Hearst Newspaper Company Senior Vice President Lincoln Millstein continues to slime Democrats in his Greewich Time blog, "Lincoln's Log". Let's keep this straight: Millstein is one of just four senior vice presidents in the entire company, and he reports to the company president. He is also the Senior VP responsible for all digital media at Hearst. Yet he promotes his own blog on the online edition of the newspaper for which he's responsible. And he still continues to mislead readers by not clearly identifying himself. The front page of his blog only says, "Lincoln Millstein offers his unique views and insights on Greenwich and its community". No mention on the front page that he's a senior executive, senior, in fact to everyone working at Greenwich Time.
He writes a very twisted version of the truth:
"(In a previous post, I was lambasted for referencing dictator Chang Kai-shek's regime, under which I spent my formative years, because he built both good schools and police stations."
No, I lambasted him for comparing the government and political system of Greenwich to the repressive regime of Chang Kai-Shek. He was not criticized for saying that Chang built good schools and police stations. That speaks volumes about the low standard of journalistic ethics with Millstein and Hearst. His suggesting that our town government in any way was equivalent to Chang's repressive dictatorship was highly insulting. But Millstein doesn't seem to think insulting our town's government in that manner is a problem.
The funny thing is that he is also writing critically about the town's educational system, which their education beat reporter Colin Gustafson refuses to criticize. Now how is it that a senior VP is writing about education in Greenwich Time when the paper has its own education reporter? Talk about making his own employees look bad. Is he sending Gustafson a message? If so, it's a lousy, very public way to embarrass one of the newspaper's reporters.
He writes:
School board issues self-congratulatory report on latest test scores (what's more important is not whether scores go up or down in one year or another. How we compare to the rest of the state is more important. I will follow with a detailed analysis in a separate post ...)
He says that comparison with other towns is most important. But shouldn't that message be conveyed by the GT publisher or editor to Gustafson? Why is Millstein trying to show him up? No class, that's for sure. Colin, get your resume together.
Why Hearst permits a senior executive to write a blog insulting local political leaders, while continuing to mislead readers by not pointing out clearly his position in the organization is inexplicable. The only answer is that the organization has no attachment to journalistic ethics.
Yep, Millstein is slamming Democrats again. He writes, again misleadingly:
Democratic Town chairman Dave Roberson standing on behalf of a tax collector candidate who is a Pat Buchanan supporter (This reinforces my long-standing tenet that Greenwich really does not have a two-party system. Instead it's a coalition government with different parties in name only).
Let's keep in mind how Millstein has insulted town Democrats. He said that U.S. Congressman Jim Himes and state attorney general Blumenthal might live in Greenwich, "but they're not welcome here." Can anyone imagine how a senior vice president for the newspaper group that exercises a virtual monopoly in Southwestern Connecticut could actually write on his publication's website that two of the state's most senior elected officials "aren't welcome" in their hometowns? And let's keep in mind that newspapers are supposed to work very hard to maintain unbiased reporting so that their reputation for ethical journalism isn't impaired. Not Millstein and Hearst, though! You know exactly how much they hate Democrats.
Millstein's been going after Democratic Town Committee chairman Roberson for months. Now think of what message this sends to the reporters at Greenwich Time, and at other Hearst publications for that matter. If they want to keep their jobs, are they going to pen articles that refer to DTC members or other DTC chairmen favorably? When one of the five top executives in the company has gone out of his way to demonstrate his utter contempt for Democrats in this state? A reporter would have to be brain-damaged to write anything favorable about a Democratic politician. Would an ethical publication ever in a million years permit a senior executive like Millstein to write such scathing criticisms of any politician? Of course not.
Of course, this isn't an ethical publication. It's the right-wing rag that employs Neil Vigdor at Greenwich Time, the right-winger who's been well known as a Democrat basher for years. Hearst's flagship publication in Connecticut is Connecticut Post, whose political reporter Ken Dixon is the guy who referred to newly-elected congressman Jim Himes as a "forty two year-old blank slate". So there is certainly a pattern of right-wing sleaze here, and, as the Asian expression goes, "a fish rots from the head."
I don't expect Millstein to stop sliming Democrats; I don't expect anyone at Hearst or Greenwich Time to suddenly develop respect for journalistic ethics. But no one should give these hacks a free pass on their biased reporting and journalistic sleaze.
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