In this 2002 file footage, used last week on Channel 21, Bell the Channel 27 reporter chases J.J. Cafaro after Cafaro pleaded guilty to bribery.

Joe Bell certainly had tough days in his old job as a television reporter.

Now, as spokesperson for the Cafaro Company, he’s learning difficulty at a whole new level.

Bell, 51, chased news for WKBN Channel 27 in Youngstown from 1992 to 2007 and had an edge to him.  Though a short fellow, his deep, clear voice was good for a zinger at many a news conference.  He was a newsman in a trade often plied by would-be movie stars.

Tough week

When he joined Cafaro as director of corporate communications in early 2008, he could not have imagined a week like the last one.  Last Monday, J.J. Cafaro pleaded guilty to making an illegal payment to an election campaign of his daughter, Capri, now an Ohio senator. The next day, Flora Cafaro was revealed as the provider of a loan accepted illegally by a Youngstown judge.

These stories surfaced less than two months after Bell’s team announced the retirement of J.J., 58, and his older brother, Anthony, 63, from their leadership positions at the real estate concern in what was described as a transition long in the making.

Last week’s news was tragic in that the Cafaro Company, one of America’s largest shopping center developers and a highly philanthropic and still-Youngstown-based concern, established in the 1940s by J.J.’s father and uncle, is being mentioned alongside serious criminal offenses. So is Senator Cafaro, a respected young stateswoman.

Setting things straight

To minimize the damage, Bell, the family’s Cleveland lawyers and Capri’s personal public relations firm have cut the ribbon on an anchor store full of clarifications, corrections, asterisks, addenda and other ”corporate communications.” To wit:

• J.J. admits illegally advancing $10,000 to Capri’s unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2004. But a formal statement emphasizes that this was a personal action that had nothing to do with his official capacity as executive vice president of the company.
• A person working on Capri’s campaign acknowledges receiving her dad’s $12,000, far above the $2,000 contribution limit. But that does not mean Capri condoned it or was even aware of it. She tells The Vindicator that her father ”has made a habit over the years of doing things and not necessarily telling me about them.”
• Flora Cafaro is identified as the provider of an $18,000 loan to a friend, Maureen Cronin, the ex-judge now headed to prison. But another Cafaro Company statement emphasizes that Flora has no day-to-day involvement with the real estate company. Although The Vindicator digs up a public record in which she lists herself as a Cafaro Company official, Bell clarifies that this information is not accurate.

Time for a change

These are the kinds of clarifications the old Joe Bell may have ripped apart … especially if they were being conveyed by a Congressman, commissioner or contractor charged on the public record, making them safe targets for such rippage.

Today, though, Bell is a contributing author and provider of such clarificata.

“We are only stating what the actual relationships are,” he stated in a phone interview.

“On the whole, our local writers have been fair and balanced,” Bell said of last week’s front page coverage.  “There have been some inaccuracies, but a lot of the stories don’t have an awful lot to do with the work I do.”

He says he has no second thoughts about his leap from Channel 27 to Cafaro.

“I feel the same way as when I first left the news business,” Bell said. “It was time for a change.”