The reason, after so many crappy years, we still love the Times
In John Ford’s great film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, someone says, “When legend becomes fact, print the legend.” So it goes with the death of Cesar A. Borja, the New York City policer office who, claimed the dailies, rushed to Ground Zero right after September 11th, pulling 16 hour volunteer shifts in the toxic fires, heroism that eventually led to his death this January 23rd from pulmonary fibrosis. The Daily News and the Post carried the story for days, following Borja’s son Cesar Jr. as he appeared at the State of the Union Address, as he met with Hillary Clinton and President Bush, as he cried. Now a team of New York Times reporters, asking the hard questions none of the dailies would, reports that Borja Sr. first appeared near Ground Zero on December 24, 2001, several days after the fires were out, and that he worked a few blocks away, directing traffic. And he didn’t volunteer. And, most importantly, he smoked a pack a day for years.
This sucks. Not because the Daily News and the Post are acting like the Daily News and the Post, but because when we worked at the Village Voice, fact checkers held our feet to the flames till we provided a valid source for every single syllable we wrote. Dang, we couldn’t make anything up.
Posted in The City on February 13th, 2007 | 
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March 21st, 2007 at 11:07 pm
The “reports that the officer did not show up untill Dec 24.” Who reported this? Many of the FD &PD put in hours on scene in the immediate aftermath. Verify? Please! The radios didn’t even work for God’s sake.
Why were all the Wall St. briefcase-carrying-crowd doled out millions with no questions asked? When a fireman or policeman or paramedic puts in for a simple diability claim, the burden of proof is on the civil servant.
A pack-a-day smoker commuting to the twin towers, who worked for a big multinational, had to prove nothing. Why the double standard? You call us “heroes” out of one side of your mouths, then testify against legitimate claims with the other side to keep taxes down. This is why that old retired fireman that President Bush grabbed,(It might as well have been Clinton-Shumer), seemed so surreal and out of place.
We protect you and your families. We respond with great urgency to your calls for assistance, no matter how benign. Now we need your help. Will anyone respond to the first responders?