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Was the Stuart case a wake-up call for the media? The Globe’s answer: Yes, but not enough.

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On December 11, 2023

In Media

Greg Moore: “In retrospect, I don’t trust anything or anybody.” Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

The Boston Globe, as promised, has published an epilogue to its series on the Carol and Charles Stuart case that takes on “the media’s sins.” That reckoning takes the form of a commentary by columnist Adrian Walker, one of four reporters on the project and the narrator of podcast version. Super-brief recap: In October 1989, Charles Stuart, a white man from the suburbs, murdered his pregnant wife in Mission Hill and was seriously injured himself. He blamed it all on a “Black man” and jumped to his death from the Tobin Bridge several months later while the police were closing in.

Not surprisingly, a good chunk of Walker’s piece focuses on former Globe columnist Mike Barnicle, who wrote several racist columns as well as a news story that turned out to be false about an insurance scheme Charles Stuart had supposedly concocted. As Walker observes, Barnicle was fixated on trashing the lead suspect in the case, William Bennett, even after Bennett had been exonerated following Stuart’s fatal jump. I quoted from one of those columns last week, and Walker cites another in which Barnicle made much of Bennett’s seventh-grade report card. Barnicle wrote of Bennett:

The man’s pathetic, violent history is so much a part of the unyielding issues of race, crime and drugs tearing daily at America that it is amazing how any black minister or black politician could ever stand up and howl in public that his arrest was a product of police bigotry and a volley of discrimination aimed at all black residents of Boston.

Remember, this was published after Bennett had been cleared. But as Walker writes, Barnicle was carrying water for the Boston Police, including his brother, the late Paul Barnicle, a homicide detective. Barnicle, not surprisingly, refused to give a substantive interview to the Globe.

We also hear quite a bit from Renée Graham, who, like Walker, was a young reporter at the Globe in 1989 and is now a columnist. The perspective of two Black journalists, Walker and Graham, is fascinating, especially since Walker believes the city’s media coverage of race has improved more (but not enough) than Graham does. “I don’t know that journalism has gotten better since the Stuart case,” Graham said. “You know, I think that the media still is attracted to heat, not light. Like you always say, this is what changed everything. But it didn’t change anything. I mean, look, they couldn’t even write a damn correction, a change, nothing.”

Also quoted is Greg Moore, who at the time was the Globe’s assistant managing editor for local news, later rose to become managing editor (No. 3 in the hierarchy), and still later became the top editor at The Denver Post — the most prominent Black editor in the country until Dean Baquet became executive editor of The New York Times. “In retrospect, I don’t trust anything or anybody,” Moore told the Globe. “You know, if somebody tells me something like that, I want to know exactly, what is that based on? And again, I think that’s another legacy of Stuart, at least for me.”

What struck me more than anything in reading the series was the disproportionate amount of attention given to the murder at a time when people of color were meeting the same fate on a regular basis. Indeed, Walker revisits a story that then-Globe reporter Eileen McNamara wrote explicitly to draw that contrast. As McNamara wrote: “James Moody, 29, was shot to death only a few hours after a robber attacked Carol and Charles Stuart outside Brigham & Women’s Hospital Monday night. But no calls were heard at the State House for tougher sentencing practices.”

Like the Stuarts, I’m white and I live in the suburbs, so I have no direct experience with the racism that people of color continue to experience every day. It seems better, and I guess it is. If an incident similar to the murder of Carol Stuart happened today, I think the police and the media would be much quicker to ask questions about the husband’s role. And yet I’m sure that such incident would still draw outsize attention. Look at how quickly the Black Lives Matter movement that reignited after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor curdled into renewed fears of crime, even though statistics showed that there had been very little in the way of an upsurge.

Let’s give the last word to Walker: “For a time, the case sparked an unusual spate of self-examination in the press. But the questions it raised — about how to cover communities of color and about whose stories are valued — were never resolved and resonate to this day.”

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The Globe, the Stuart murder and what lessons the case holds for Boston’s future

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On December 6, 2023

In Media

Montage of front pages via CommonWealth Beacon

The Boston Globe’s multimedia series on Charles and Carol Stuart, “Nightmare in Mission Hill,” is good and important work. Everyone who wants to understand Boston and its racist past (and present) should read it. Especially impressive is the layered approach: a deeply reported text-based story, audio clips, a podcast, a documentary film, photos, front pages and documents.

Going into it, I wondered what I could possibly learn given how much those of us who were here were immersed in the tragedy at the time. If you’re new to Boston, the Stuarts were a white couple from the suburbs who, in October 1989, were shot while they were driving home from a childbirth class at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Carol Stuart and her unborn child died; Charles Stuart lived and told police they had been shot by a Black man. The city’s Black neighborhoods were turned upside down until, finally, law enforcement identified a career criminal named William Bennett as the likely shooter. But they later came to believe that the actual shooter was Charles Stuart himself and, with the police likely to arrest him at any moment, he jumped off the Tobin Bridge to his death.

The case was one of the most notorious crimes in Boston history, up there with the Boston Strangler and Sacco and Vanzetti. And you might wonder why investigators didn’t alight on the most obvious suspect, Charles Stuart, right from the start. The series answers that question. First, the trauma surgeon who operated on Charles determined that he couldn’t have shot himself given the angle of the bullet’s entry; and second, he nearly died from his wounds.

Given that 34 years have passed, it was hard for me to sort out what I learned from the series and what I might have known at one time but had forgotten. So I appreciate the Globe’s laying out its new findings in the eighth and final part. Among the revelations:

  • Police ignored evidence implicating Charles Stuart and sidelined two detectives who’d suspected him from the earliest days of their investigation.
  • The Stuarts and people around them couldn’t keep their mouths shut. By the time Charles Stuart finally jumped, more than 30 people knew that he had put together the plot himself. Yet the secret, such as it was, held, and at least two attempts to blow the whistle on Charles went nowhere.
  • Matthew Stuart, Charles’ brother, may have been more than an innocent dupe, as he had always been portrayed. The Globe found that “evidence points to Chuck’s brother, Matthew, playing a much larger role in the shooting than previously known, running counter to his claims he was tricked into helping get rid of the murder weapon.”

The series is not perfect. Matthew Stuart’s 2011 death from an overdose is relegated to a separate timeline, which a lot of readers aren’t going to see. More significant is that the Globe makes little effort to deal with the media’s shortcomings and failures. Certainly the media couldn’t solve the crime independently, and the severity of Charles Stuart’s wounds served to insulate him from closer scrutiny. Still, the press at that time, rather than serving as an independent monitor of power, went along for the ride.

I see that there’s an epilogue coming soon called “Media Sins.” I’ll be reading that closely. But even at the time it was clear that the media had failed in several ways, as Alex S. Jones detailed in The New York Times (free link) several weeks after Charles Stuart’s death. Jones’ explosive lead: “The tangled Stuart murder case has been a near-obsession for this city’s news organizations for the past three months, but the character and tone of their reporting coverage have prompted charges that the press has been racist, incompetent and reckless.”

Jones took on the Globe and the Boston Herald, then a much more robust daily paper than it is today, for running with anonymously sourced tips that didn’t pan out, such as a Globe report that Stuart had plotted his wife’s death as part of an insurance scheme so that he could start a restaurant and a Herald story that Stuart had been treated for cocaine addiction. Jones also wrote:

Critics have also said that the city’s news organizations allowed themselves to be manipulated by law enforcement agencies. For instance, during the investigation, two black men were identified at different times in news reports by anonymous police sources as the “primary suspect,” though there was no direct evidence against either one. Critics say this is a tactic investigators sometimes use to advertise for evidence.

Even after William Bennett’s exoneration following Charles Stuart’s death, then-Globe columnist Mike Barnicle wrote a column (available in databases but not on the open web) defending the police and blasting leaders in the Black community who were attempting to shine a light on the racism that undergirded much of the police response.

“Naturally, a pack of publicity hounds within the black community — a few ministers and headline-hunting politicians now passing themselves off as skilled homicide investigators — jumped on Bennett’s arrest as proof of a racist plot by the white power structure to make every black man, woman and child in Boston out as ruthless, bloodthirsty criminals,” Barnicle wrote in a column that appeared on Jan. 9, 1990, five days after Charles Stuart’s fatal jump. He added: “I guess they are upset because nobody thought to beat the truth out of Stuart that night in the hospital after he had shot and very nearly killed himself.”

As I said, I’m interested to see how the epilogue deals with this and other media failures.

“Nightmare in Mission Hill” is a tremendous contribution to Boston’s attempts to come to terms with its well-deserved racist reputation. The team that put this together deserve a lot of credit — including but not limited to reporters Adrian Walker, Evan Allen (the lead writer), Elizabeth Koh and Andrew Ryan. I just signed up for the newsletter, I look forward to dipping into the podcast, and I hope that the series serves to advance the ongoing conversation about how Boston can work toward becoming a better, more inclusive home for all of us.

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Mike Barnicle, Pulitzer winner

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On February 6, 2023

In Media

MSNBC commentator Michael Barnicle, who left his perch as a Boston Globe columnist in 1998 after he was confronted with evidence that he was a serial fabricator and plagiarist, sat there and said nothing during a Jan. 30 appearance in which he was described as “a Pulitzer Prize winner for his Boston Globe reporting.”

Barnicle was appearing with sports commentator Stephen A. Smith. The fictional accolades from host Ari Melber come at about 1:05 of the above video. I watched the segment to the end, and Barnicle makes no attempt to correct the record. He does, though, mock U.S. Rep. Anthony Devolder or George Santos or whatever his name is for — you guessed it — fabricating his biography.

Update: Some of Barnicle’s work may have been included in the Globe’s 1975 Pulitzer for Public Service, which recognized its coverage of the city’s school-desegregation crisis.

According to our friends at Wikipedia, J. Anthony Lukas, author “Common Ground,” the best book about Boston ever written, told an interviewer that a 1974 Barnicle column headlined “Busing Puts Burden on Working Class, Black and White” was a defining moment in the Globe’s coverage. There is no citation for that interview. There’s also nothing in “Common Ground,” at the Pulitzer Prize website or in the Globe’s own story about winning the Pulitzer that reveals whether any Barnicle columns were submitted or not. But it’s possible there were one or more Barnicle columns in the Globe’s entry.

That does not make Barnicle a Pulitzer-winner, and it would have been easy enough for him to correct Melber. But if Barnicle really was part of the team that won the Pulitzer, his failure to speak up strikes me as less of a big deal.

Mike Barnicle is up to his old tricks

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On April 12, 2016

In Media

In the annals of modern political commentary, few phrases have been associated with one writer the way the ironic “it’s not about race because it’s never about race” is associated with Worcester’s own Charles Pierce, who writes a political blog for Esquire. For an example, see Pierce’s post of August 27, 2014, headlined: “It Is Never About Race: A Continuing Series.”

And by all means, trying Googling it so you can see all the references to Pierce.

Then there is former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle. On February 22, 2015 (sorry, but I only found out about this a few days ago), Barnicle wrote a piece for the Daily Beast ripping Rudy Giuliani for making veiled racial remarks about President Obama. So far, so good. But then there was this:

Let’s pause right here in this off-the-cliff assault by the former mayor to remind everyone of something Obama’s loudest critics always insist is the case: This is not about race because it’s never about race when it comes to nut-boys attacking the President of the United States. Sure!

Fairly innocuous as these things go? Well, yes. But given that Barnicle has a history of helping himself to other people’s words and phrases, I thought it was worth pointing out.

I emailed the Beast‘s editorial and public-relations departments late last week asking for a comment from an editor, Barnicle, or both. Crickets are chirping (a phrase that did not originate with me, I hasten to add).

And a hat tip to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, who not only nailed Barnicle back when it happened but worked in a sly reference to Mike Royko while he was at it. Royko memorably accused Barnicle of pilfering his work back in the day.

Correction: The original version of this post misstated the date of Barnicle’s Daily Beast column.

Some thoughts about the meltdown of The New Republic

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On December 7, 2014

In Media

I don’t have much to offer on the meltdown of The New Republic except for a few inchoate thoughts. Many people have written many things, but it seems to me that the one essential read is Lloyd Grove’s piece in The Daily Beast. Now then:

1. Despite owner Chris Hughes’ excruciatingly awful behavior last week, it still isn’t clear to me why everyone resigned. When then-owner Marty Peretz fired editor Michael Kelly in 1997, mass resignations were threatened, but only one writer — media columnist William Powers — actually walked out the door. Kelly was an enormously popular, charismatic figure, but maybe the lack of solidarity was in recognition of how far he had dragged the supposedly liberal magazine to the right. Still, does no one want to see if there might be some positive aspects to Hughes’ plan?

2. And yet — if Hughes wants a digital media startup, why didn’t he just do it instead of buying TNR and turning it into something else? That makes no sense. And yet again — if Hughes is looking for the kind of print/online/events strategy that has transformed The Atlantic, as media-business analyst Ken Doctor argues, how could that possibly be a bad thing? I’d be the first to admit that I don’t like The Atlantic nearly as much as I did when it was a staid, Boston-based monthly. But it has managed to combine success, influence and seriousness, and that’s nothing to be scoffed at.

3. During Peretz’s long ownership, TNR was derided not just for its lack of diversity but for its hostility to any steps aimed at ensuring racial justice. I wrote for TNR twice. The first time, in 1998, was about the departure of Boston Globe columnists Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle for fabricating, and Barnicle for plagiarizing as well. When I received the edited version of my piece, I saw that someone had inserted some harsh anti-affirmative action language. (The idea was that both Smith, an African-American, and Barnicle, an Irish-American, had been beneficiaries of some sort of affirmative-action mindset.) I was appalled, and fortunately was able to get the language removed before publication. But it showed what kind of thinking prevailed at TNR.

4. Among the former TNR editors lashing out at Hughes is Andrew Sullivan, who, among other things, once gave over the cover of the magazine to the authors of “The Bell Curve,” a racist tome that argued that black people just aren’t as intelligent as whites. Sullivan also published an infamous, falsehood-filled article by Betsy McCaughey that trashed the Clinton health plan and may have contributed to its defeat. Sullivan did far more harm to TNR than Hughes, but now he’s seen as a defender of tradition. (For more on the sins of TNR during the Peretz era, see Charlie Pierce.)

5. Probably the worst thing you can say about Hughes is that he decided to blow up The New Republic just as it was rediscovering its footing as a liberal journal. Editor Franklin Foer, by all accounts, was doing a fine job before Hughes fired him. But what is the role of a magazine like TNR in the digital age? The policy pieces in which it specialized are everywhere. Hughes could have kept it going as a small, money-losing journal, of course. But there was a time when TNR was an influential small, money-losing journal. Those days are long gone, as Ezra Klein notes at Vox. You can’t blame Hughes for wanting to try something different. If his behavior had been less reprehensible, maybe he could have brought his talented staff and contributors along for the ride.

Six takeaways from BoMag’s big John Henry profile

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On February 19, 2014

In Media

John Henry

John Henry

This article was posted earlier at WGBH News.

The local media community has been buzzing since Tuesday, when Jason Schwartz’s 5,000-word Boston magazine article on the state of The Boston Globe under John Henry went live. The piece is chock-full of goodies, and you should read the whole thing. As you do, here are six takeaways for you to ponder.

1. It could have been a lot worse. Although we knew that Douglas Manchester, the right-wing hotel magnate who bought the San Diego Union-Tribune and unforgivably renamed it U-T San Diego, was interested in buying the Globe (he even threatened legal action after it was sold to Henry instead of him), it is nevertheless chilling to read Schwartz’s account of Manchester’s coming in and kicking the tires after the New York Times Co. put the Globe up for sale.

As I wrote in my book about online community journalism, “The Wired City,” Manchester has been described as “a minor-league Donald Trump” who uses his newspaper to promote his business interests as well as conservative causes such as his opposition to same-sex marriage.

In the Boston magazine article, Globe editor Brian McGrory tells Schwartz that “some potential bidders” — and by “some,” it’s clear that he’s including Manchester — would have “cut the living bejesus out of the place.” And Schwartz includes this delicious anecdote: “During the U-T San Diego presentation, people who were in the room attest, Manchester at one point instructed McGrory to call him ‘Papa Doug.’ McGrory did not call him Papa Doug.”

2. It’s official: The Globe is moving. Even before Henry won the Globe sweepstakes, it was clear that the next owner was likely to sell the paper’s 1950s-era Dorchester headquarters for redevelopment — a move that would presumably recoup virtually all of the $70 million Henry paid to purchase the Globe, the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester and related properties.

Henry has now made it official, telling Schwartz his goal is to move the paper to a smaller space with better access “in the heart of the city.”

Of course, the Globe still needs a printing press, not only for its own use but for other publications it prints under contract — including its tabloid rival, the Boston Herald. One likely possibility: the Telegram & Gazette’s printing facility in Millbury, which Henry said he was keeping when he announced recently that he was putting the T&G up for sale.

3. The two-website strategy needs an overhaul. Since the fall of 2011, the Globe has offered two websites: BostonGlobe.com, a paid-subscription site offering Globe content and a few extras; and Boston.com, a free site that’s been around since the mid-1990s.

The problem, Schwartz tells us, is that Boston.com, stripped of most Globe content, has been struggling, while BostonGlobe.com hasn’t produced as much revenue as Globe executives would like. The next step: a looser paywall for BostonGlobe.com to encourage more social sharing and a mobile-first Boston.com that’s still in development. (Joshua Benton has more at the Nieman Journalism Lab.)

4. Henry wants to reinvent the newspaper business. This week’s New Yorker includes a rather dispiriting account by George Packer of how Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com took over the book business. Anyone looking for signs that Bezos has a clear idea of what to do with The Washington Post, which he agreed to buy just days after Henry’s purchase of the Globe was announced, will come away disappointed — although he is, to his credit, spending money on the Post.

By contrast, Henry comes across as energized, bristling with ideas — peppering Brian McGrory with emails at all hours of the night — and getting ready to unveil new products, such as standalone websites that cover religion, innovation and other topics.

“I wanted to be a part of finding the solution for the Globe and newspapers in general,” Henry tells Schwartz. “I feel my mortality. I don’t want to waste any of the time I have left, and I felt this was a cause worth fighting for.”

5. Mike Barnicle is lurking off stage. If you were worried when you spotted Barnicle with Henry during the World Series, well, you were right to be. Barnicle, who left the Globe in 1998 after a career full of ethical missteps finally caught up with him, really does have Henry’s ear — and even supplied him with the email address of John Allen, the National Catholic Reporter journalist whom Henry successfully talked into coming to the Globe.

The old reprobate hasn’t changed, either, supplying Schwartz with a great quote that artfully combines religion with an F-bomb.

6. The executive team is now in place. By accepting publisher Christopher Mayer’s resignation, naming himself publisher and bringing in former Hill Holliday president Mike Sheehan as his chief executive officer, Henry has completed a series of moves that have remade the top layer of Globe leadership. McGrory is staying. Andrew Perlmutter, who made his bones at Atlantic Media and The Daily Beast, has replaced Jeff Moriarty, who left for a job in Britain, as the Globe’s chief digital strategist.

That’s not to rule out further change, especially if Henry’s goals aren’t met. But the sense you get is that Henry — to use a Red Sox analogy — now has his Larry Lucchino/Ben Cherington/John Farrell triumvirate in place. No doubt they all realize that winning a world championship is a lot easier than finding a profitable way forward for the beleaguered newspaper business.

For the Cape Cod Times, the beginning of the trail

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On December 5, 2012

In Media

Screen Shot 2012-12-05 at 8.40.27 AM

Image via Today’s Front Pages at the Newseum

You may have heard that a journalistic scandal is unfolding at the Cape Cod Times. A 59-year-old reporter, Karen Jeffrey, left the paper after editor Paul Pronovost and publisher Peter Meyer concluded she had fabricated sources in at least 34 stories dating back to 1998. Jeffrey had worked at the daily since 1981.

According to the apology that the paper has published, the fabrications appear to be restricted to “lighter fare,” and that Jeffrey managed to stick to nonfiction when covering hard news. That might help explain how she got away with it for so long. Then, too, fictional sources don’t call up the editor to complain.

Still, you have to wonder if anyone either inside or outside the newsroom harbored suspicions. This is a big deal — as bad as Mike Barnicle, Patricia Smith and Jayson Blair. The only difference is that Jeffrey’s downfall is playing out on a smaller stage. Count me as one observer who would like to know more.

Jim Romenekso covers the scandal here; Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon has more here; Walter Brooks of Cape Cod Today indulges in a little schadenfreude here.

Rupert Murdoch, believe it or not, actually owns the Times, a consequence of his having bought the Wall Street Journal and its affiliated properties five years ago. Boston Herald owner Pat Purcell, a Murdoch protégé, is involved in managing the Times and other Murdoch-owned community papers.

Jeffrey’s reign of error began many years before the Murdoch era. But it will be interesting to see whether Purcell is heard from as this story unfolds.

MSNBC slings it in full-page ad for “Morning Joe”

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On January 1, 2012

In Media

"Weird"! "Completely unnecessary"!

We can assume any advertisement that quotes selectively from what people have said about the product being touted is going to be at least somewhat deceptive. But I was so taken aback by one quote in a full-page ad for MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in today’s New York Times that I thought I ought to do some digging. The ad, titled “The Most Influential Political Show in America,” appears on the back page of the Sunday Review.

I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of “Morning Joe,” as I’ve never been someone who turns on the TV set in the morning, even when I’m home. I caught a bit of it when I was recuperating from elbow surgery last year, and was put off by the smug, insidery tone. The participation of tired, predictable pundits like Mike Barnicle and Mark Halperin, Salon’s Hack of the Year (and the co-author of a book that used anonymous sources to slime the terminally ill Elizabeth Edwards), doesn’t exactly lure me in any deeper.

The quote in the Times ad that caught my eye, “the best morning talk going,” is from Tom Brokaw, which is innocuous enough — except that Brokaw is, well, a regular on “Morning Joe,” as well as a longtime member of the NBC family. Perhaps that’s not quite as bad as quoting Scarborough as saying that “Joe Scarborough is the sharpest political analyst on television,” but it’s close. So let’s keep going, shall we?

Politico, the ad tells us, wants us to know that “Morning Joe’s team has become the insider’s insider.” I cannot find that particular quote anywhere. What I can find, though, is a 2010 story from the Associated Press informing me that Politico and “Morning Joe” are business partners.

That same AP story is the source of yet another blurb from the ad: “An important wake-up call for political and media leaders.” The full quote doesn’t quite contradict that, but nevertheless places it in a rather different context: “An affiliation with Politico that began about six months ago helped cement the program’s status as an important wake-up call for political and media leaders.”

Speaking of different contexts, the ad also blurbs the phrase “appallingly entertaining,” taken from the New Yorker. I looked that one up, and here’s what Nancy Franklin wrote in 2008: “It’s a weird, completely unnecessary show, and it’s appallingly entertaining.” OK, not a 180-degree contradiction of “appallingly entertaining,” but you will note that MSNBC did not grab “completely unnecessary” for the ad.

Moving right along, the ad cites Forbes as referring to “Morning Joe” as “the hottest morning show.” I tracked that one down to a column written for Forbes.com by veteran journalist James Brady in 2008 — who sounded none too pleased with that development. Bear with me, because this one needs a little air to breathe:

Is the media now really the story? Are journalists now the stars? Is all this incestuous, or is it clever reporting? Just consider these recent examples, a few weighty, some trivial, others clearly absurd:

“Morning Joe,” a couple of hours of political dish on MSNBC hosted by a glib onetime congressman, is the hottest morning show around. Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live for a time was getting more ink than the candidates with her wickedly spot-on devastation of Gov. Palin. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post backs McCain and blasts Obama while Rupert himself calls Obama “a rock star.” Larry King gets interviewed and reveals to columnist Cindy Adams that his own first great interview was with Eleanor Roosevelt when her husband was still president. Since FDR died in April of 1945, we learn the precocious Mr. King interviewed the First Lady when he was 12.

It doesn’t seem to me that Brady is describing “Morning Joe” as must-see TV.

In 2009, Newsweek described “Morning Joe” as “a serious-minded evening show still wearing its bathrobe and its slippers.” The ad, naturally, does not tell us — as Media Bistro does — that the writer, Colter Walls, had previously worked for MSNBC; that Newsweek and MSNBC were content partners; and that the then-editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, was a regular on “Morning Joe.” The conflict-of-interest trifecta!

Some of the blurbs are legit. The New York Times and the American Journalism Review really did give “Morning Joe” a thumb’s up. And some of them are too wonderfully strange for me to want to check. For instance, when you see a quote from Parade imitator USA Weekend calling something “the thinking viewer’s choice,” you just want it to be true.

My bottom line: “‘Morning Joe’ is a … show about politics.”

Photo (cc) by Dave Winer and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Salon gets it wrong on Barnicle and Whitey

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On June 25, 2011

In Media

Mike Barnicle

It was a sensational accusation, and it appeared to be backed up with the man’s own words. On Thursday, Salon posted a piece claiming that Mike Barnicle wrote a column in the Boston Globe in 1991 defending the notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger against charges that he’d made a $14 million lottery winner an offer he couldn’t refuse.

The article, by Steve Kornacki, has gotten wide distribution, and is seemingly irrefutable. And Barnicle’s track record of plagiarism, fabrication and toadying to the old Irish-American political order in Boston make him an easy target. (Note: Kornacki has written a retraction. See below.)

But this particular allegation isn’t true. I looked it up.

What’s given the Salon piece such legs is that Barnicle’s column, published on Aug. 1, 1991, is not on the open Web — rather, it’s in the Globe’s paid archives. (You can find it here. It’s $4.95 unless you’re a Globe customer.) What made me want to look it up were the excerpts Kornacki quoted, which struck me as florid and over-the-top even for a hack like Barnicle. I’m not going to requote what Kornacki found — you can do that yourself. But I do want to quote some of the stuff that Kornacki left out. Here’s a lengthy section in which Barnicle writes about the organized-crime wars in which Bulger was involved:

The myth took root decades ago after Jimmy returned home from away games in Atlanta, Alcatraz and Leavenworth, where he earned his federal letter sweater. Then, Southie was sort of dominated by nickel and dime hoodlums claiming to be part of the Mullen Gang. This was the only gang in America that took its name from a street sign. They were supposed to be bad but, bottom line, they were stupid and Whitey is not.

He aligned himself with a larger outfit, many of whose members were of Mediterranean extraction and thus easily tricked by glib Irish wit. His associates loved to talk with their mouths full of linguine and clam sauce and, in between twirling noodles onto spoons, they talked themselves into jail or the trunks of Lincoln Town cars.

Some Irish were wounded, too. Among them was a Bulger acquaintance, Buddy Roache, the police commissioner’s brother, who got shot in the spine and must now rely on a wheelchair for movement. Then, there was the commissioner’s former brother-in-law, Mickey Dwyer, who got in a fight with the late Donald Killeen, one of Whitey’s executive vice presidents before they changed the title to executed vice president. Donny bit Mickey’s nose off in a fight but, out of friendship, called a cab after the beef and had the nose sent to the hospital. The cabbie got a tip, but the surgical procedure failed and to this day Mickey sounds like a cold front out of Canada.

There was Billy O’Sullivan of Savin Hill, who did not know enough to stay within his own zip code. Billy had more hits to his credit than Elvis but he got greedy. They found his car in Charlestown with Billy’s shoes alongside the spare tire. And that’s all they ever found.

Louie Litoff was another part-time member of Jimmy Bulger’s cabinet, a bookmaker with a hundred different jogging outfits. On his last run around the block, Louie stepped on Red Assad’s foot outside the Waltham Street Cafe. It’s the little things that are important and soon Louie had a new nickname and a new address. He went out being called, “Bowling Ball Head” due to the three bullet holes in the back of his skull, and he now gets his mail at Mt. Calvary Cemetery.

Believe me, it’s not all ice cream and sweet dreams for Jimmy Bulger. Someone is always after his behind or his job. He’s always the object of some hostile takeover.

This is pure satire — really bad satire, as only Barnicle could write it. But you can clearly see that Barnicle was acknowledging Bulger’s involvement in murder and mayhem. Does Kornacki really think Barnicle would condone such actions?

Now, there is no question that Barnicle was and is close to Bill Bulger, the former Massachusetts Senate president, and has been an unconscionable apologist for former FBI agent John Connolly, now serving a prison term for his corrupt dealings with Bulger. In fact, here’s an excerpt of an article I wrote for the Boston Phoenix in 1998, a week before the Globe got rid of Barnicle for fabrication and plagiarism:

[W]hen it comes to the other Bulger, Whitey, Barnicle crosses the line from irresponsibility into journalistic corruption. Barnicle has consistently, and against all reason, defended the deal FBI agent John Connolly made with Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, letting them sell drugs, terrorize their enemies, and even kill in return for intelligence on La Cosa Nostra.

Barnicle’s August 4 effort … was quintessential Barnicle. He went after John Martorano, a killer who’s decided to cooperate with the FBI in its quest to track down the elusive Bulger. Barnicle quoted Eddie Walsh, “an honest cop,” as saying Martorano “killed an awful lot of black people,” including three women at a Roxbury club in the 1960s. “If he gets immunity,” Walsh, who’s now retired, told Barnicle, “they ought to put the judge in jail.”

The column caused an immediate uproar, because sources inside the Globe — not to mention Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis — questioned how there could have been an unsolved triple murder that no one could remember. As it turned out, the murder had occurred, though Barnicle had some of the genders wrong (it was two men and one woman). But as Gelzinis reported in a devastating column on August 6, Barnicle failed to mention that “honest cop” Walsh is one of Connolly’s closest friends. And that Connolly had shared with Walsh information that could have saved the life of a bookie who was prepared to rat out Bulger, had Walsh chosen to do anything with said information. Leaving out such facts is not just bias on Barnicle’s part; it’s gross malpractice, and it’s inexplicable that the same Globe that could produce a Pulitzer-caliber Spotlight series on the FBI’s Bulger connection could at the same time tolerate such sleaze.

I suppose that, to some extent, satire is in the eye of the beholder. Any writer who attempts satire will be misunderstood by some of his readers. And yes, feel free to be offended that Barnicle, in the column cited by Salon, attempted to write a humorous piece about Whitey Bulger’s crimes and life of violence.

But don’t believe that Barnicle defended Whitey Bulger on that day. It’s just not true.

Update: If you follow the link to Kornacki’s piece now, you’ll see that he’s written a very gracious and thorough retraction. He’s a stand-up guy, and I’ll try to remember his example the next time I screw something up.

The Globe, Jack Connors and Mike Barnicle

By

On May 31, 2011

In Media

Mike Barnicle

I’m just catching up to this excellent analysis by Poynter’s Rick Edmonds of the Aaron Kushner group’s ongoing efforts to buy the Boston Globe from the New York Times Co. Edmonds’ bottom line: a sale is possible but unlikely.

With the Globe’s business having stabilized and the Times Co.’s debt burden eased, Edmonds writes, “It looks to me like a keeper for the company — unless someone comes forward with cash and is prepared to way overpay.”

Last week the Globe’s Brian McGrory reported that local advertising executive Jack Connors has joined the Kushner group, which already includes former Globe publisher Ben Taylor and his cousin Steve Taylor, himself a former top Globe executive. This isn’t the first time Connors has tried to become part of the Globe’s ownership.

It also raises the intriguing question of whether the specter of former Globe columnist Mike Barnicle can be far behind. Barnicle was involved in a bid by retired General Electric chief executive Jack Welch and Connors to buy the Globe several years ago, a bid that Barnicle told Boston magazine was “very serious.” In a 2007 Boston Globe Magazine piece by the legendary Steve Bailey, Barnicle’s wife, Bank of America executive Anne Finucane, was described as one of Connors’ “closest friends.”

It’s hard to know what to make of the Barnicle connection, but my guess is that it diminishes the likelihood that the Times Co. will sell the Globe. It would be the ultimate revenge for Barnicle. It’s also a victory that I suspect Times Co. chief executive Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would rather not let him have, given that Barnicle was let go by the Globe in 1998 — possibly with a push from New York — over a series of ethical transgressions.

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