the lack of credibility of the MedCon and all things called Econ Dev in NEO. 

Disrupt IT