David Ortiz celebrates the first of his three championships with the Red Sox. Photo (cc) 2013 by Colin Steele.
Boston magazine and The Boston Globe published dueling stories over the weekend that recount the 2019 shooting of Red Sox legend David Ortiz.
The Boston magazine story, by Mike Damiano, appears to have been many weeks, if not months, in the making — it’s a rich, deeply reported story about Ortiz’s life in the Dominican Republic and his complicated family situation. The Globe article, by Bob Hohler, may have been assigned (or least put on the fast track) in reaction to BoMag. It’s a newsy account of that attempts to get to the bottom of who ordered Ortiz’s shooting, and why.
By all means, read both. But by far the most interesting detail is the dueling theories about the role of a major drug trafficker, César Peralta, known as “The Abuser.” According to the Globe’s account, former Boston police commissioner Ed Davis, who was hired by Ortiz to investigate the shooting, Peralta is in fact the guy who ordered the hit. Hohler writes:
Davis, disclosing his findings for the first time, said the powerful and politically connected drug lord César “The Abuser” Peralta came to feel disrespected by Ortiz, prompting him to place a bounty on Ortiz’s head and sanction the ragtag hit squad that tried to kill him.
“Peralta said he had David shot,” Davis said in an interview, citing information that he said US law enforcement officials gathered and shared with him.
The BoMag story, on the other hand, all but rules out Peralta as having any role. Here’s what Damiano has to say:
As I, too, tried to get to the bottom of what caused the shooting, I found that the closer I got to people with genuine knowledge of the Santo Domingo underworld, the more skepticism I heard about the love-triangle theory and any possibility of Peralta’s involvement. One man I spoke with who knows many of the men in Peralta’s circle, as well as some of the men accused of involvement in the shooting, said that the theory was bunk. No part of it added up, he said, and hardly anyone in his neighborhood — Herrera, a hot bed of Dominican drug trafficking — believed it.
The two accounts also raise some questions about access. The Globe’s owner and publisher, John Henry, is also the principal owner of the Red Sox. Davis is a security consultant for the Globe. It does not appear that Davis shared his theory about Peralta with BoMag.
Both stories dismiss the widely mocked theory put forth by Dominican authorities that Ortiz was the victim of mistaken identity.
The conclusion I took away from Damiano’s and Hohler’s reporting was that we may never know who ordered the hit on Ortiz. I’m just glad he’s still with us.
Footnote: I’m told that Damiano has been hired by the Globe.
Sometime in early March, the extremist Republican congressman from North Carolina decided to go off on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug,” Cawthorn told supporters. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”
If Cawthorn had spoken, say, a month earlier, he might have earned the praise of former President Donald Trump and gotten invited to trash Zelenskyy some more on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program. But that was before Zelenskyy had emerged as a heroic figure, standing up to Russia’s invasion of his country with a combination of eloquence and courage. “I need ammunition, not a ride,” he said to those who thought he should flee.
So former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, the sort of establishment Republican who was frozen out during the Trump era, used his Wall Street Journal column to let his readers know that Republicans like Cawthorn and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance (“I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another”) are outliers — and that the party is oh-so-very supportive of Zelenskyy. “Republican members of Congress, candidates and commentators echoing Mr. Trump’s isolationism and Kremlin apologetics are out of sync with GOP voters,” Rove wrote.
WRAL.com of North Carolina, which obtained video of Cawthorn taking the Kremlin line, pushed that message even harder, stressing in its lead that Cawthorn’s vile rhetoric was at odds with his party and calling it “a comment that runs counter to the overwhelming share of Republicans with a favorable view of the leader fending off a military invasion from Russia.”
Oh, please. Can we get real for a moment? Yes, Rove and WRAL cited poll numbers that show Republicans, like most Americans, are now pro-Zelenskyy and support Ukraine in fending off the massive Russian invasion. But that is an exceptionally recent phenomenon.
In January, for instance, a poll by The Economist and YouGov found that Republicans viewed Vladimir Putin more favorably than President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — hardly surprising after years of pro-Putin pronouncements by Trump.
No wonder former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who’d like to run for president, told Fox News that Putin is “a very talented statesman” with “lots of gifts” who “knows how to use power,” as Eric Boehlert, who tracks conservative bias on the part of the mainstream media, took note of.
Now, some of this reflects a split between the Republican Party’s right wing and its extreme right wing. Way out on the authoritarian fringes, figures such as Carlson and Steve Bannon have long admired Putin for his unabashed, anti-democratic espousal of white Christian dominance and attacks on LGBTQ folks. Politicians such as Cawthorn, Vance and Pompeo, rather than standing up for principle, are trying to thread the needle.
Meanwhile, their less extreme counterparts, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have flipped from coddling Trump, Putin and Russia to claiming that Biden is to blame for the invasion and the high gas prices it has led to.
All of this has a historical context. As everyone knows, or ought to know, Putin has represented an existential threat to Ukraine since 2014, when he invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and incorporated it into Russia. Putin appears to be gripped by the idea of a Greater Russia, of which in his mind Ukraine is a part. Ukraine was a Soviet republic, and Putin has always expressed nostalgia for the U.S.S.R. But the two countries’ ties go back centuries, and apparently no one cares about that more deeply than Putin.
Into this box of dry kindling came the spark of Trump in 2016. His numerous statements of support for Putin and pro-Russia actions couldn’t possibly all be listed here, but a few that pertain to Ukraine stand out. One of Trump’s campaign managers, Paul Manafort, had worked for a pro-Russian political faction in Ukraine and, upon being forced out, offered his services to Trump free of charge. You may also recall that a plank in that year’s Republican platform guaranteeing Ukraine’s security was mysteriously watered down — and a delegate to that year’s convention later said she was asked directly by Trump to support the change. (Manafort later went to prison for financial crimes he committed in Ukraine, only to be pardoned by Trump.)
That was followed by revelations in the fall of 2019 that Trump, in a phone call to Zelenskyy, demanded dirt on Biden in return for military assistance — assistance that Ukraine needed desperately to deter Russian aggression. Trump was impeached over that massive scandal. Yet not a single Republican House member (not even Liz Cheney) supported impeachment, and only one Republican senator — Mitt Romney — voted to remove Trump from office.
As detailed a month ago by The Washington Post, Trump has continued to praise Putin, hailing his war against Ukraine as “genius” and “savvy,” while Trumpers like U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona sneer, “We should just call ourselves Ukraine and then maybe we can get NATO to engage and protect our border.”
Mother Jones reported over the weekend that Russian media outlets have been ordered to quote Tucker Carlson as much as possible. Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed Republican congressional candidate in Washington state, endorsed Cawthorn’s eruption this past Saturday and went him one better, tweeting: “Zelenskyy was installed via a US backed color revaluation [sic], his goal is to move his country west so he virtue signals in woke ideology while using nazi battalions to crush his enemies. He was also smart enough to cut our elite in on the graft. @CawthornforNC nailed it.”
There was a time when, as the old saying went, politics stopped at the water’s edge. That wasn’t always good policy, as elected officials came under withering attack when they dared to criticize misbegotten actions such as the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. But there was a virtue to it as well. When we go to war or, in the case of Ukraine, engage in high-wire diplomacy aimed at ending a war, it’s that much harder when critics are sniping at our leaders. Can you imagine if Republicans had gone on television in 1962 to say that Nikita Khrushchev was right to place Soviet missiles in Cuba?
Claiming that Republicans are united in supporting Ukraine doesn’t make it so. Some are, some aren’t. It’s shocking that a few fringe figures like Cawthorn and Kent are openly criticizing Zeleneskyy even now — but it’s just as shocking that praise for Putin was a mainstream Republican position as recently as a month or so ago.
Unfortunately, the media’s tendency to flatten out and normalize aberrant behavior by the Republicans will prevent this from growing into an all-out crisis for the party. We’ll move on to the next thing, whether it be expressing faux outrage over Vice President Harris and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s touting electric cars while gas prices are high (what better time?) or Biden’s latest miserable polling numbers.
Anything that enables our feckless media to cover politics as the same old both-sides game that it used to be.
Boston Globe journalists will be returning to the newsroom at least three days a week starting Tuesday, May 3, according to a message sent to the staff by Linda Pizzuti Henry, CEO of Boston Globe Media.
Henry’s message reflects optimism that COVID-19 has reached the stage where we can all live with it and manage it. Let’s hope she’s right. I imagine most Globe staff members will be happy to return. As Henry notes in her memo, the lack of downtown workers has had a devastating effect on the city’s economy as well.
Here is her full message.
Team,
Two years. We left our offices in March of 2020 with the hope that a few weeks would change the course of the virus spreading around the world. We informed, we comforted, we entertained, we helped where we could, and we got the critical news and information to our community when they needed it most.
And lately, our coverage has included an inspiring note of us emerging from this pandemic, with an increasing number of articles and columns about the declining infection numbers, offices reopening, what different companies are doing, and how important it is to the vitality of our city that people do come back to their offices.
As we all know, the world is different from 2020, and so going back to exactly the way things were is not our plan. We have been doing a lot of listening, a lot of reading, and a lot of deep thinking about how our business operations work. You have been able to get things done for two years despite trying circumstances, and the organization is thriving. The experience has allowed us to learn a lot about how we work. At the same time, we have missed the chance to think together in the same way. We have over 80 new people at the Exchange Place offices that we all really want to get to know. The connection, the ability to bring in more people to a conversation spontaneously, the ability for different parts of the organization to collaborate easily, the faster sharing of knowledge, the mentorship, the camaraderie of this special Globe community, the culture of being part of this historical organization filled with brilliant people — it has been harder to maintain. As a multimedia organization that is constantly innovating to provide the best possible journalism for our readers, we see the need and advantage of being together.
So, to balance our business need to work together and our understanding of how we can function well, we are going to start with a 3/2 schedule with three set days in the office and two flexible days. For this flexibility to work, we all need to be in the office on the same days — that way we all get the benefit and efficiency of working together in the same place at the same time. Input from managers across Exchange Place and a review of our operations have led us to the days of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in person in the office. Mondays and Fridays will be flexible for at least a few months, meaning you can work in the office or remote, as your work permits and as you prefer.
As an organization that is constantly learning and innovating, we will survey, listen, and reassess how it is working after a few months to see if adjustments are needed or if we have it right. “Right” means doing what is best for both this institution and for the people who make this institution what it is.
We are pacing the return in consideration of the month-long timing of various commuter passes, so we will officially be in person at the offices with our 3/2 schedule on Tuesday, May 3rd. To make this an easier re-entry, we are encouraging people to go into the office at least once a week in April — on whatever day works for you. Many of you have been going in regularly already and have been finding it productive. We are hearing from other companies that this helps with the transition back to the office.
Thank you for your help in this next transition. We believe that maintaining a physical office in the heart o
f the city matters. As a Boston institution dedicated to helping our community thrive, being there also matters.
This week on the “Beat the Press” podcast: Reporting from Ukraine without a safety net. Should journalists market their own brand? Bigorexia and its discontents. Anthony Weiner is back — sort of. And our weekly Rants & Raves.
Our host, of course, is Emily Rooney, joined by Jon Keller, Lylah Alphonse and me. You can find us on Apple, Google and other platforms. Hope you’ll tune in!
They say Indianapolis is lovely in the summer. Photo (cc) 2009 by Willy Feng.
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that a glitch in Gannett’s online advertising software had resulted in ads appearing in the wrong places. For instance, to cite an actual example, an ad that was intended for USA Today’s national online audience might instead appear on the website of the Indianapolis Star.
So how did Gannett respond? With a defensive press release that falsely claimed the Journal story “implies Gannett intentionally shared inaccurate information to advertisers over a period of nine months.”
No, it didn’t. You can read the full Journal story, by Patience Haggin, for yourself, but this seems relevant: “Gannett said in a statement that it provided the wrong information and that it regrets the error, which it said was unintentional.” There is not one sentence in Haggin’s article contradicting Gannett’s claim that the error was inadvertent. Of course, the mistake might have been related to the fact that Gannett’s workforce is notoriously overworked and underpaid, but the Journal article didn’t say that, either.
What the story does confirm is that no one knows what is going on in the murky world of programmatic advertising, where digital ad space is sold through automated auctions by Google and, in this case, Gannett. It’s not at all like buying a two-column, six-inch ad on page seven in your local print newspaper. As Braedon Vickers, the ad-industry researcher who discovered the error, told the Journal, “Programmatic advertising relies on a lot of data being self-reported by those selling the ads. That this issue went undetected for so long suggests that the processes in place to verify this information are not sufficient.”
Writing in the trade journal Editor & Publisher, Gretchen A. Peck observed that Gannett’s “value proposition and trust” were undermined by the error. But she also quoted Krzysztof Franaszek, the founder of Adalytics Research, who said it appeared exceedingly unlikely that Gannett’s deceptive practices were intentional:
I think it’s likely a simple ad ops error. We tried to analyze this phenomenon from a number of different angles to determine if there was some kind of material benefit to Gannett of doing this, and after an exhaustive enumeration of possibilities, we found no rational explanation of how this would benefit Gannett.
Among the brands affected by the screw-up, according to Vicker, were Nike, Ford, State Farm, Starbucks and Marriott. Gannett’s statement said the error involved less than $10 million in advertising.
Gannett is the country’s largest newspaper chain, owning 100 or so daily newspapers and many hundreds of other media properties in 46 states. The company controls a good share of the local news outlets in Greater Boston and environs — including a number of weekly papers that have gone digital-only in the past year, and which recently dumped community coverage from most of its non-daily titles.
There’s a bit of news in Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory’s message marking the paper’s 150th anniversary today: he writes that the Globe now has “about 250 staffers in its newsroom and on the editorial pages.”
That’s up significantly from a few years ago. In 2018, the Globe had a full-time staff of about 220 journalists, which means that the size of the newsroom has increased by nearly 14% over the past four years. Regular readers know that the paper has been boosting its coverage of climate change and technology, among other topics.
McGrory and owners John and Linda Henry deserve to take a bow for the Globe’s renaissance in recent years. After buying the paper from the New York Times Co. in 2013, the Henrys compiled an uneven record in rebuilding the Globe as a sustainable business. When I checked in with John Henry in mid-2018, the paper was still losing money and had fallen short of its goal of selling 100,000 digital subscriptions. Henry was forced to declare that he had no plans to sell.
Six months later, Henry said the Globe had finally become profitable. Today the paper has some 235,000 paid digital subscribers, making it a leader among large regional newspapers, and has far more reporting capacity than most of its peer news organizations, many of which are owned by cost-obsessed hedge funds.
I’ve been a Globe reader for nearly 50 years. It’s a very different institution compared to the pre-internet glory days, when it covered national and international news with its own reporters and had a staff — at its 2000 peak — of about 550 full-timers.
Yet it remains one of the best, most deeply staffed papers in the country. It’s also evidence that committed, deep-pockets local ownership can be the difference between a thriving journalistic enterprise and a decimated newspaper hanging on for survival.
The dichotomy at the heart of any State of the Union address was on full display Tuesday night. The president’s annual message to Congress is a major news event. Yet it is fundamentally a political exercise.
So when serious news from the outside world intrudes, cognitive dissonance ensues. That was surely the case during President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union as well as in the subsequent coverage.
How did the pundits handle it? For the most part, they treated it as two speeches — a sober, even stirring call to support the Ukrainian people as they fight desperately to hold off an unprovoked invasion by Russian forces, and a domestic-policy address aimed at shoring up Biden’s miserable poll numbers.
“It was as inspiring as any section of a State of the Union, in large part because it was about something bigger and more compelling than politics as usual,” wrote Washington post columnist Jennifer Rubin of Biden’s opening, which focused on Ukraine. “Moreover, it was a rare display of bipartisanship, and a reminder that in facing external threats we can rise to the occasion…. From there on out, bipartisanship receded.”
The real-news-versus-politics divide was particularly acute in the way the war in Ukraine and the State of the Union address were played on the front pages of our three leading newspapers. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all led with Ukraine. The Journal didn’t even place Biden’s address above the fold.
Originality was hard to find in my post-speech scan of the coverage. One exception was Ezra Klein of the Times, who noted that Biden did little — nothing, really — to prepare Americans for the economic effects of the tough sanctions that he and other Western leaders have imposed on the Putin regime.
“For all Biden’s resolve on Tuesday night, he did not try to prepare Americans to sacrifice on behalf of Ukrainians in the coming months, if only by paying higher prices at the pump,” Klein wrote. “Instead, he said, ‘my top priority is getting prices under control.’ That’s the tension Putin is exploiting.”
Divisions on the right were apparent in both the House chamber and in the subsequent commentary. During Biden’s speech, far-right Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene disgraced themselves by interrupting the president just as he was about to invoke the memory of his late son, Beau Biden, whose death from brain cancer may have been related to his exposure to toxic fumes while he was serving in the military.
Writing for the ultraconservative PJ Media site, Matt Margolis made the same point somewhat more artfully, criticizing Biden for talking about his dead son rather than the 13 American soldiers who were killed by terrorists during last summer’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. There was, Margolis said, “not a single word about the withdrawal” in Biden’s speech. “Not a single word to honor those who died because of his incompetence.”
At National Review, a more mainstream conservative publication, Dan McLaughlin praised Biden on Ukraine but dismissed the rest of his address, writing, “You could tell the pandemic is really and truly over when we saw a return to Democrats demonizing the pharma companies that gave us life-saving vaccines.”
McLaughlin also attempted to turn the Big Lie on its head, taking Biden to task for speaking out against voter-suppression efforts fueled by pro-Trump Republicans who dare not question the former president’s false assertions that he actually won the 2020 election. “This is hardly the first time Biden has cast doubt on the legitimacy of our elections,” McLaughlin wrote in a truly mind-bending line.
Meanwhile, Jonathan V. Last, writing for The Bulwark, a Never Trump conservative site, summarized the moment in a pre-speech assessment beneath a headline that read “The West Is Winning, Russia Is Losing, and Biden Is Doing a Good Job.”
Although Biden noticeably did not move to the center, doubling down on popular but stalled-out ideas such as a $15 minimum wage, child-care assistance and controls on drug prices, he nevertheless invoked the moderate, unifying appeal that carried him to victory over Trump.
David A. Graham of The Atlantic wrote that “rather than try to convince Americans not to believe what they’re feeling, or claim credit for things they don’t see, Biden offered them a promise that things are about to get better. To make the case, he tacked toward the middle — with a few pointed detours — delivering a speech that hews closer to the ‘popularist’ movement in the Democratic Party than to its more progressive contingent.”
“Popularism,” in case you’re unfamiliar with the term, is the idea that the Democrats should de-emphasize the more divisive aspects of their agenda in favor of those with broad support. Examples offered by Graham were Biden’s calls for more police funding and keeping kids in school during COVID-19 surges.
According to a snap poll conducted by CBS News, the speech was popular with those who were watching, with 78% saying they approved of his speech and just 22% disapproving. But, CBS cautioned, “As we’ve seen with previous presidents’ State of the Union speeches, those who watched tonight are more likely to be from the president’s own political party, boosting approval of the speech.”
In other words, whatever political benefit Biden receives from his address is likely to be short-lived. His popularity — and, thus, the Democratic Party’s prospects in the upcoming midterm elections — are likely to be grounded in matters that are largely beyond his control, such as the outcome of the war in Ukraine, the ongoing battle against COVID and the persistence of inflation in an otherwise strong economy.
For one night, though, the stage was his. It’s fair to say that he made the most of it.
This week, on the second “Beat the Press” podcast, we talk about the latest mishegas at CNN, as number-two executive — make that former number-two executive — Allison Gollust walks the plank.
Other topics include a discussion of how much responsibility Spotify should take for Joe Rogan’s vaccine disinformation and n-word-spewing mouth; privacy concerns over the death of comedian Bob Saget; and a conversation with civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, the co-founder of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Plus: Rants & Raves are back!
Hosted, as always, by Emily Rooney, with Jon Keller, Lylah Alphonse and me. You can listen to “Beat the Press” on Apple and wherever fine podcasts are found.
“Beat the Press,” which was canceled last summer by GBH-TV after a 22-year run, is back — this time as a podcast.
Hosted, as always, by the incomparable Emily Rooney, our debut features a discussion of how the media should cover the crisis in democracy; the Cuomo-CNN meltdown (recorded before Jeff Zucker’s implosion); what to do about social media-driven hoaxes; and Dave Chappelle’s recent anti-transgender remarks.
Emily is joined by Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, Jon Keller of WBZ-TV and me. You can find us on Apple Podcasts and, I imagine, just about anywhere else you get your podcasts.
The Poynter Institute has published an important story on the difficulty of tracking layoffs of journalists, especially journalists of color. As Kristen Hare writes, very few news organizations let it be known when they’ve eliminated positions. “For an industry that prizes transparency,” she says, “we’re experts at asking for it and rotten at actually offering it.”
She’s right, and it’s something I’ve found pretty frustrating whenever I hear reports that newspapers owned by Gannett or Alden Global Capital have downsized once again. Since many news organizations follow the practice of last hired, first fired, journalists from underrepresented groups tend to be disproportionately affected — but finding out exactly what happened is difficult if not impossible. Hare offers three explanations for why this information is so hard to come by:
“Lack of public notice about who was laid off and where
“A reluctance among some journalists to say anything publicly
“Growing use of nondisclosure agreements that include non-disparagement agreements”
Hare also quotes my Northeastern journalism colleague Meredith Clark, who’s been working with the News Leaders Association to revive its annual survey of newsroom diversity — a survey that was suspended several years ago because so few news organizations were responding. Dr. Clark puts it this way:
The thing is, journalism as an institution, as a business, has a vested interest in continuing to isolate people in terms of their knowledge of what the field actually looks like. And the corporatization of journalism helps with that because it’s easy to say, “Oh, this is a problem for HR,” or, “Oh, because of legal we can’t do this.”
Clark is absolutely right, and it extends well beyond layoff and diversity numbers. I’ve been covering the news media for more than 25 years, and though I’ve found a great deal of openness to the idea that journalists should be as transparent as they expect their sources to be, I’ve encountered plenty of examples of the opposite, too.
Unfortunately, we can’t file public-records requests or demand the right to attend meetings at media outlets. Rather, we have to rely on news executives to do the right thing. If they think government officials should be compelled to release data that casts them in an unfavorable light, then why do they think it ought to be different for media organizations?
