Media Nation

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.

Click here and enjoy. Thanks to Rachel Slajda.

Given that the Los Angeles Times has a reputation for being out of touch with its home base, I find it somehow hilarious that a new project to reinvent the newspaper has become known internally as the “Manhattan Project.” Kevin Roderick has more.

Visions of nuclear armaggedon aside, the “Los Angeles Project” would definitely be a more promising name.

Media Nation extends its best wishes to WBZ (AM 1030) talk-show host and Lowell Sun columnist Paul Sullivan, who’s undergoing another round of brain surgery in his battle with melanoma.

While the Herald slams Deval Patrick for the second day in a row with what essentially is the same story about hot tuna and squishy basketballs, the Globe offers two striking examples of Kerry Healey’s hypocrisy. They’re on the front page, but you have to go to the jump to grasp the extent of it.

First, Andrea Estes reports that Patrick raised about $20,000 at a fundraiser hosted by O’Neill and Associates, which lobbies on behalf of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the Big Dig project manager. It appears that Patrick guaranteed himself the worst of both worlds in agreeing to this event. He asked that no Big Dig contractors be invited, lest he soil himself with their tainted money. But by letting O’Neill organize it, he gets the bad headlines anyway.

But let me call your attention to this striking passage:

O’Neill and Associates raises money for many political candidates, mostly Democrats. Earlier this year, firm officials said, O’Neill and Associates held a fund-raiser for Patrick’s Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey. According to Ann Murphy, a former aide to Governor Mitt Romney who now works at O’Neill and Associates, about two-dozen people attended the February fund-raiser….

Healey’s campaign slammed Patrick yesterday for using O’Neill and Associates.

Asked about Healey’s fund-raiser at the O’Neill firm, a Healey spokesman refused to address her event.

“It’s another example where Deval Patrick claims he’s an outsider, but is following the insider playbook to a tee,” said Tim O’Brien, Healey’s campaign manager.

My next example is a story by Frank Phillips on Healey’s half-dozen or so votes to limit access to criminal records in 2000 to 2002, when she served on the Criminal History Systems Board. Healey, of course, has been attacking Patrick for taking exactly the same position. Thus Phillips’ reporting exposes a top layer of hypocrisy that should be clear to everyone.

But it’s worse than that, because, underneath the hypocritical crust is a gooey filling of still more hypocrisy:

Late yesterday, Healey’s campaign released a statement to the Globe saying her “experience on the board gave her a firsthand look at how the CORI [Criminal Offender Record Information] system does not serve the best interests of employers.”

“Based on the nature of her position to uphold CORI laws, the lieutenant governor became aware of the need for change within the system and that criminal records must be made more available to employers,” said Laura Nicoll, her campaign spokesperson. “Deval Patrick still doesn’t get it. He wants to hide this information from employers.”

But her actions on the board appear to contradict her public statements.

Deval Patrick? Hmmm … Kerry Healey actually voted to hide information from employers. Now we are to believe that she wouldn’t.

So she changed her mind? That seems to be what Nicoll is saying, but she doesn’t come right out and say it. It wouldn’t do for Healey to admit that she was for keeping the records of criminals secret before she was against it. Meanwhile, she attacks Patrick for holding precisely the same position that she did — a position that she actually got a chance to act on, at least when she bothered to show up to board meetings. (Phillips also reports that her attendance was spotty.)

Thus does Healey demonstrate her deep understanding of how the news media work. If you’re prominent enough, and a major-party candidate for governor surely is, then you can say literally anything and the media will report it.

The better reporters, such as Phillips and Estes, will make some attempt to put your statements in context, but it doesn’t matter. The key to success is to keep those sound bites coming. Those are far more likely to penetrate the public consciousness than the hedges and qualifications. That’s B4 stuff, and who reads that?

Romenesko‘s already got this, but in case you haven’t seen it, Editor & Publisher reports that Boston Globe management wants salary increases for Newspaper Guild employees to be contingent on revenues.

And print revenues only, please. Under management’s proposal, increased online revenues would not count. Given that print revenues are huge but declining and Web revenues are small but rising, that sounds like an offer the Guild will refuse.

Here’s one good thing that will likely come out of the latest revelation about Deval Patrick: If he hangs on and wins the governor’s race, he’s not going to begin his 2012 presidential campaign the next day.

The Boston Herald’s Dave Wedge reports today that Patrick spent at least part of his time in the Clinton administration sending letters to prison officials around the country telling them to stop serving meals to inmates that were too hot or too cold, and to make sure their sheets were cleaned three times a week.

Now, I don’t want to get sucked into the Herald’s faux-populist inmate-bashing. Criminals are sent to prison to do time — not to be shackled in airless closets 24 hours a day and fed nothing but bread and water. There is supposed to be a rehabilitative aspect to being locked up, after all.

But, at least on the face of it, the Herald’s reporting suggests that Patrick’s values are out of whack with those of most people. I’m glad he was looking out for the legitimate rights of prison inmates, but this does seem to go quite a bit too far, no?

The next poll is going to be pretty interesting. Patrick was ahead by 25 points a couple of weeks ago, but that was before Kerry Healey and her supporters started blasting him as a criminal-coddling weenie.

In today’s Boston Globe, Frank Phillips writes, unsurprisingly, that the Patrick campaign believes Healey’s attacks aren’t working, and that the Healey campaign believes they are.

Might we be getting the results of another poll this Sunday?

Update: Patrick’s lead has shrunk considerably, according to the latest “fast track” poll from WBZ-TV (Channel 4).