Dear Editor,
When he owned the “Hoboken Reporter,” Joe Barry allowed for stories whose contents ran counter to his business interests, contends Tom Jenneman in last week’s cover story.
But Jenneman’s biased reporting betrays his own contention and shows, sadly, that the Hoboken Reporter is still under Barry’s sway.
Balance is a key to objective journalism; a reporter achieves balance by giving each side of an issue, or a story, or a story about a prominent person in this case, equal say.
Jenneman’s story on Barry was clearly unbalanced.
Towards the end of the story, he quoted three sources who heaped praise on Barry. One was Barry himself – surely an unbiased source on himself. The second was a crossing guard and Applied Housing tenant; the third was a former mayor of Bayonne. Yet oddly, Jenneman quoted no one who disapproved of Barry.
Thus the imbalance, thus the bias in his reporting.
So perhaps the “Hoboken Reporter” is willing to make up for Jenneman’s reportorial lapse by including this dispraise of Barry, from one who has for years watched his developments turn Hoboken into a more congested, expensive, less livable place to live.
To to my mind, Barry’s developments have served one overriding purpose: to enrich himself. That he now faces serious bribery charges moreover shows that he — and a jury will soon decide this — enriched himself unethically and, alas, at the expense of residents.
Robert Florida