Media Nation

Here’s a pretty amazing detail that Kimberly Atkins includes in her account of last night’s debate: “Healey … stationed supporters outside the debate posing in orange jumpsuits with signs reading ‘Inmates for Deval Patrick’ …”

A disadvantage to recording the gubernatorial debates for later listening in the Media Nationmobile is that I still don’t know what happened, except second-hand. Seth Gitell’s take strikes me as characteristically sharp. Check out what he says about Kerry Healey:

My only interpretation of this unprecedented campaign: that is, a candidacy where the candidate never introduces herself, never runs an ad telling the public about her background, gives voters no “story” or “narrative” to latch on about who she is. That is always my first question in writing political profiles. All candidates need to lay this positive foundation so they can weather the difficulties of a political campaign — and give voters a reason to vote for them. Either Healey’s advisers are unaware of this basic fact or something is blocking the Healey campaign — or the candidate herself — from telling this story. I have a couple theories about this. One is that her campaign team has no confidence in any story Healey would tell pro-actively. Another is that Healey has difficulty talking about herself.

OK, that’s more about Healey’s stunningly negative ads than about the debate, but there you go.

What Healey’s doing isn’t working. Adam Reilly was among those who pointed to a new Wall Street Journal poll showing that Deval Patrick’s actually gaining again following a rocky couple of weeks. His lead is now more than 22 points. Another round of attack ads isn’t going to do it for Healey.

Earlier today I was talking with a fellow political junkie. Her take was that Healey should have differentiated herself from Mitt Romney early on — come out foursquare for same-sex marriage and made it clear that she’s a moderate Republican in the Bill Weld mold. That’s who we all suspect she really is. Yet she spends 99 percent of her energy pandering to the tiny number of people who call radio talk shows.

If I’d been advising Healey, I’d have told her that she was probably going to lose, but that she should do everything she could to establish herself as a likable, moderate, competent alternative should Patrick self-destruct. And if he cruised to victory — well, there are worse things than losing.

Like destroying your own reputation, as Healey is doing right now.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Boston Globe is en route to its first unprofitable year in a long time. It’s the same old story — circulation is plummeting; Web readership is skyrocketing; but online advertising revenues aren’t nearly enough to offset the decline in print ads.

The Journal story adds perspective to last week’s news that Globe management doesn’t want the union to share in the growth of online revenues. The Boston Herald today carries a story that the Newspaper Guild has rejected the proposed contract.

It looks like Shaw’s may have violated its own policy in banishing copies of the Portland Phoenix, which carries an inside-the-paper nude photo of the late Allen Ginsberg and his lover, Peter Orlovsky, to accompany this article. In a statement reported by the Portland Press Herald, Shaw’s spokeswoman Judy Chong says:

“It’s not our policy to censor material produced by an independent publisher if the material falls within the guidelines of the law and is not considered patently obscene or offensive. Shaw’s reviewed the content of this publication and decided to remove the paper based on the nude images.”

If you want to parse this legally, you’ve got to put a lot of weight on the word “offensive.” Because something that is obscene under the Supreme Court’s Miller v. California standard is, by definition, illegal — not that there’s always any sure way of knowing in advance whether it’s obscene. But there is no way that this particular image could be considered obscene. It doesn’t depict sexual acts, and it obviously has artistic merit.

Shaw’s clearly has the right to ban anything it wishes. I’m just pointing out how far off Shaw’s is in invoking obscenity as a reason for removing the paper.

After all, the photo is freely available on photographer Elsa Dorfman’s Web site (that’s her at the top of this item) and, as Phoenix editor Peter Kadzis tells the Press Herald, is on permanent display at the Museum of Fine Arts. So far, the anti-obscenity cops at the FBI have not descended on either Dorfman’s studio or the MFA.

Christopher Lydon’s year-and-a-half-old radio program, “Open Source,” has been dealt a blow, but apparently not a fatal one. Since its inception, “Open Source” has been ostensibly based at WUML Radio (91.5 FM), the UMass Lowell radio station. Now, according to this post by Lydon, interim chancellor David MacKenzie has decided to end the relationship.

The Lowell Sun editorializes that “Open Source” was just too expensive, noting that Lydon is paid $12,500 a month.

The UMass Lowell connection has been an odd one from the beginning. As I reported in March 2005, the move was highly unpopular with the students and community activists who were involved in WUML.

Still, it sounded like it could be a good deal for UMass. At the time, there was talk of building a new state-of-the-art studio at the university, and of Lydon hosting a Lowell-only show on Fridays with the help of students. That never came to pass, and Lydon is still only on the air four evenings a week — from Boston.

Lydon’s partnership with PRI is intact, and he continues to broadcast from 7 to 8 p.m. at WGBH Radio (89.7 FM).

Lydon writes:

It’s not easy to get a radio show off the ground, and UMass Lowell supported us through a year and a half of a then untested concept that debuted on three stations. Support from UMass Lowell gave us time to build an audience of more than 150,000 listeners a night on thirty-one stations. Around 80,000 different people come to our website each month, from more than 150 different countries. 8,000 people download our podcasts.

“Open Source” is excellent, and Lydon was off the air for too long before his return. Let’s hope this is no more than a temporary setback.

It looks like we might never know who tipped off the media about Deval Patrick’s brother-in-law Bernard Sigh. In today’s Boston Globe, Andrea Estes reports:

The Globe received an anonymous two-page document last week describing the criminal case. The Globe immediately verified the rape conviction and Sigh’s residence in Massachusetts and then checked with the sex offender registry to determine if Sigh had fulfilled a requirement to register.

The Globe inquiry prompted state officials to notify Sigh that he had failed to register, but the editors decided against publishing a story after finding no relevance to Patrick’s record or qualifications. Responding to inquiries from the Globe, the campaign said Patrick had never intervened on Sigh’s behalf and the Globe found nothing to contradict that assertion.

This expands slightly on the statement that the Globe reportedly posted on its Web site yesterday and then removed. And it looks like the perfect political crime: Dump the documents anonymously, and then sit back and watch what happens. From this, I would have to assume that the Herald doesn’t know where the documents came from either.

The culprit is almost certainly a Kerry Healey supporter who works in a state agency that has access to such documents. But Patrick may have gone too far yesterday when he blamed it on the Healey campaign. She immediately denied having anything to do with it, and demanded an apology from Patrick.

Finally, a word to Patrick-bashers who’ve been posting here and here: You seem to assume that those of us who are appalled by what’s happened believe Sigh should have been left alone. No. He is a convicted rapist. If someone learned that he’s unregistered, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with notifying the Sex Offender Registry Board.

What’s slimy about this is the fact that the press was tipped off. Sigh is not a public figure, and this would not have been news if it weren’t for his family ties.

As for who leaked the documents, it looks like this is going to be a tough one to crack. But I hope that our political press at least makes the attempt.

Update: I endorse Anonymous 8:59’s theory of a California connection. As for the national Republican involvement that he suspects, we’ll have to wait and see.

Update II: Sorry, but if Patrick is parsing his language as finely as David of Blue Mass. Group thinks he is, then he deserves to be criticized, not praised.

As David notes, Patrick said yesterday of his brother-in-law and sister: “By no rules of common decency should their private struggles become a public issue. But this is the politics of Kerry Healey.”

If that doesn’t mean Patrick’s blaming the Healey campaign, then he worked for Bill Clinton way too long.

Odd goings-on over the fallout from the story about Deval Patrick’s brother-in-law Bernard Sigh, who was outed in the Herald today as an unregistered sex offender.

Dave Wedge, who wrote the first story, has done a follow-up in which the Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB) claims that the initial inquiry about Sigh came from the Globe. Wedge writes:

The SORB originally investigated Sigh’s criminal record after an inquiry from a Boston Globe reporter, said Kelly Nantel, spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety. The letter was sent after the SORB confirmed his record and determined he is required to register, she said.

So who tipped off the Globe? Obviously someone has been shopping this around. Presumably this slime artist turned to the Herald after having been jilted on Morrissey Boulevard.

More intrigue: Blue Mass. Group claims that the Globe posted this statement on its Web site earlier today, and then later removed it:

The Globe learned about Patrick’s brother-in-law last Friday. After assurances from his campaign that Patrick did not intervene on Sigh’s behalf, the paper decided not to write about the issue because it had no bearing on Patrick’s candidacy for governor.

A responsible decision, I’d say. As I wrote earlier today, I’m not going to claim this isn’t a story; but if I were playing editor, I’d rather not run it than run it. Sigh is a convicted rapist, and it’s his responsibility to register as a sex offender. But he’s not seeking office, and Patrick is not responsible for his brother-in-law’s actions. Moreover, the circumstances of Sigh’s crime are such that this story would be entirely unnewsworthy were it not for the Patrick connection.

Here’s what Globe editors are dealing with this evening. The political community is in an uproar over this incredibly sleazy maneuver against Patrick. Everyone wants to know who’s behind it. The Herald, no doubt having gotten the tip on a promise of anonymity, can’t say. Maybe the Globe can — although its editors may be laboring under the same promise.

Is there someone who can get to the bottom of this ugly smear?

The Lowell Sun reports that he’s recovering from brain surgery and should be back to work soon.

I won’t say this Herald article about Deval Patrick’s brother-in-law’s being an unregistered sex offender isn’t a story. It is what it is. But by far the most interesting part is the question that isn’t answered. Dave Wedge writes:

The Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board sent [Bernard] Sigh [the brother-in-law] a letter this week alerting him that he is required to register. The letter informed him he has 10 days to comply or he will face criminal prosecution, according to Kelly Nantel, spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety.

Nantel said the board recently learned of Sigh’s rape conviction and after reviewing his record, “determined he is required to register.”

“Recently learned,” huh? Rape is an incredibly serious crime, and if Sigh’s got to register, then he’s got to register. By the Herald’s account, though, it does seem that there are some nuances worth considering. Sigh was convicted 13 years ago of raping his wife; they later reconciled, and they’ve lived quietly in Milton since 1997. Or at least they were.

The real story here is who tipped off the Sex Offender Registry and then leaked it to the Herald. This is really sordid stuff.

Meanwhile, the Globe’s Andrea Estes reports today that back when Patrick’s running mate, Tim Murray, was a low-paid public defender, he took cases. Some of those cases involved suspected sex offenders.

Is this what the election is really going to turn on? Incredible.

I come to this with clean hands: I didn’t think it was a big deal when the Boston Globe caught Kerry Healey using a photo from the wrong signing ceremony in one of her TV ads*. It was truthful, even if it wasn’t 100 percent accurate — not good enough for journalism (or at least it shouldn’t be), but plenty good enough for political advertising.

Now, then. On to Scott Allen Miller’s latest, in which he claims that Deval Patrick did the same thing and no one’s calling him on it.

Scott’s evidence is a Patrick ad in which Romney’s signing something and Healey’s looking over his shoulder with a tight little smile on her face. The “something,” according to the ad, is a $682 million cut in local aid. In fact, Miller points out, the photo was actually taken at the signing of the sex-offender-reform bill. Miller writes:

Let’s not hold our breath that the Globe will report, let alone run on the front page of section B, that the latest Deval Patrick ad is using a picture to make the same kind of distortion in reverse.

Trouble is, Miller’s lament is based on two suppositions, both ludicrous. They are:

1. That Romney and Healey would hold a public signing ceremony so the cameras could click away as they slashed nearly $700 million for local police officers, firefighters and teachers. Rest assured, that one was signed in the office, with the door closed.
2. That Patrick campaign officials hold the public in such contempt that they think viewers would actually believe Romney signed those cuts in public.

The shot used in the Patrick ad was clearly intended as stock footage, and was understood as such by 99 percent of those who saw it. The shot used in the Healey ad was not — viewers were deliberately led to believe Romney was signing the health-care bill when in fact he was signing the sex-offender bill.

Again, not a big deal. But to the extent that anyone was being deceived, it was by Healey, not Patrick.

*Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ad was bought for her, not by her.