Howie Carr and Grace Curley, a host on his radio network. Photo (cc) 2020 by Timothy Quill.
During the Massachusetts governor’s race in 2022, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr strangely turned on his allies in the MAGA wing of the state party and began attacking them in his column and on his radio show. Howie being Howie? Well, maybe. Or maybe not.
Scott Van Voorhis, who writes the newsletter Contrarian Boston, reports that Carr’s motives may have been a lot simpler than that: the state GOP owed him money. With the Democratic candidate for governor, Maura Healey, coasting to victory, Van Voorhis writes that Carr began “savagely” attacking the then-head of the state party, Jim Lyons, and Healey’s Republican rival, Geoff Diehl.
It turns out that Lyons’ wrecking crew owed Carr more than $7,000 for ads on Carr’s radio program, which he owns. Lyons’ replacement as party chair, the slightly less MAGA-ish Amy Carnevale, is now paying back Carr at the rate of $500 a month. Van Voorhis is careful to note that it’s not clear if the dispute over those unpaid bills came about before or after Carr began attacking Lyons and Diehl.
And here’s a fun detail: Van Voorhis credits the MassGOP Majority newsletter for breaking the story. But when you click through, you learn that though that may be the URL, the actual name of the newsletter is Kool-Aid Kult Kronicles. Apparently that is some sort of joking reference to something Carr said. There’s more news, too, including WRKO Radio’s supposed decision to ban Diehl from its airwaves because of “the perennial candidate’s repeated, baseless claims that Howie Carr is being paid by the MassGOP to attack him and his slate of candidates for Republican State Committee.”
Now, let’s get serious for a moment. Van Voorhis describes Carr as “not exactly the kind of guy you want to piss off.” True enough. But how far can Carr veer from the ethics of journalism and still manage to write for the Herald? Journalists — even opinion journalists like Carr — are expected to maintain their independence. We don’t give money to candidates. We don’t take money from candidates. And we don’t criticize candidates and party officials who owe us money, whether there is a direct connection between those two facts or not.
Just grotesque stuff from someone who wrote a must-read column back in the 1980s and has long since devolved into a caricature of himself.
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Bob Drake
Dan,
(With tongue firmly in cheek…). How often to we see the words “Carr” and “ethics of journalism” in the same sentence?
Wes Slate
Dan, Nice detail of the “Contrarian Boston” item on Howie Carr and the Mass GOP. And your money quote at the very end was spot-on. You may recall a Boston Magazine cover story a couple of years back, “What the Hell Happened to Howie Carr?” that dove deep into his whole then-current financial status and how it has colored his “commentary”.
Jay Griffin
Thanks for the info Dan. I miss the passionate old Boston radio scene. There were muckrakers, educators and entertainers from one end of the dial to the other.
Randi Swartz
He is nothing if not a bloviating bag of hot air.
Tom Mashberg
I think the lesson here is don’t get between a man and his money. 💰