Author: Dan Kennedy

You have to wonder what Bobby Dellelo was thinking. The ex-convict, who served some four decades in connection with the murder of a police officer, allowed himself to become a public face of efforts to reform the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law. What happened next was inevitable.

Advocates of reform say that prospective employers use CORI to screen out ex-cons, making it impossible for them to find work and turn their lives around. Yesterday the Boston Globe published a longish feature on Dellelo by Megan Tench, complete with an evocative portrait by photographer Dominic Chavez. Tench quoted Dellelo as follows:

“I can’t even get a job driving a cab,” said Dellelo, 68, who holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Curry College.

“I can’t get a home. I can’t get a job. I know how to rob banks. I know how to hotwire armored cars. I did it. What do you think I should do?”

But there is absolutely no mention in Tench’s story of Dellelo’s murder conviction. So would you care to guess what happened today? In what might be termed a double make-up call, the Boston Herald ran an O’Ryan Johnson piece headlined “Globe’s ex-con exclusive excluded killer details: Tale of woe left out conviction in murder.” And the Globe itself ran a follow-up — bylined by Marcia Cramer and Tench — dredging up Dellelo’s past in loving detail.

Johnson’s article quotes Thomas Holmes, who was 9 years old when his father, George Holmes, was shot to death by Dellelo’s accomplice in a jewelry-store robbery. “Why not mention the truth of what he is?” Holmes is quoted as saying. “If it was me they’d go through my background, they’d dig up everything they could. They want to make everyone feel sorry for this guy because he was in prison. My father was shot six times without having his gun pulled out of his holster.”

The print version of today’s Globe includes two photos of Dellelo being forcibly apprehended by authorities, once after his arrest in 1963, and another time after he’d escaped from prison in 1968 — not his only escape, by the way. The article quotes Robert Kenney, president of the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society, as saying, “I think it’s a little disgusting. I think it’s shocking we’re supposed to feel sorry for a guy who killed a police officer…. There is no reason for him to be walking the streets.”

Holmes’ and Kenney’s sentiments are absolutely understandable. But let’s not forget that Dellelo never shot anyone. He and his accomplice, Nicholas Yasaian, had actually gone off in different directions before Yasaian, unbeknownst to Dellelo, murdered Holmes. Yasaian later committed suicide. Legally, Dellelo is just as culpable as Yasaian. Logic and morality, though, would dictate otherwise.

Still, the Globe certainly should have offered more details about Dellelo’s past in its first article — not just because readers have a right to know, but out of respect for George Holmes’ memory and his family. And it’s not as if no one knew. Here is the lead of an April 4, 2004, Globe Magazine piece to which the Herald alludes: “After 30 years in state and federal prisons plus a few years in juvenile detention, Bobby Dellelo thought he had experienced everything there was to life behind bars. He was serving a life sentence for his part in a Boston jewelry heist in which an off-duty police officer had been killed.” That’s certainly clear enough. Aren’t you supposed to check the clips?

As for Dellelo himself, how could he have not known what was going to happen when he stepped forward — especially if he failed to come clean about his past?

For Dellelo, there is one consolation. In yesterday’s Globe story, he was 68 years old. Today he’s 64. Given enough time, maybe he’ll get back a few more of the years he served.

I had intended to issue a ringing endorsement this morning of the Northeastern Patriot’s right to publish. But I can’t. You see, when I investigated the Patriot on the Web, I learned that the production manager’s Facebook photo is of a license plate that reads “RDSXSUX.” Worse, the plateholder is emblazoned with “New York Yankees.” I mean, there are limits.

But seriously. The Patriot is a new conservative newspaper on campus. I haven’t seen a copy, since it ran into distribution problems earlier this week. But judging from coverage in the Northeastern News and the Boston Globe, it sounds like the problem isn’t its content, but, rather, the fact that the students who put it together put the Northeastern brand in its title without going through the proper channels. Apparently they don’t even have to do that if they simply drop “Northeastern” from the name.

An example would be Boston University’s student paper, which is known simply as the Daily Free Press. Beneath the nameplate appears this: “The Independent Student Newspaper at Boston University.” Problem solved — and a censorship controversy avoided.

Disclosure: If you don’t know already, read my bio under “About the blogger,” in the upper-right corner of this page.

Tom Finneran, where are you? The iron-fisted former Massachusetts House speaker would have known exactly what to do about the State Ethics Commission‘s ludicrous attempt to ban political statements on state-owned property. He would have abolished the commission. Now, some might say that would be extreme. But as Barry Goldwater once said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Yesterday, the Boston Globe’s Andrea Estes reported that the commission had “tightened its rules on political activity by public officials, barring them from writing stump speeches, answering campaign questions, or holding news conferences on political topics inside the State House or other state office buildings.”

The ruling follows a complaint filed by Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman Phil Johnston and state Rep. Jim Marzilli, D-Arlington. Their beef: Gov. Mitt Romney, accompanied by several staff members, had appeared outside his State House office in July 2004 to verbally cuff Sen. John Kerry. Yet the Globe story also notes that several Democrats, including Attorney General Tom Reilly, have made purely political statements while inside state office buildings. Indeed, Republican consultant Rob Gray, quoted in Estes’ story, gets it exactly right:

“If the Ethics Commission intends to stop all political lines of questioning for elected officials inside the State House, that’s ridiculous and impractical,” said Rob Gray, a Republican consultant and press secretary to former governors William F. Weld and A. Paul Cellucci. “These are elected officials. That in and of itself means there is a crossover between policy and politics. Stifling reporters’ questions only lets elected officials off the hook. What’s an elected official going to say when a reporter asks a political question — ‘Hey everybody get your coats and meet me at the corner of Beacon and Park streets and I’ll answer the question.’ It’s silly.”

The trouble is, this isn’t just ridiculous and impractical, although it’s surely that. It’s also an attack on free speech — a logical extension of misguided attempts to limit and regulate speech through so-called campaign-finance reform. Romney, Reilly and every other elected official ought to be able to say exactly what they want, regardless of where they happen to be standing or sitting at the time.

Johnston himself may be having some misgivings. In Estes’ article yesterday, he’s quoted as saying, “I’m delighted. We feel completely vindicated.” Today, though, Johnston tells Globe columnist Adrian Walker, “I think it’s a bit extreme. We didn’t ask that [political questions] be prohibited. Obviously, it’s a bit absurd to say reporters can’t ask political questions at the State House.” Well, Phil, that’s the problem with asking the ethics police to crack down on free speech: They just might go even farther than you’d intended.

WBZ-TV (Channel 4) political analyst Jon Keller wonders if the commissioners “ate a batch of mystery brownies without checking to see what the ingredients were.”

Veteran political columnist Alan Lupo, writing in today’s Boston Herald, waxes indignant at the whole notion that speech on Beacon Hill can be regulated. Lupo writes:

Would it be such a violation of our common sense if, in the middle of a gubernatorial press conference, a reporter might ask the chief executive’s opinion of a presidential candidacy, and the governor might actually respond?

Are we now to believe that politics stops at the door of government? This foolishness reminds me of those cloying candidates for office who insist, “I’m not a politician.” Well, what are you then if you are running for office and hope to serve? A tree surgeon? An alto sax player? A member of the Black Watch Regiment?

The Berkshire Eagle makes a similar point in an editorial published today:

Government is politics and politics is government, and it is impossible to determine how a distinction can be made when elected officials are queried during campaign season. It is easy to imagine politicians using the commission ruling to avoid answering tough questions from reporters on the grounds that the questions are political in nature. According to the commission’s ruling, press conferences should be stopped in their tracks by a press officer if political questions begin to dominate. The distinction between a campaign question and a question related to official matters is a subjective one, as is the decision as to when one kind of question or the other dominates. This guideline is so vague as to be meaningless, and the prospect of a press conference at the State House being ended abruptly so it can be resumed at a campaign office is absurd.

Good for the Eagle. Neither the Globe nor the Herald has editorialized on this yet, and news of the ruling came too late for the Boston Phoenix’s deadline. I’m afraid that this is going to fall through the cracks unless there’s a concerted effort. Yes, this led the Globe yesterday, but stories have a way of fizzling out quickly unless there’s sustained follow-up.

This is scary. If nothing is done, I hope some brave politician will challenge the commission by speaking out as he or she pleases and then refusing to pay the fine that will inevitably result. It’s called civil disobedience, and the future of our political discourse depends on it.

As no doubt many of you already know, conservative commentator Bill Bennett yesterday told his radio listeners that newly minted Pulitzer Prize winners James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times and Dana Priest of the Washington Post should go to jail for revealing the existence of secret anti-terrorism operations. Editor & Publisher has the story:

According to an E&P transcript of the audio of his radio program, Bill Bennett said that the reporters “took classified information, secret information, published it in their newspapers, against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and others, that they not release it. They not only released it, they publicized it — they put it on the front page, and it damaged us, it hurt us.

“How do we know it damaged us? Well, it revealed the existence of the surveillance program, so people are going to stop making calls. Since they are now aware of this, they’re going to adjust their behavior … on the secret sites, the CIA sites, we embarrassed our allies…. So it hurt us there.

“As a result are they punished, are they in shame, are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer prizes — they win Pulitzer prizes. I don’t think what they did was worthy of an award — I think what they did is worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward.”

He urged his listeners to write the top editors of the two papers and said their addresses were posted on his Web site.

Media Matters reports that when Bennett popped up on CNN’s “The Situation Room” later in the day, Wolf Blitzer neglected to ask him about his remarks.

Of course, the media do not have carte blanche to reveal national-security secrets in a time of war. Col. Robert McCormick, the eccentric publisher of the Chicago Tribune, was nearly prosecuted for treason when one of his reporters revealed after the Battle of Midway, in 1942, that the United States had broken the Japanese code.

But context is everything. The Times and the Post revealed secrets that were unimportant to the enemy and that the American people had a right to know. As I argued yesterday, these Pulitzers are likely to become a cause célèbre among conservatives, who will use this as an example of the liberal media’s treachery. That analysis, though, just doesn’t hold up.

The Times, of course, revealed that the National Security Agency was wiretapping suspected terrorists in the United States without bothering to get a warrant, as required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. We can safely assume that these suspects already knew they were being wiretapped. The Times’ bombshell was that the administration had decided to ignore the law.

The Post revealed the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe where suspected terrorists are interrogated. Again, it’s inconceivable that advance knowledge of these prisons would somehow help the terrorists. So why shouldn’t the American public be informed about what’s being done in its name?

It’s been many years since the line between the media and the government was drawn this starkly over matters of such crucial importance. I suspect we’ve only seen the opening skirmishes so far.

The New York Times has posted a video from Bruce Springsteen’s forthcoming Pete Seeger tribute album. “Pay Me My Money Down” sounds like it has more musicians than a high-school marching band — or, as Will Hermes writes, “Coffeehouse folk music it ain’t — sports arena folk is more like it.” Good stuff.

I hope this is the beginning of a creative revival for Springsteen, whose songwriting has waned since his last really good album, 1995’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

Cosmo Macero’s successor as the Boston Herald business editor will be Greg Gatlin, who was the paper’s media reporter — and a very good one — before becoming Macero’s deputy. There’s also talk that Macero is going to start blogging again. If he does, it will be here.

By honoring the New York Times and the Washington Post for their work in exposing the Bush administration’s covert and legally dubious campaign against suspected terrorists, the Pulitzer Prize board yesterday signaled a final end to the media’s post-9/11 skittishness with respect to tough coverage of the White House. The media, in effect, reasserted their independence.

Some conservative supporters of President Bush have argued that the Times could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 for revealing the existence of the National Security Agency’s secret, no-warrant wiretapping program — an example of journalistic derring-do that Bush himself publicly labeled a “shameful act.” (Bush was specifically referring to the leak that led to the story. But it seems clear that he was referring as well to the story, which the Times had refrained from publishing for more than a year at Bush’s request.)

Right on cue, Scott Johnson of the conservative Power Line blog denounced what he called “The Pulitzer Prize for Treason,” writing that the Times article, by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “clearly violated relevant provisions of the Espionage Act — a particularly serious crime insofar as it lends assistance to the enemy in a time of war.” For good measure, Johnson drew a parallel to Walter Duranty, the Times reporter who infamously ignored Stalin’s crimes against humanity in the 1930s.

Stephen Spruiell, who writes National Review Online’s Media Blog, was more restrained, contenting himself with referring to the Times’ and the Post’s Pulitzers as “highly politicized” awards that were “based on anonymous sources who sought to damage the Bush administration.”

Although I have not yet run across any commentary suggesting that the Post may be in the same kind of legal peril as the Times, there’s no question that Dana Priest’s reporting, revealing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, has raised precisely the same hackles on the right. And, as is the case with the Times, the leak that led to Priest’s story is under investigation.

What we have here is a situation analogous to the Pentagon Papers. Our two leading newspapers — then, as now, the New York Times and the Washington Post — have exposed government secrets about how the administration has waged war. Then, as now, journalists argued that the public has a right to know what’s being done in its name. Then, as now, the White House and its supporters contend that the press is engaged in acts that are, at best, unpatriotic and, at worst, treasonous.

No doubt we’ll hear that these awards were the work of out-of-touch intellectuals at Columbia University, which administers the Pulitzers. Well, to invoke a Clinton-era cliché, the juries that chose to honor the Times and the Post look like America.

The jurors who picked the Times for one of two national reporting awards came from the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, USA Today, Newhouse News Service and the Dallas Morning News. For the Post, which won in the beat reporting category, it was the Sacramento Bee, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Philadelphia Daily News, the John S. Knight Fellowships, the News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Orlando Sentinel. Clearly this was not an Ivy League plot.

For the Pulitzer board to cast its lot on the side of a free press yesterday was an important symbolic act that will be invoked over and over again in the ugly legal and political battles to come.

In the interest of fairness: Bronson Arroyo yesterday pitched five innings and gave up five earned runs, including two homers, in an 8-7 loss. Oh, yeah: He also went 0 for 2. But I never said he was a front-line pitcher — just more valuable than Wily Mo Peña.

Karen Guregian (sub. req.) on how good Bronson Arroyo would look in a Red Sox uniform now that David Wells is back on the DL:

As everyone knows, the Sox had a pretty darn good starter-in-reserve, a guy who was 10th in the American League in quality starts last season. But they traded him for someone who played a line drive into a ground-rule double yesterday, someone who’s getting mock cheers when he actually makes a catch.

And this Chris Snow piece really makes it sound like Wells might be finished.

I didn’t want to let the week go by without mentioning a few developments on the “what’s happening to the newspaper business” front. No übertake from Media Nation. Nevertheless, here are a few things you should keep an eye on.

The week began with a perversely fascinating story in the New York Times. Steve Lohr reported that some news services are deliberately sticking flat, dull headlines on the Web versions of their stories so they’ll be more likely to get chosen by the robots at Google News, Yahoo News and the like. Lohr explains:

In newspapers and magazines, … section titles and headlines are distilled nuggets of human brainwork, tapping context and culture. “Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, ‘The heck with that,’ ” observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.

“Tulsa star: The life and career of much-loved 1960’s singer” is example of an evocative headline designed for human eyes. The bots’ choice? “Obituary: Gene Pitney.”

Also last week, Christopher Lydon’s consistently excellent public radio program, “Open Source,” did an hour on the future of the newspaper business. You can read a summary and download the audio here. Lydon’s lead guest was Alan Rusbridge, editor of The Guardian, the British newspaper that has become something of an international phenomenon thanks to its well-executed Web version.

Rusbridge made the rather astonishing assertion that The Guardian’s 14 million American readers exceeds the online circulation of the Los Angeles Times. I guess it makes sense; though the Times is a great paper, it’s seen as essentially regional. The Guardian’s frankly liberal orientation, easy-to-navigate Web tools and emphasis on smart but short articles are bound to make it a favorite in Blue America.

Rusbridge made one other observation that leads me to my final destination. Lydon at one point noted that, as publicly owned companies begin to flee the newspaper business, nonprofit foundations such as the one that owns the St. Petersburg Times (and runs the Poynter Institute) may become the wave of the future. Rusbridge agreed, and noted that The Guardian is actually owned by such a foundation.

Yet one of the outstanding examples of such subsidized journalism — the Christian Science Monitor — would appear to be in some danger, as the financially troubled Christian Science Church last week announced a series of moves aimed at putting the church on more stable footing.

The Monitor is a terrific paper with an international focus that has already morphed into a pretty much Web-only news source. (When was the last time you saw a paper Monitor?) The Boston Globe’s Tom Palmer reported (fee req.) on Friday that the church intends for the Monitor to be self-sufficient by 2009 after having received millions of dollars in subsidies in recent years. But it’s hard to imagine how that could happen without seriously downgrading the journalism.

The church would be an ideal patron for the Monitor’s journalism. It’s a shame that its own financial problems may make that impossible.