Tara Reade, who accused Biden of sexual assault, pops up in Russia

Tara Reade’s new home: The Kremlin. Photo (cc) 2015 by Larry Koester.

On Tuesday came the bizarre news that Tara Reade, who accused Joe Biden of past instances of sexual assault during the 2020 presidential campaign, had popped up in Russia, claiming she feared being imprisoned or killed. The Guardian reported that she had “defected”; The New York Times went with the less charged “moved.”

Women rarely lie about sexual assault, but there were reasons right from the start not to believe Reade’s claims. Among other things, the PBS NewsHour reported that the details Reade offered were almost certainly false, and Politico found that she had spent much of her adult life as a grifter. Below is a blog post that links to those stories.

Follow the money

Media Nation | May 16, 2020

Two in-depth reports Friday rendered what was left of Tara Reade’s credibility in tatters.

The more important was a story by the PBS NewsHour. Lisa Desjardins and Daniel Bush interviewed 74 former Joe Biden staff members, 62 of them women. And though they said Biden sometimes had trouble keeping his hands to himself (something Biden acknowledged and apologized for last year), they emphatically denied that they’d ever heard of him engaging in sexual assault.

“The people who spoke to the NewsHour,” they wrote, “described largely positive and gratifying experiences working for Biden, painting a portrait of someone who was ahead of his time in empowering women in the workplace.”

Crucially, an on-the-record source told them that there were problems with Reade’s job performance that may have led to her termination. And the place where the alleged assault took place was entirely out in the open, making it nearly impossible for Biden to have done what she claims without being seen.

Also Friday, Natasha Korecki reported for Politico that Reade has spent much of her adult life as a grifter, lying and cheating people out of money — but never, in the recollection of the people she interviewed, saying anything negative about Biden.

“Over the past decade,” Korecki wrote, “Reade has left a trail of aggrieved acquaintances in California’s Central Coast region who say they remember two things about her — she spoke favorably about her time working for Biden, and she left them feeling duped.”

In the weeks after I wrote about the Reade case for WGBH News, I’ve gone from thinking there was a reasonable chance that she was telling the truth to now believing it’s highly likely that she made the whole thing up.

But why? Could it have something to do with her weird praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin? What should we make of the fact that her lawyer, who’s representing her for free, is a Trump donor? Or the fact that another lawyer who’s acted on her behalf has ties to Russian propaganda operations?

Ultimately Reade’s story can’t be definitively proven or disproven, but the media have done a good job of laying out the facts and showing how far-fetched it is. Now we need to know who, if anyone, was behind what appears to be a classic political dirty trick. Keep digging.

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A quick guide to the debt ceiling crisis. Or, why it’s all the Republicans’ fault.

There must be a $1 trillion platinum coin in there somewhere. Photo (cc) 2016 by cweyant.

I imagine most readers of this blog understand the ins and outs of the debt ceiling fiasco, but in case you don’t, a brief explanation.

The debt ceiling is an extra, and entirely unnecessary, appendage to the work of passing budgets and appropriating money. Congress gets to debate what should go into the budget, and that’s an opportunity for those who want hold down spending to make their case and put it to a vote. But once the budget is passed, that’s the end (or at least it should be), and if the executive needs to borrow money to fulfill that budget, then so be it.

For the past century, though, congressional action has been needed to approve more borrowing, even though that borrowing is to cover spending that has already been approved, and in many cases has already taken place. No one thought much about it until recently, but in 2011 congressional Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling unless President Obama made concessions, and now House Republicans are attempting to do the same with President Biden.

The only other Western democracy that countenances this foolishness is Denmark. Try buying a car with a loan and then telling the finance company that your family has voted not to approve the monthly payments. Bye bye car.

You’ll note that this only happens when there’s a Democratic president and one or both branches of Congress is controlled by Republicans. President Trump ran up enormous deficits, and the debt ceiling was routinely increased on a bipartisan basis to accommodate those deficits. Other than a few rogue individual votes here and there, Democrats have never sought to exploit the debt ceiling, because — whatever their faults — they belong to a party that believes in basic governance.

Sadly, though, the debt ceiling negotiations have occasioned an outpouring of terrible both-sides media coverage. Gosh, why can’t Democrats and Republicans come together for the good of the country?

Click on image of post to follow link to the NPR story

The hypocrisy and phoniness surrounding this issue are why a lot of observers are calling on Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment, which states in part, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” Or to mint the coin.

In any case, if and when Democrats are fully in power again, they ought to repeal the debt ceiling so we can go about our business like a normal country.

John Widdison, a former top editor at the Telegram & Gazette, dies at 84

John Widdison

John Widdison, a former executive managing editor of the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, died Tuesday at the age of 84. Mr. Widdison oversaw the merger of the morning Worcester Telegram and the Evening Gazette, later serving as director of public affairs for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, where he worked until retiring in 2001.

In 2019, Mr. Widdison was inducted into the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame, administered by the New England Newspaper and Press Association. According to the citation he received, “He led with compassion and intelligence thereby engendering a teamwork, we’re-all-in-this-together work atmosphere. John’s impact was felt not only in the newsroom but also in the community where he welcomed feedback from readers on everything from missed deliveries to spelling errors.”

Here is Mr. Widdison’s obituary, as published by the T&G.

Globe columnist Tom Farragher to retire

Boston Globe metro columnist Tom Farragher is retiring after more than 25 years at the paper, according to an email to the staff sent by managing editor Jennifer Peter. Farragher, who was part of the Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting of the pedophile-priest scandal, later went on to serve as editor of the investigative Spotlight Team.

“I have loved my work here alongside dedicated professionals who come to work each day to produce the best newspaper in New England,” Farragher told his colleagues.

The Globe agrees to a $5m settlement for sending user video data to Facebook

Illustration (cc) 2018 by Book Catalog

Web publishers are notorious for violating our privacy, and news organizations are no exception. Now, though, one of those organizations, The Boston Globe, is being held to account. The paper has agreed to a $5 million settlement of a lawsuit brought by a California man named David Ambrose over the Globe’s practice of hoovering up the identifying information of users who watch videos on its website and sending it to Facebook.

The proposed settlement, now pending in U.S. District Court, would encompass $4 million to compensate subscribers, who could receive $22 to $44 apiece, and another $1 million to extend the subscriptions of affected users for one week. News of the proposed settlement was first reported Friday evening by Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub. The Globe has denied any wrongdoing.

Before paid digital subscriptions overtook free news, it was understood that the only way news organizations could make money online was to barrage readers with popups, pop-unders, autoplay digital ads and other forms of obnoxious, intrusive commercial messages. That set up a downward spiral, with users fleeing and news orgs ratcheting up the ads even more. You’d think those days would be in the past — but they’re not.

Now that the Globe has agreed to end one of those privacy-violating practices, I hope the paper’s business-side executives will think about how much inconvenience and privacy violations they want to inflict on their digital subscribers, who pay an industry-high $30 a month. I hope other news outlets take heed as well.

A top Globe editor moves on

Scott Allen, a top editor at The Boston Globe (his title is assistant managing editor for projects), is leaving the paper, according to an email sent to the staff Thursday afternoon by editor Nancy Barnes. Here’s the email, sent to me by several trusted sources.

Dear all,

Scott Allen is leaving the Globe after 30 years to work with his son, John Allen, better known as MrBallen, whose hit podcast on Amazon Prime and his videos on YouTube reach millions each week.

It’s nearly impossible to sum up 30 years of Boston Globe journalism in a few paragraphs, but here goes:  At the Globe, Scott has helped edit four Pulitzer Prize finalists and one Pulitzer winner, the Quick Strike Team’s “Blind Spot” series, which won for investigative reporting. Most recently, he worked closely with Janelle Nanos on her heart wrenching Pulitzer finalist “Kate Price remembers something terrible.”

Scott has also served as Spotlight Team leader and editor of the Globe’s medical, science and environmental coverage. He joined the Globe as a cub environmental reporter back in 1992.

And in recent years, Scott has led the newsroom’s effort to make the most of our intellectual property, pursuing creative ways to repurpose the Globe content in podcasts, on TV and in other media.

“My colleagues at the Globe have been like family to me and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together,” he said. “It’s bittersweet to say goodbye, but the opportunity to work with my son was just too good to pass up. I wish my friends here nothing but continued success.”

Scott has agreed to stay on for a few weeks to help me with transition issues. I want to personally thank Scott for welcoming me to the Globe long before I arrived, and for being such a supportive partner as I made my way around the organization.

Nancy

Should the press have blown the whistle on Rachael Rollins? No. Here’s why.

Several people have raised questions as to why the local press didn’t blow the whistle on U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins over what the Justice Department has characterized as her attempts to influence the Suffolk County district attorney’s race between interim DA Kevin Hayden and Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo. Rollins favored Arroyo over Hayden, who was the eventual winner and is now the elected district attorney.

As documented in the inspector general’s report, Rollins leaked like a broken faucet to The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald in an attempt to influence their coverage. The report makes clear that was a serious ethical violation, and that it has possibly landed her in legal trouble as well. Isn’t that a story in and of itself?

Well, now. The relationship between journalists and sources is often not pretty, and this is one of those rare instances of the public being given an inside look. Sources have all kinds of motives, sometimes less than pure. Reporters want to get the story, and they generally don’t worry much about whether their sources are doing the right thing.

As Bruce Mohl and Michael Jonas write at CommonWealth: “These sorts of back-channel communications are commonplace in the world of political journalism, where reporters and political figures often use each other for their own ends. But rarely do these exchanges come to light.”

The most famous example I can think of is Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and The Washington Post. The journalists who received those documents knew that Ellsberg was breaking national-security laws. But rather than turning him in, they published the government’s own secret history of the Vietnam War, thus performing a public service. The government later prosecuted Ellsberg, although the case fell apart. Of course, the motives in the Rollins case were hardly that grandiose.

Keep in mind, too, that reporters in the Rollins case were unaware of the full extent of Rollins’ alleged wrongdoing. Probably the most damaging allegation to come out of the Justice Department report is that Rollins is said to have lied under oath when she was asked by investigators about leaking a confidential document to the Herald. Journalists had no way of knowing about that until Wednesday, when the government released that report.

Finally, there’s the matter of what would have happened if the press had decided to report on Rollins’ leaking. There’s actually a 1991 Supreme Court case that speaks to this — Cohen v. Cowles Media. In that case, a political operative named Dan Cohen leaked information about his client’s opponent to the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press, papers in Minneapolis and St. Paul; the Star Tribune at that time was owned by Cowles Media and the Pioneer Press by Knight Ridder. The reporters were so appalled at Cohen’s attempt to get them to write about a politician’s petty crimes that they decided the real story was Cohen’s sleazy tactics.

Cohen sued at having been outed, and the court sided with him, citing the doctrine of promissory estoppel: Cohen acted the way he did on the belief that his anonymity would be respected. Essentially, the reporters violated a verbal contract with Cohen, and a $200,000 judgment Cohen had been awarded in state court was reinstated. Justice Byron White’s decision began:

The question before us is whether the First Amendment prohibits a plaintiff from recovering damages, under state promissory estoppel law, for a newspaper’s breach of a promise of confidentiality given to the plaintiff in exchange for information. We hold that it does not.

I don’t know what federal or Massachusetts law says about promissory estoppel, but it seems likely that reporters would have run afoul of their legal obligations if they had promised Rollins anonymity and then blew her cover. In any case, there’s no reason to think they even considered doing such a thing. Nor should they have. Promising anonymity to a source is something that should not be undertaken lightly, but once that agreement is in place, no journalist should even consider violating it.

Correction: This post originally misidentified the owner of the Pioneer Press in 1991.

DOJ report on Rachael Rollins provides an inside look into journalistic sausage-making

Rachael Rollins. YouTube screen capture via Wikimedia Commons.

Earlier today the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General issued a 155-page ethics report regarding U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins, who announced Tuesday that she would resign from her position.

Much of the report details Rollins’ alleged attempts to influence the 2022 Democratic primary in the Suffolk County district attorney’s race between her successor, interim DA Kevin Hayden, and his challenger, Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo. Hayden, who had been appointed on an interim basis by then-Gov. Charlie Baker, defeated Arroyo and is now the elected DA.

The campaign was dominated by two major series of articles in The Boston Globe — one involving Hayden, who reportedly had slow-walked an investigation into serious problems with the MBTA Transit Police, the other pertaining to allegations of sexual assault brought against Arroyo. The Justice Department’s report details Rollins’ attempts to provide information to the Globe and the Boston Herald that would harm Hayden and help Arroyo.

The report is devastating in places, concluding that Rollins “knowingly and willfully made a false statement of material fact under oath when she testified on December 6 that she was not the federal law enforcement source cited in the Herald article and that she did know who the source was.” In that article, the Herald reported that Hayden could face a federal investigation stemming from the Transit Police matter.

Because the report provides a fascinating inside look at how the journalistic sausage is made, I’m reproducing the inspector general’s analysis of the evidence, which can be found on pp. 69-73. The report also includes mountains of information about the nature of Rollins’ contacts with the Globe and the Herald, which the Justice Department obtained voluntarily from Rollins’ cellphone. No journalists were asked for information, in accordance with Justice’s guidelines.

***

Based upon the facts described above, the OIG [Office of Inspector General] concluded that U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins used her position as U.S. Attorney in an effort to influence the outcome of a partisan political election, namely the September 6, 2022 Democratic primary election that would select her likely successor as Suffolk D.A. We further found that Rollins took an active part in Ricardo Arroyo’s primary campaign for the Suffolk D.A. position in an effort to help Arroyo defeat Interim D.A. Kevin Hayden. We concluded that, despite her assertion otherwise, Rollins was very much trying to put her “finger on [the] scale” in the race for D.A., a race that certain local media reports suggested was a referendum on the policies and programs Rollins instituted during her own tenure as Suffolk D.A. — with Arroyo being seen as someone who was more supportive of, and likely to continue, her policies than Hayden. Even Arroyo, moments after he lost the primary election to Hayden, sent a message to Rollins stating that her “legacy work deserved better.”

Additionally, we determined that days after Hayden prevailed in the September 6 primary election, Rollins sought to damage Hayden’s reputation by leaking to the Herald Reporter non-public and sensitive DOJ [Department of Justice] information that suggested the possibility of a federal criminal investigation into Hayden, a matter from which Rollins was recused. Finally, we concluded that Rollins lacked candor during her OIG interview when discussing her communications with the Globe Reporter and with the Herald Reporter, and falsely testified under oath when she initially denied that she was the federal law enforcement source who provided non-public, sensitive DOJ information to the Herald Reporter about a possible Hayden criminal investigation. Rollins only admitted to being the source during subsequent testimony after Rollins produced, in response to the OIG’s requests, relevant text messages, which definitively showed that Rollins had indeed been a source for the reporter. Continue reading “DOJ report on Rachael Rollins provides an inside look into journalistic sausage-making”

The Wall Street Journal drops honorifics

Image
Is there a Dr. in the house?

The Wall Street Journal is ending its use of honorifics, leaving The New York Times as one of the very few news organizations that still describe someone with Mr., Ms., etc., on second reference.

Editor-in-chief Emma Tucker writes that “the trend among almost all news organizations and magazines has been to go without, as editors have concluded that the titles in news articles are becoming a vestige of a more-formal past, and that the flood of Mr., Ms., Mx. or Mrs. in sentences can slow down readers’ enjoyment of our writing.” An exception will be made for “occupational titles” such as Gen., Sen. or Dr. As is the case with AP style, Dr. will be reserved for medical doctors.

The Journal also offers this bit of silliness:

Honorifics have dishonorable aspects in history. At the worst, some newspapers had a practice to use courtesy titles for white people only. There were also courtesy-title policies that were sexist: Some newspapers in the past gave courtesy titles only to women, which had the effect of identifying women as either a Mrs. or Miss; meanwhile, the format for couples was Mr. and Mrs. John Smith.

All true, of course, but if you use honorifics without regard to race or gender, as the Journal, the Times and others have for many years, then the problem goes away.

I posted a query on Mastodon and Twitter to find news organizations other than the Times that still use honorifics and came up with an extremely short list. If you know of any others, please post it in the comments.

  • The Christian Science Monitor
  • The New York Sun
  • The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  • The Blade of Toledo

The Post-Gazette and the Blade share common ownership.

Post-publication additions:

Spare Change News co-founder James Shearer dies at 64

Hawker selling Spare Change News. Photo (cc) 2011 by Bogdan Seredyak.

James Shearer, who co-founded Spare Change News some 30 years ago, has died at the age of 64. The paper is sold by homeless people on the streets of Boston, and was begun with the idea that it would provide them an alternative to panhandling. Bryan Marquard has written a lovely obituary of Mr. Shearer for The Boston Globe. His public Facebook feed is filled with tributes as well.

Samuel Scott, who was the editor and executive director of Spare Change News from 2004-’07, sent along the following statement:

James co-founded a newspaper that has always done two amazing things over the decades: It brings attention to homelessness and other social justice issues, and it gives homeless people bona fide jobs selling the paper on the street so they can earn a respectable living just like anyone else with a job. Countless homeless and other marginalized people have been helped by the newspaper that he helped to found over the years, and I hope that everyone in the Boston area is still buying Spare Change to this day.

It’s easy to pass by someone selling Spare Change News, and its visibility decreased during the COVID years. Vendors often sold the paper outside T stations, and with many people now working hybrid schedules, there aren’t as many opportunities to buy it. The next time you see someone hawking Spare Change, please stop for a moment and pay for a copy.