Expert Insights and Journalistic Failures
Readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with, and possibly sick of, my fixation over the sanitary condition of Delaney Hall. I’ve written four posts on the subject.

On June 24, I challenged New Jersey State Senator Holly Schepisi’s whitewash of the state health department’s report on Delaney Hall. On June 25, I took issue with Politico’s misreporting on the subject. On June 27, I took issue with NJ.com’s misreporting on the subject. And on July 2, I responded to Holly Schepisi’s incredibly stupid attempt to “respond” to my earlier challenge. Since then, I’ve demanded that all three of them–Schepisi, Politico, and NJ.com–retract or correct the false claims they’ve made on the subject. Schepisi has served up evasive bullshit; Politico and NJ.com have simply stonewalled and gone silent.

In the meantime, I made contact with Professor Donald W. Schaffner, Chair of the Department of Food Science at Rutgers University, and a Distinguished Professor there. I asked Schaffner to read my blog posts on Delaney and give me an objective assessment of the health-related claims I made in them. A week later, he sent me a very thorough report, which I’ll quote and paraphrase in a future post here.

For now I’ll just say that while Schaffner found some minor errors or misstatements on matters of detail, he not only agreed with my fundamental assessment of the state health report, but in certain respects went beyond it. He described some of the lapses at Delaney Hall “egregious,” and ended his report by saying: “I think the conditionally satisfactory inspection results indicate that it’s entirely possible that a facility like this might have maggots.” In other words, expert opinion suggests that the detainees’ complaints were plausible.

I just noticed an extensive report in yesterday’s New York Times that vindicates my own views on this topic as well as Schaffner’s comments, and also vindicates the criticisms I’ve been making of Schepisi, Politico, and NJ.com.

The Times’s reporters did what I myself had wanted to do, but lacked the resources to do. The May 28 New Jersey Department of Health inspection report not only demanded future inspections, but made reference to past ones. The obvious thing to do–the obvious thing for a bona fide journalist to do–was to make an OPRA request, to demand the documentation on past inspections, and to look at the medical histories of patients transported to local hospitals under emergent conditions. That’s what the Times did.

The result is a journalistic bomb shell. What becomes clear is not only that there is a documented pattern of complaints consistent with the findings of the May 28 report, but that the Schepisi-Politico (and in some respects NJ.com) claim that the state had issued a “Satisfactory” finding is pure DHS propaganda.

The Department of Homeland Security said in an emailed statement that the state’s lawsuit was frivolous and noted that the state Health Department’s kitchen inspection in late May had determined that conditions were overall satisfactory.

No, they didn’t. The inspection determined that conditions were Conditionally Satisfactory, which is not Satisfactory. I’ve said that before, but I’ll repeat it as many times as I need to. This is not a tough call. It’s not a matter of “opinion.” The May 28 health department report did not give Delaney Hall a Satisfactory rating. Sorry.

I wish the Times had focused more specifically on this issue: it’s the central lie that Delaney’s apologists are promulgating. And at this point, it can only be described as a lie. What’s shocking is not just that DHS is telling this lie (we should at this point assume that anything DHS says is a lie until proven otherwise), but that a state senator and two respected media outlets are unapologetically repeating the lie, straight out of the DHS playbook. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

It’s well past time for candor. Schepisi and Politico are lying to us. And NJ.com is putting its embarrassing incompetence on public display. These parties are, in full knowledge of the facts, going out of their way to mislead the public, punching down at the detainees in the process, and evading the fact that the stakes involved are a matter of life and death. Given the chance to recant obvious error, they have refused to acknowledge it, refused to take responsibility for it, and gone silent. That’s not acceptable. These people have committed the intellectual and journalistic equivalent of a crime. There has to be some accountability. I go back to my days in hospital EVS and think: if I had, in the OR, done one fraction of what these people have done, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. This can’t be forgiven.

So far, only one publication seems to have followed up on the Times’s report, an Italian paper called La Voce di New York. Sad but true: as was true of the Civil Rights struggle of the 60s, foreign journalists seem more engaged by Delaney Hall than homegrown ones. It’s a scandal–both the conditions themselves, and the reporting on them–but I think the Times’s report signals the beginning of the end for Delaney’s apologists: their story, implausible to begin with, is falling apart. But there’s more to say; I’ll write it up when I get the chance–including Schaffner’s report on my posts, my unanswered letters to Politico and NJ.com, and a fresh critique of Schepisi on a slightly different topic. Stay tuned.