By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
That’s what U.S. District Judge William Young told former sportscaster Bob Gamere yesterday after Gamere whined about the five-year prison sentence he’d just been handed for distributing child pornography.
No kidding. What Gamere seems to have lost sight of is that actual children were exploited, and that his actions helped spur demand for more such exploitation.
Or maybe he doesn’t care.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGqikIrNKw4&w=425&h=344]
Joel Brown calls a television commercial put out by Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s re-election campaign, featuring his empty desk, “a terrible spot” and — with a bit of rewriting — “an excellent ad for one of his opponents.”
Adam Gaffin adds: “Maybe this is what happened to Curley’s desk.”
I can’t think of a better lesson for journalism students.
Earlier today I was attending an orientation for freshmen and transfer students when word came in on my BlackBerry, via the Salem News’ Twitter feed, that the Danvers Town Hall was on fire. (Media Nation’s world headquarters is located in Danvers.)
By 4:30 p.m., the News had posted a reasonably complete story with a Google map and an 11-photo slideshow.
Ten years ago, needless to say, the News would have been silent until the next day.
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at the fall of Van Jones — and at how a far-right Web site and Glenn Beck, improbably enough, took him down with a clean hit.
Conservative pundit Byron York has written a piece for the Washington Examiner reminding us that Democrats protested when President George H.W. Bush delivered a televised address to schoolchildren in 1991.
As described by York (and a contemporaneous New York Times account backs him up), the Democrats’ protest was deeply stupid. But, as York notes, the protests came after Bush’s speech, and were about money, not motives.
If York wants us to believe there’s any moral equivalence between what the Democrats said 18 years ago and Republican protests that President Obama would indoctrinate impressionable minds with socialist ideas, well, he’s going to have to do better than that.
Media Nation recently participated in a fundraising drive for a scholarship named after U.S. Army Sgt. Jared Monti of Raynham, who was awarded the Medal of Honor after giving his life to save a fellow soldier in Afghanistan.
On Sunday, the Boston Globe published a terrific front-page article on Monti’s life by Bryan Bender. What makes it especially powerful is that Bender presents Monti as a real human being rather than as an improbable saint. Bender writes:
Everything went wrong for Monti and his patrol. The unit was left on that narrow ridge longer than intended, exposing it to a much larger enemy. And while Monti’s display of “extreme personal courage and extraordinary self-sacrifice,” as the Army described it, helped turn the tide, disaster struck again when the soldier Monti tried to save was killed in a freak accident while being airlifted out. Including Monti, four soldiers died.
“True valor is not defined so much by results,” an Army general wrote in recommending Monti for the medal, “as it is by the depth of conviction that inspires its expression. On rare occasions, the actions of men are so extraordinary that the nobility rests, not in their outcome, but in the courage of their undertaking.”
Bender’s piece is both inspiring and heartbreaking, and I urge you to take the time to read it. And yes, you can still give to the SFC Jared C. Monti Memorial Scholarship Fund.
State Attorney General Martha Coakley is in a commanding position to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy now that former congressman Joe Kennedy has announced he won’t run.
I doubt many people are surprised by Kennedy’s decision. Last week, WBZ-TV (Channel 4) political analyst Jon Keller and Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh both gave Kennedy a taste of what he could expect from the sensible center had he chosen to jump in. Needless to say, conservative talk radio would have savaged him.
Who would want to bet against Coakley? Not me. While several congressmen ponder whether they should give it a try, Coakley is already off and running. She’s won statewide, and the times would suggest that voters may be looking for something a little different. As a woman and as someone who’s not part of the Capitol Hill gang, Coakley can position herself as an outsider.
As for the Republicans, so far the party has been unable find someone willing to be a human sacrifice. Former lieutenant governor Kerry Healey, who at least would have been well-funded, has decided against running.
Call this a gut sense rather than a prediction, but barring a major unexpected development — like Victoria Reggie Kennedy getting in — this race may be over before it even begins.
Photo (cc) by weinbergagain and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Paging Kevin Bacon! There’s a heretofore unreported connection between the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Mormon temple in Belmont: communications consultant Scott Ferson, president and CEO of the Liberty Square Group.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Ferson was press secretary and Massachusetts issues director for Kennedy from 1990 to 1995. Later, as senior vice president of McDermott/O’Neill, he provided assistance to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its efforts to build a massive temple in Belmont, a matter of some local controversy.
Ferson, in a comment he posted on Blue Mass. Group about an unrelated matter involving Republican gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos and Lieutenant Gov. Tim Murray, writes:
[T]he Mormon church was a client of mine, and … I joined Mitt Romney as he gave a tour of the Boston Temple in Belmont to my former boss, Ted Kennedy. Coincidence? Are there really any coincidences in this city?
It remains unclear precisely what Kennedy might have done to help local Mormons, who were finally allowed to build a spire with the Angel Moroni on top after winning a case before the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. But it is a fact that Kennedy was close to Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who claims Kennedy took credit for the Mormons’ success.
I should point out that Ferson is (was?) also involved in the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s efforts to build a gigantic gambling casino in Middleborough — efforts that, fortunately, have bogged down in scandal and controversy, through no fault of Ferson’s.
(Thanks to an alert Media Nation reader for passing this along.)
Someone will probably try to blame this on the low journalistic standards of them there internets. But the perpetrator of today’s insult against Diane Sawyer — someone I had not previously considered defending — has worked for the Wall Street Journal and written for the New York Times and other publications. And her editor is the legendary Tina Brown.
But not to back into this. According to Rebecca Dana of Brown’s Daily Beast, Charles Gibson was “livid” when he learned that Sawyer would replace him as anchor of ABC’s “World News.” Here’s the relevant paragraph:
Gibson didn’t do interviews this time, but said in a statement that his “heart is full of gratitude.” Although they worked closely for more than a decade, Gibson makes no direct reference to Sawyer in the statement, and a source close to the departing anchor described him as “livid” that she’s succeeding him. An ABC executive called this “nonsense,” and Westin said he told Gibson from their earliest conversations about his retirement that Sawyer would be his replacement.
That’s it. There is nothing else in Dana’s longish piece to suggest that Gibson has a problem with Sawyer. And, as Westin says, there was really no other logical replacement (George Stephanopoulos?), so Gibson couldn’t have been surprised. Dana has one anonymous source who claims Gibson is “livid,” and another who says it’s “nonsense.” What is the value of this bit of gossip?
I realize that the source “close” to Gibson may in fact be Gibson himself. But since the reader has no way of knowing, so what? Moreover, we have no idea why Gibson might be livid. Is it because he thinks Sawyer lacks sufficient gravitas? Or does he suspect her of stealing pencils out of his desk drawer?
Sawyer comes off as quite solicitous of Gibson in Howard Kurtz’s account for the Washington Post, reportedly asking ABC News president David Westin, “Can’t we talk Charlie into staying?” Kurtz also writes:
The friendship between Sawyer and Gibson — who last worked together moderating a health-care forum with President Obama — dates to 1998, when both agreed to fill in at the floundering “GMA” in a temporary assignment that became permanent.
Kurtz is too good a reporter to have used the word “friendship” if he’d picked up any buzz that there was a rift between Sawyer and Gibson.
Sawyer will do a perfectly fine job of anchoring the evening newscast. She wouldn’t have been my choice, given her years as a tabloid sob sister. But, then again, I’m not in the demographic for the network newscasts: I’m only 53, about two decades too young.
As for Rebecca Dana’s gossipy account, it’s a cheap shot. Even if we later learn there’s something to it, her claim that Gibson was “livid” is based on one anonymous source, with no context or explanation. Not good enough.
Boston Herald business reporter Jay Fitzgerald talks with newspaper-industry analysts who say a group headed by Stephen Taylor — a member of the family who sold the Boston Globe to the New York Times Co. in 1993 — may be emerging as the leading candidate to buy the Globe from the Times Co.
That would fit with the Globe’s own recent reporting, which identified the Taylor group and a California-based real-estate investment company, Platinum Equity, as serious contenders. All things being equal, Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would presumably rather sell to a newspaper guy than to an out-of-state company that may be more interested in the property than the news.
