Dear Naedine Hazell and Jeff Levine,
As an occasional reader of the Hartford Courant, I read with painful amusement your shamefully disingenuous staff memo “explaining” why you fired George Gombossy and pulled his consumer protection column in what appears to be an effort to protect a major advertiser’s right to continue selling used, bed bug-infested mattresses as new.
Did you really think anyone on your news staff would be persuaded by your silly spin? Hello! They’re news people. Their job requires seeing through self-serving bullshit.
Perhaps your memo was meant to persuade readers and other outside parties. If so, you underestimated them too.
You’ve turned the Courant into a journalistic disgrace.
Andrew Skolnick
This is an outrage! I’m going to start a writing campaign to ALL Courant advertisers complaining about the paper’s credibility and to dissuade the from advertising with the paper. If the Courant’s ethics can be so easily sold, perhaps it can be bought back with income loss of other retailers who care.
As somone who just kind of discovered you blog, let me give you all the kudos I can muster for your efforts to give the consumer the information power they need to make informed decisions and in the case of Sleepy’s, to perhaps get the authorities to shut this health-menace down. When it comes to your former employer, that unfortunately has been the trademark of the so-called rags here in the South, particularily South Carolina, which have lied to the citizenry for decades. Only when an outside newspaper (used to be the Charlotte(NC) Observer) scooped a story “The State” or the “News and Courier” ignored, did either paper finally jump on board. Now to give them credit, it was “The State” that broke the story on Mark “The Lazitarian” Sanford’s affair, but they (The State) had concrete proof of his misdoing months before they published it, making them tools of just another political agenda..
If it’s a crooked university (USC Gamecocks), true crime statistics, OR anyone going against the status quo, Pravda, ie “The State” and the other small papers in this state of small, cowardly carpetbaggers, do all they can to promote and perpetuate the “big lie”so as to not stir a complacent, docile populi. However, because of courageous bloggers like yourself the same populace is waking up to demand accountability from the powers that be in the private and public sector
My point is that it’s great that you all have nailed the Courant in their lies and have proven the current management unworthy to be called “journalists”. I say “bring them to their senses or bring them to their knees”. Let the clear message be, that IF you violate the public trust, you will be replaced with someone who can restore it.
Again, congratulations on being the Courageous Watchdog you are!