Hartford, CT – A consumer watchdog columnist was fired from a Hartford newspaper he had worked at for forty years after writing a piece that exposed allegations against retail giant Sleepy’s for selling second-hand mattresses as new—including one with bedbugs.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Despite the case being currently under investigation by the Connecticut attorney general, the Hartford Courant refused to publish George Gombossy’s exposé on one of their largest advertisers.
Gombossy quotes a report from a NJ environmental group that was brought in to exterminate bedbugs out of a box spring he had recently purchased at Sleepy’s and appeared to have been previously used.
The report found that the “box spring … was the culprit. There were bedbugs inside and the box spring did not look like it was new.”
Gombossy has published the column on a new watchdog blog he started, where he prefaces it by saying, “This was the first time in my 40 years at The Courant that an investigation by the attorney general was withheld from the public.”
His site invites advertisers with the caveat “you will be treated the same as non-advertisers.”
welcome to comunist america…
How is this “comunist”? If anything, it is capitalist – the paper wants to profit from the advertiser at all costs.
I hope he sues the pants of the newspaper and the paper has shown that they have no credibiltry
I have seen magazines, and or web sites than can be very critical of their biggest advertiser. for example cnet or Zdnet can be very harsh on Microsoft and tell you Firefox is better than Microsoft explorer (Microsoft must be one in not their biggest advertiser)
they claim-that the company keeps two completely separate divisions editorials and advertised. And the two are not aloud to mingle so as to influence the reviews of products
Simply they said, if not and our editorials are biased to the advertiser the public w ill know we will lose our credibility and our magazine and web site would be worthless
You didn’t think that the companies with a return policy on mattresses threw them out – did you? It’s a high profit item, but not that high.
Welcome to Corporate controlled, for profit media in the U.S. Walter Cronkite and Edward Morrow are spinning in their graves. The papers are turning into partisan opinionated garbage and no neutral investigative reporting. The networks and cable news are turning into spectacles and divisive political drama shows and again no neutral reporting. Without honest journalism, our liberties will be threatened.
bedbugs are rampant these days for some unknown reason. wait till the kids come home from camp and bring along the little buggers with them!
I don’t know about Sleepy’s and it doesn’t make sense that they would do such a thing and take a chance, but this is nevertheless a big problem because it is very easy to turn an old mattress into a new one and no one will know. Turning old mattress into new ones is a big business, but who buys them, the hotels? I have never seen for sale a mattress saying that it is a refurnished one.