Author: Dan Kennedy

Polling the Senate race

Good luck making sense out of polls about the Massachusetts Senate race.

Following Democratic candidate Martha Coakley’s even-bigger-than-expected victory in the Dec. 8 primary, most political observers had assumed she would cruise in the final. That assumption has been looking questionable since last week, when a Rasmussen poll showed Coakley with just a nine-point margin over her Republican challenger, Scott Brown.

Then, last night, Public Policy Polling released the results of a survey showing Brown actually leading Coakley by a margin of 48 percent to 47 percent. Let the tea party begin!

A few hours later, the Boston Globe published a story about its own poll, in which Coakley is maintaining a comfortable 15-point lead.

So what’s going on here? Who knows?

Frankly, I would start by throwing out the Public Policy Polling survey — it’s a robocall. (“If Scott Brown, press 1. If Martha Coakley, press 2.”) Would you hang on the line? I wouldn’t.

I’ll also point out that the Globe’s poll was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, a highly respected operation. I’m no polling expert, but I do know that Rasmussen gets mixed reviews.

Also, as best as I can tell from diving into the fine print, it looks like the Globe/UNH poll was the only one of the three in which respondents were specifically asked about the third candidate in the race, libertarian independent Joe Kennedy, who receives a not-insignificant 5 percent. Indeed, given the vagaries of polling, that alone could explain the difference between Rasmussen’s nine-point margin and the Globe’s 15-point spread.

What’s making everyone hypercautious is that we have absolutely no idea who’s going to turn out in the Jan. 19 special election. And what if there’s a blizzard?

My guess, though, is that Coakley’s right where you’d expect her to be with a little more than a week to go.

Tomorrow’s corrections today

The Boston Globe today reports that Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown last week played up his conservative bona fides in an interview with “Sean Hannity, cohost of Fox News Network’s ‘Hannity and Colmes.'”

Was there no one handling this story who was aware that Alan Colmes announced he was leaving more than a year ago? Hannity went solo on Jan. 12, 2009.

A most unfortunate juxtaposition

The Cambridge Chronicle, like other GateHouse papers, often runs sticky-note ads on the front page. This one didn’t work out so well. Here’s the Chronicle’s story on the alcohol-fueled imprisonment and resignation of former state senator Anthony Galluccio.

Update: Statement from GateHouse group publisher Greg Reibman.

An important libel ruling by the SJC

The state’s Supreme Judicial Court issued an important decision today that reaffirms protections for the news media against libel suits.

The case involved a town employee in Abington who was fired after sexually explicit images were discovered on his town-owned computer. The Enterprise of Brockton published a series of stories on official actions taken against the employee (who was eventually fired), based almost entirely on anonymous sources.

The SJC decision, written by Justice Robert Cordy, found that the fair-report privilege, which allows journalists to report libelous statements made in the course of official proceedings, applies even when those reports are based on anonymous sources.

Cordy also ruled that the Enterprise’s stories were substantially fair and accurate despite an error in one of the stories, and that the ex-employee could not sue the paper for intentionally inflicting emotional distress.

Those are the highlights. First Amendment lawyer Robert Ambrogi offers a deeper analysis here. The full text of the decision is here. (Via Universal Hub.)

Ted Koppel may anchor ABC’s “This Week”

Ted Koppel

My “Beat the Press” colleague Callie Crossley has the best idea for George Stephanopoulos’ replacement on ABC’s “This Week”: Gwen Ifill, who would have been a far better choice to succeed the late Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” than David Gregory — predictably — has proved to be.

But if an Ifill hire isn’t in the works, we might get the next best thing. The Politico’s Mike Allen reports that ABC is negotiating with legendary “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel, now in busy semi-retirement, to moderate “This Week” three Sundays a month.

Koppel was one of the finest broadcast journalists of his generation — the successor to Murrow and Cronkite to a far greater extent than any of the folks who have anchored the network evening newscasts in the post-Cronkite era. He’s a tough interviewer and would bring unparalleled gravitas to the job. Ducking a question from Ted Koppel is not the same as ducking a question from Jake Tapper, Terry Moran or anyone else.

I do have one reservation. After Russert’s death in 2008, I thought retired anchor Tom Brokaw was an excellent choice to fill the moderator’s slot on an interim basis. Instead, Brokaw seemed cranky, sour and bored.

The Brokaw lesson is that it would be great to have Koppel back — but only if he’s prepared to bring his “A” game.

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

McCain, Brown and torture (II)

One rather odd aspect of reports that Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown had said he would support waterboarding of suspected terrorists was that none of the stories I looked at — from the Boston Globe, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and the Associated Press — quoted Brown directly.

Michael Pahre noted that shortcoming in the comments. And though the AP did quote Brown in a story earlier today on a Senate debate sponsored by WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), I still wanted to hear from the Brown campaign myself.

This afternoon I talked with Brown campaign spokesman Felix Browne, who told me that Brown did not consider waterboarding to be torture. “He believes waterboarding is an enhanced-interrogation technique,” Browne said. “It’s hard, but it’s not torture. He does not believe that it’s torture.”

Browne also said he was pretty sure Brown had not discussed his position with U.S. Sen. John McCain, a staunch opponent of waterboarding who endorsed Brown earlier this week. “Obviously Sen. McCain and Sen. Brown are two different individuals,” Browne said.

And there I thought the matter would rest — except that, when I sought to clarify whether Sen. Brown would support waterboarding terrorism suspects, spokesman Browne realized he wasn’t entirely sure. So I put off writing this until he’d had a chance to check. Early this evening he e-mailed me this:

Waterboarding has been banned by executive order of the President. It would be up to the President to reauthorize its use. Scott Brown would support the President in whatever he decides.

Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley, for her part, used the WTKK debate to clarify her own opposition to waterboarding, as I noted in an update to my earlier item.

All that’s remaining is to hear from McCain — who, as I pointed out earlier, doesn’t just oppose waterboarding, but has gone out of his way to label it as torture, and to emphasize that U.S. forces actually executed Japanese officials at the end of World War II for waterboarding American prisoners.

This is no mere difference of opinion. McCain must choose between his endorsement of Brown and his moral revulsion over a practice regarded almost universally as torture. Will someone please put the question to him?

Globe loses a political editor

The Boston Globe’s deputy national political editor, Foon Rhee, is leaving the paper this Friday to take a job at the Sacramento Bee, according to a copy of an internal e-mail obtained by Media Nation. The e-mail, from Washington bureau chief Chris Rowland, is as follows:

Foon Rhee, the Globe’s deputy national political editor, will be departing after more than five years at the newspaper to take a job as associate editor at the Sacramento Bee, serving on the editorial board and writing editorials, columns, and analysis pieces. There is no positive way to spin this, so I won’t try: it is wretched news for the Washington Bureau, and he will be deeply missed. Foon is a talented and invaluable editor, lending a strong hand on assignment and story editing of our Washington report, and offering excellent news judgment accumulated over a career that has emphasized political coverage. He also is an Internet news blogger extraordinaire, almost single-handedly writing the Political Intelligence blog on a minute-by-minute basis, all day long. He is blazingly fast, and he routinely gets news out to readers of boston.com much more quickly than the wires or cable television. Foon has occupied his current post since August 2007, joining the national political desk in time to work on the dramatic 2008 presidential election. Prior to that, he served three years as the Globe’s city editor, overseeing coverage of vital metro stories like the Big Dig ceiling collapse and the Haleigh Poutre case. Former metro editor Carolyn Ryan brought him to that job in 2004 from the Raleigh News and Observer, where Foon was local news editor and then political editor. He previously held reporting jobs at the Charlotte Observer. Foon graduated from Duke University and he is a big Blue Devils fan, to the serious dismay of various Tar Heels in the newsroom. As he journeys now to the land of sunshine and movie-star governors, Foon will also be moving closer to family members, who live in Oakland. His last day at the Globe will be this Friday, Jan. 8. Please join me in wishing Foon the best of luck and congratulations before he leaves Morrissey Boulevard and hops on the Pike, westbound.

— Chris