The Boston Herald composing room. Photo from sometime between 1859 and 1885.
It has been a while since we’ve heard about cutbacks at Alden Global Capital’s Massachusetts properties. But Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan writes that the hedge fund is once again on the move, as the Boston Herald has cut three employees from its small staff.
Those reportedly losing their jobs: a full-time sports reporter, a part-time photographer and, on the business side, a part-time account executive. Boston Newspaper Guild president Scott Steeves tells Ryan, “It’s unfortunate because it seems like both the online version and the print version have done well as of late.”
No current headcount, but Ryan observes that the Herald’s newsroom was down to 24 in 2020. Just a few years earlier, the Herald employed 240 people, but it’s not clear whether that’s an apples-to-apples comparison. The Herald also lacks a newsroom.
I’d be curious to know whether Alden’s other Massachusetts properties, The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg, have been affected — and if Alden papers across the country are being cut yet again. If you have a tip, just use the “Contact” form.
From the moment that President Biden started coming under fire for his disastrous debate performance of June 27, Biden’s most vociferous supporters on social media have demanded that the press focus on Donald Trump’s undemocratic and sociopathic behavior.
No doubt that Trumpworld is a target-rich environment. He is an insurrectionist and a felon. He’s been found in a civil case to have committed sexual abuse. He is accused of illegally taking classified documents from the White House and of attempting to rig the election results in Georgia. He and his allies are planning an authoritarian takeover through an agenda known as Project 2025.
Recently, though, we’ve also seen the resurfacing of an allegation that, if found credible, could shake Trump’s support even among his most devout supporters: accusations that he sexually assaulted two young girls, ages 13 and 12. It is by far the most disturbing accusation he has faced, and is obviously the sort of thing for which people go to prison for the rest of their lives.
But even though this horrifying story is being told anew, and even though some elements of the anti-Trump movement on social media have been demanding to know why the press isn’t covering it, the reality is that this is an old allegation lacking in credibility. Journalists should be looking into this again, and maybe some are. But there are good reasons that you’re not reading about it in The New York Times or The Washington Post. As Tom Nichols wrote for The Atlantic on Monday, “credible news outlets rarely treat a single deposition as adequate sourcing for incendiary accusations against any individual.”
Nichols was so leery of giving the story any oxygen that he didn’t even explain what he was talking about. Well, I will. The Trump allegations were reborn as the result of a Florida judge’s recent decision to release 150 pages of transcripts regarding the late Jeffrey Epstein. According to The Associated Press, “The transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. The teenagers testified and told detectives they were also paid to find him more girls.”
Trump, as you no doubt know, liked to pal around with Epstein. So did many other prominent men. Only Trump, though, has ever been accused of raping young girls procured for him by Epstein.
The release of the transcripts prompted Ed Krassenstein, a harsh Trump critic, to post on Twitter/X a page from an affidavit containing the allegations. “So many people didn’t even know that Donald Trump was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl with Jeffrey Epstein,” Krassenstein wrote. “They pretend that this complaint never happened.” The affidavit is date-stamped April 26, 2016. Krassenstein’s July 2 tweet, as of this morning, had been liked 34,000 times.
There’s even a fake AI-generated photo of Trump, Epstein and a teenage girl that’s making the rounds.
Both girls are identified by pseudonyms — Katie Johnson, who was the 13-year-old, and Maria Doe, who was 12. Johnson’s allegations were actually investigated in some detail back during the 2016 campaign. In fact, if you take a look at Vox right now, you’ll see that its own 8-year-old story about Johnson’s allegations is currently the seventh-most-viewed story on the site.
In case you’re not familiar with Vox, it’s a high-quality outlet that specializes in fact-checks and explainers. To cut to the chase, what Vox’s Emily Crockett found in 2016 was not just that Johnson’s accusations couldn’t be verified, but that there was some reason to believe that she doesn’t even exist. As Crockett wrote after Johnson failed to appear at a news conference:
It was the end of an incredibly strange case that featured an anonymous plaintiff who had refused almost all requests for interviews, two anonymous corroborating witnesses whom no one in the press had spoken to, and a couple of seriously shady characters — with an anti-Trump agenda and a penchant for drama — who had aggressively shopped the story around to media outlets for over a year.
Crockett notes, too, that even the Hillary Clinton campaign wouldn’t touch the story, writing:
It’s true that the allegation is explosive, and could make voters see Trump’s many disturbing comments about young girls over the years in a new light. But it’s also very dubious and uncertain, and there’s no real need to promote a case like that when a dozen women have come forward with much more credible stories, using their own names and making themselves available to reporters for scrutiny.
Not that any of it mattered on Election Day.
Both the affidavit and the Vox stories I’ve linked to are full of lurid, disturbing details that I needn’t quote here, and the latter should give you a clear understanding of why the mainstream media have not touched this.
Those of us who fear the authoritarian threat that Trump poses to our democracy would like every possible negative story about him to be true, or at least to get a thorough airing in respectable news outlets. But this particular rancid tidbit doesn’t rise even close to the level that journalistic ethics demand.
To repeat: I hope that some reporters are sifting through this even now in order to determine whether there’s anything they missed the first time. Absent that, though, we ought to concentrate on the very true Trump stories that really matter.
With the prospects of President Biden’s remaining in office still uncertain despite his insistence that he’s not going anywhere, here are three updates:
• The Wall Street Journal posted a five-byline story Monday night headlined “How Biden’s Inner Circle Worked to Keep Signs of Aging Under Wraps.” It’s a well-reported reprise of a piece that the Journal published a month ago that was widely dismissed at the time because of its reliance on partisan Republican sources. Now that earlier article looks prescient (free links).
• What you might call a mini-feeding frenzy broke out Monday afternoon when The New York Times, CNN and others reported that a specialist in Parkinson’s disease had visited the White House eight times over the past eight months. Hours later, the story looked like a cautionary tale in not getting ahead of the story, as we learned that the doctor had almost certainly been called in to see other patients, and that his service at the White House goes back a dozen years.
• Josh Marshall is always worth reading when you’re trying to make sense of complicated political stories. On Monday he wrote that he’s less sure than he was a week ago that Biden would step aside, mainly because, well, he hasn’t stepped aside. “By the end of the weekend,” he wrote, “I was back to near total uncertainty about where any of this was going.”
The fallout continues from an illegal police raid on a Kansas newspaper and two private homes last August. According to The New York Times, Deb Gruver, a former reporter for the weekly Marion County Record, has reached a $235,000 settlement as part of her federal lawsuit accusing then-Police Chief Gideon Cody of grabbing her cellphone and injuring her hand.
The Associated Press reports that Gruver’s lawsuit against two other officials continues. Nor is that the only legal action under way. Publisher Eric Meyer is suing local officials over the death of his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who was stricken a day after officers entered her home and rifled through her property.
I took one of my favorite rides Saturday — from Danvers Center along the rail trail and then east and north to Wenham, Hamilton and Bradley Palmer State Park, south to Route 97 and back along the rail trail from the Topsfield Fairgrounds to Danvers, a little over 18½ miles. I also cruised around the Pingree School and took pictures of some of the outdoor art installations. Enjoy!
“On Your Mark,” by Michael Aldred and Tim Johnson“Guitar,” by José CriolloUnlabeled as far as I could tell“Think and Be Free,” by Dale Rogers“Fintasia,” by Steve Heller
We were at a Worcester Red Sox game Friday night, so we watched George Stephanopoulos’ interview with President Biden when we got home. I don’t think it moved the needle. Biden was neither strong enough to put the doubts to rest nor weak enough to accelerate calls for him to step aside.
Stephanopoulos did an admirable job of asking tough questions while maintaining a respectful tone. As for his repeated queries about whether Biden would agree to take a cognitive test, I was surprised that Biden didn’t answer that he would if Donald Trump would. But whatever.
Biden’s flat-out denial that he’s behind in the polls and that his approval rating is very low wasn’t great, but that seems to be his approach: dig in, even if it means contradicting reality. It would have been better if he’d said, “Yes, I’m behind, and here’s how I’m going to overcome it.”
And let me join with other commentators who were appalled at his answer to how he’ll feel next January if he loses to Trump: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” No. The challenge we are all facing is how to beat authoritarianism. The Democrats need to meet that challenge with their strongest candidate, whether it’s Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris or someone else.
George Stephanopoulos interviews President Biden in 2021. White House photo.
Right now we’re all waiting to see how President Biden does in his interview with George Stephanopoulos. Obviously Biden has to come off as coherent, and even then it’s not going to stop calls for him to step aside in the midst of donor panic and declining poll numbers. The New York Times and The Boston Globe are reporting that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has been telling associates that Biden’s candidacy is “irretrievable.”
Given the terrible position in which we find ourselves, it’s worth asking whether the media should have covered Biden differently over the past few months. My Northeastern University colleague Jill Abramson, a former executive editor of the Times, thinks so, writing a commentary for Semafor that begins:
It’s clear the best news reporters in Washington have failed in the first duty of journalism: to hold power accountable. It is our duty to poke through White House smoke screens and find out the truth. The Biden White House clearly succeeded in a massive cover-up of the degree of the President’s feebleness and his serious physical decline, which may be simply the result of old age. Shame on the White House press corps for not to have pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the President.
Richard Tofel, a former top executive at The Wall Street Journal and ProPublica, has been reminding us on social media that he’s been calling for greater scrutiny of Biden’s age since last October. Here’s part of what he said back then:
Is Biden speaking more slowly because he’s conscious that his lifelong stutter might now be taken for cognitive frailty, or because he has no choice? Is he walking more cautiously because he knows the political peril of falling, or because he can no longer go any faster? If you think you know the answers to those questions, what is your evidence? I know of very little, either way.
My own sense is that there was actually quite a bit of reporting on Biden’s age even before his disastrous June 27 debate with Donald Trump, but that it was discounted for a variety of reasons. When special counsel Robert Hur called Biden “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” that got plenty of coverage. At the same time, though, Hur was arguably engaging in prosecutorial misconduct by adding his own commentary while not bringing charges against Biden — which, in turn, reminded people of then-FBI Director James Comey trashing Hillary Clinton in 2016 over the way she handled her emails even while concluding she had not committed a crime.
The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth story on Biden’s age-related issues in early June, but that was widely dismissed because of the Journal’s reliance on partisan Republican sources, including former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had previously told aides privately that he found the president to be sharp in White House meetings.
The Times itself has spent months obsessing over what voters think about Biden’s age, which in turn brought about accusations of both-sides-ism and false equivalence given that Trump is nearly as old and arguably more addled as well as an insurrectionist and a convicted criminal who’s been found liable for sexual assault.
The national media wasn’t dodging the story: The biggest newspapers in the country published lengthy stories about Biden’s mental fitness. The public wasn’t in the dark about Biden’s age: Most voters (67 percent in a June Gallup poll) thought he was too old to be president even before the debate. But questions about Biden’s fitness for office were not emphasized as much as they should have been.
That’s the third option: The stories should have been tougher, the volume should have been louder.
Then, too, journalists are not unaware of what we’re facing. A second Trump term could amount to nothing less than the end of democracy in this country. Surely there was a sense that as long as Biden wasn’t too impaired, it wasn’t worth the risk of throwing the election into chaos and risking Trump’s return to office — this time as the head of the authoritarian right.
If Biden could somehow make it across the finish line this November, so this thinking went, it would be up to God and Vice President Kamala Harris after that. I definitely count myself among those observers who dismissed concerns about Biden’s age, partly because I thought they were overblown, partly because I feared the consequences of removing Biden from the top of the ticket.
Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.
The Boston Globe’s editorial board has just called for President Biden to end his re-election campaign. The paper took its time, which I think is appropriate. But given the president’s anemic response to his disastrous performance in last Thursday’s debate, it’s now clear that someone else would be better suited to the crucial task of saving our democracy from Donald Trump and the forces of the authoritarian right. The Globe writes:
Serious questions are now in play about his ability to complete the arduous work of being leader of the free world. Can he negotiate with a hostile Republican Congress, dangerous foreign powers, or even fractious rivals within his own Cabinet? The nation’s confidence has been shaken.
The Globe is also calling for an open convention. I understand the appeal. But the cleanest solution would be to hand off the presidency to Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden would have to resign in order to do that, and I realize that’s unfair. There’s no logical reason for him not to serve out the remainder of his term, but defeating Trump is of paramount importance. Harris is as popular, or unpopular, as any of the other Democrats being mentioned, and with her ascendance there would be no issues regarding campaign finances or ballot access.
The New York Times is reporting that Biden told an unnamed key ally that he is thinking about ending his campaign. The Times is getting furious pushback from the White House, but how could Biden not be having such conversations? Former President Barack Obama is also letting it be known that his full-throated support for Biden is mainly for public consumption.
Maybe Biden will put the doubts to rest in his interview with George Stephanopoulos. Maybe he’ll hold a two-hour news conference, as Jake Tapper has suggested, and turn back the clock. Right now, though, he appears to be on a trajectory that will end, inevitably, with his making a very different calculation.
A “disgruntled homophobic Middle School janitor.” The Massachusetts legislature, which has resolutely refused to strengthen our notoriously weak public records law. A Rhode Island city councilor who threw a critic out of a public meeting. A Malden charter school that refused to turn over public records on the patently absurd grounds that it’s not a public school.
These are just a few of the people and institutions that I’ve singled out over the past year as recipients of the New England Muzzle Awards, my annual Fourth of July round-up of transgressions against freedom of expression.
From 1998 to 2012, I wrote these up for the late, much lamented Boston Phoenix. Then, from 2013 to 2022, the Muzzles were hosted by GBH News. I decided to call it a wrap with the 25th-anniversary edition. But then I began to write up Muzzles as they came to my attention rather than saving them all for Independence Day. What follows are Muzzle Awards I’ve handed out since last June.
Kudos, as always, to my friends Harvey Silverglate, who conceived of this annual feature all these years ago, and Peter Kadzis, who edited all 25 editions. They were inspired by the Jefferson Muzzles, which no longer are awarded. Here in New England, though, their spirit lives on.
At a time when democracy itself is under threat, defending the First Amendment is more important than it’s ever been. The envelopes, please.
A plea from Dan Gillmor, the author of “We the Media” and “Mediactive”:
Please, journalists, declare independence from business as usual, from the counterproductive customs that have prevailed in our media even as the danger has escalated. Business as usual is outright malpractice. Stop, before it is too late.
These are just a few of the people and institutions that I’ve singled out over the past year as recipients of the 