Real LI

An East Hampton Press columnist wrote a two-part opinion column excoriating people in the real estate community for accusing his paper and The East Hampton Star of being paid off to keep a story out of its pages "about a prominent real estate broker who supposedly decked his wife at an East Hampton restaurant." The Star looked for a police report on the incident, and could not find one. (Neither could Newsday.) Tom Clavin goes on: "At least a dozen people in the past two weeks, separately, maintained they knew that the real reason that the incident had not been reported in the East Hampton newspapers was the advertising salespeople at those newspapers put pressure on the editors to keep the story out of print. This is, of course, absurd."