Star Propaganda Campaign To Promote New Pacer Subsidy Kicks Into Gear

Now that the Star and their fellow cohorts in the news media successfully shoved down our throats another massive public works project, it's time to move on to the next project: another big tax give-away to support a professional sports franchise. The Star's media campaign on behalf of those poor, ailing Indiana Pacers is self-evident today. Erika Smiths gives us a story about what an economic boon Conseco Fieldhouse has meant for downtown. "You'd never know it today, but 10 years ago, before the neon-trimmed bars, before the valet parking, before the families toting Indiana Pacers memorabilia across Pennsylvania Street, the south end of Downtown was a pretty vacant place," she writes. "Conseco Fieldhouse helped change all that," she adds.

The funny thing about this story is that I read the complete opposite in the IBJ awhile back about how neither Lucas Oil Stadium nor Conseco Fieldhouse had provided the economic boon to their respective areas as some had predicted. Contrary to what Smith says in her story, the area around Conseco Fieldhouse is one of the deadest downtown in the evening when there isn't an event going on at Conseco Fieldhouse, which would be most of the time. Figure this is just the first of many stories the Star will begin to run in an effort to convince you that the billionaire Simons should get another $15 million a year of your money because of the team's important value to the local economy. Of course, don't expect the Star to disclose its own conflict of interest, including a loan it agreed to extend to the CIB to construct Conseco Fieldhouse, which has been deferred for many years, helping to cover up the extent of the CIB's financial woes. You see, the Star chose to fore go repayment of millions of dollars owed to it for its original Circle Centre Mall investment that got diverted to Conseco at a time when it has been laying off employees left and right and cutting their salaries so it could assist in the bailout of the CIB.

Jeff Rabjohns had a front page story on this Indiana Shrine, which you can read by clicking here. Yeah, the public relations firms are making the rounds in the Star newsroom providing ready-made script for reporters all too anxious to please them.