Media Nation

I have an interview with veteran media activist Jeff Cohen in the new issue of the Boston Phoenix. Cohen has just written a book on his years with CNN, Fox News and MSNBC called “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” He’s also the founder of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), a left-liberal group that monitors media bias.

The bulk of the book is about Cohen’s stint as senior producer for his friend and fellow progressive Phil Donahue, who landed a show on MSNBC only to be muzzled by executives terrified that they would be accused of liberal bias. Cohen tells me:

We could have had a show with aggressive, articulate, passionate people saying things on national TV seen nowhere else. And it would have happened night after night. This was the time that independent, smart, active news consumers were turning away from the mainstream and looking for alternatives. MoveOn was doubling its size during this time, and we were being muzzled. We could have been an alternative in the mainstream. The best of both worlds. And our ratings would have climbed.

Instead, “Donahue” was canceled in early 2003, just before the war in Iraq got under way.

The MetroWest Daily News endorses Deval Patrick today — and mentions both of his opponents. See how easy it is?

Patrick is really racking up the endorsements, isn’t he?

The Boston Phoenix has endorsed Deval Patrick in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, while also throwing a kiss to Chris Gabrieli. But — in keeping with my theme of the week — why no mention of the third candidate, Tom Reilly, whom the paper ripped in an editorial just a week ago?

Similarly, the Phoenix chooses Deb Goldberg over Tim Murray in the governor’s race — and disappears Andrea Silbert. The paper also weighs in on the secretary of state’s race, Congress, and the state Senate.

Now that the semester has begun, blogging is probably going to be somewhat lighter than it was over the summer. I’ll try to concentrate on quality, not quantity.

I’ve been spending some time yesterday and today setting up a blog for a class I’m teaching called “Beat Reporting: The Journalism of the Web.” It’s a portal for blogs by my students. I’ll also post certain types of new-media items that might not be quite right for Media Nation. Please have a look.

On Sunday the Boston Globe endorsed Deval Patrick in the Democratic primary for governor without mentioning either of his opponents, Chris Gabrieli or Tom Reilly, in what polls show is a tight race.

Yesterday the Globe endorsed Tim Murray for lieutenant governor, again invoking the silence-is-golden rule by not whispering the names of Andrea Silbert or Deb Goldberg, who are also running for the Democratic nomination. Murray is thought to be ahead, but I don’t believe anyone has ruled out Silbert or Goldberg given the low name recognition of all three candidates.

So today the Globe endorses incumbent Secretary of State Bill Galvin, who’s running against the longest of longshots — voting-rights activist John Bonifaz — and the editorial goes out of its way to throw a kiss to Bonifaz, who’s virtually unknown and has no money.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ll take today’s endorsement of Galvin over the Patrick and Murray efforts. As I said the other day, endorsements should be about making comparisons, and you can’t do that when you only mention the candidate you’re endorsing. I just find it a little weird that the Globe would deviate from its custom in the one race where the challenger has almost no chance.

Update: The Boston Herald manages to work in references to Bill Bulger and Joe Moakley in its endorsement of Tom Reilly. But Deval Patrick and Chris Gabrieli end up on the cutting-room floor. Same with the Herald’s embrace of Deb Goldberg.

I’ve written plenty of candidate endorsements over the years. And I think it’s safe to say that the heart of any editorial that urges voters to support a particular candidate is the notion of comparison. You should vote for Candidate X because of her own fine qualities and because Candidate Y would take us in the wrong direction. Or, We think Candidates A and B are both well-qualified, but Candidate A has more experience. You get the idea.

But today the Boston Globe endorses Deval Patrick in the Democratic gubernatorial primary without ever mentioning his opponents, Chris Gabrieli and Tom Reilly. This is longstanding practice at the Globe, but it isn’t a good one. At its most absurd, the editorial page once endorsed a challenger over an incumbent for a congressional seat without once mentioning the incumbent. That’s sticking to an arbitrary formula at the expense of informing the public.

This Globe editorial, published on Friday, is actually much more informative than today’s endorsement. Headlined “It’s all becoming clear,” the piece did, indeed, make it clear — that the Globe was on the verge of endorsing Patrick — and it drew comparisons about the three candidates following their Thursday debate.

The local commentariat on Tom Reilly’s performance in last night’s debate. First, the Globe:

• Jeff Jacoby: “Reilly came across as the colorless party hack from central casting. Tired, uninspired, quick to prattle about ‘leadership’ but unable to demonstrate any — if ever a politician embodied the Peter Principle, dwindling in stature as he rises to his level of incompetence, Reilly is that politician.”
• Scot Lehigh: “Grim and angry, Reilly was in full prosecutorial mode from moment one … This went well beyond scrappy and into off-putting. Reilly looked desperate.”
• Joan Vennochi: “Reilly … wasted much too time on attacks …”
• Derrick Jackson: “Reilly will undoubtedly physically stay in the race until it is over. But his only value at this point is whether he takes more votes from Patrick or Gabrieli.”
• Brian McGrory: “Reilly … [was] loaded for bear. Whether he hit anything remains to be seen, but the early impressions are that the puddles of blood on the floor might well be his own.”

Next, the bloggers:

• Adam Reilly: “Tom Reilly is f’ing up, big time…. Last night on NECN, I predicted that Reilly would eke out a win in the Democratic primary. I hereby change my mind.”
• Jon Keller: “Memo to the Reilly campaign: Patrick’s corporate entanglements? Fair game. Gabrieli’s business background and wealth? If it was OK to rake Romney on those subjects, it’s OK to toss a few elbows at Gabrieli. But I really don’t think too many voters care about a tax lien Patrick once had to deal with, or who leaked the report on Marie St. Fleur. Why would you want to ever bring up the St. Fleur episode at all?”
• Charley on the MTA: “Last night, Tom Reilly did everything but sling his own feces at Deval Patrick and Chris Gabrieli, and succeeded mostly in getting it all over himself.”
• John Daley: “Tom Reilly came out swinging, accusing Gabrieli of leaking a report to The Globe. Bad idea. The fact that Reilly and his staff really goofed in not reading the St. Fleur report was a one day story until he brought it up again last night. And it’s about basic competence, or the lack thereof.”
• Andy at Mass Revolution Now! “I thought that Reilly’s debate prep was most likely done in a locker room just before the debate where he put on a helmet and had his campaign staff slap him on the head while shouting things like ‘who’s got a big house in Milton while you are still renting in Watertown!’ ‘Who took advantage of you dropping the ball on your LG pick so that it came back to haunt you!?’ He was WAY too aggressive.”
• Mass Marrier: “Tom was somewhere between Perry Mason and Vlad the Impaler. His out-of-his-back-pocket insults and accusations were apparently intended as some melodramatic breakthrough to prove something to someone. Instead, his ‘So there!’ became ‘So what?'”
• Aaron Margolis: “Rumor has it that when it came to Final Jeopardy, it was not the snoozefest many expected it to be, mostly at the hands of an eccentric Tom Reilly. There may not have been a clear winner, but we know who’s not coming back for the next episode.” (Aaron didn’t actually watch, but that’s OK.)

Finally, the Herald, where people see things differently:

• Howie Carr: “For Tom Reilly, freedom is apparently just another word for nothing left to lose. Where has this guy been all year? By 7:03 last night, he’d ripped Chris Gabrieli’s throat out. He was standing in the middle, between Gabrieli and Deval Patrick, and by 7:10, both of them had broken out in flop sweat. They were worried he was coming after them next … and he was.”
• Virginia Buckingham: “Sure, Reilly was way too hot for TV. And the ‘I was the only one’ refrain was grating rather than inspiring. But he sent a message that he’s not going down without a fight. And despite Gabrieli’s height advantage, I wouldn’t bet on the winner between those two in an alley.”

Reilly’s best hope today is that the Democratic primary is dominated by Herald readers.

Did I miss anyone? If so, please add links to the comments section.

I was listening to WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) this morning when Democratic political consultant Dan Payne popped up to talk about last night’s gubernatorial debate. I had not yet seen it, so I took Payne at face value when he said Deval Patrick had spent the hour sweating like Richard Nixon. Among other things, Payne (a former Patrick adviser) said the oceans of perspiration made Patrick seem “nervous,” and that he ought to fire his makeup artist.

Well, now. I’ve just finished watching a tape of the debate, and I can tell you that Patrick didn’t sweat, period. No gusher. No rivulet. Not even a drop. Patrick was shiny, but it looked to me as though there was a stray light blasting him on the right side of his face. But he was dry, and appeared calm, cool and collected for the entire hour.

This is kind of a big deal. I would imagine that far more people heard Payne this morning than actually watched the debate last night. Indeed, other than the candidates’ mothers, I may be the only person on the planet who taped it. So Payne’s mistaken observation that Patrick sweat nervously is going to stick with a lot of people. WBUR ought to broadcast a correction. This is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact, and Payne got it wrong.

Interestingly enough, anchor Bob Oakes didn’t disagree with Payne. Now, I don’t know whether Payne was present at the Kennedy School last night, but I’ll bet he was. And that might be the problem. To Oakes (who was on the panel of questioners) and Payne, it may well have looked like Patrick was sweating. Viewers at home know better.

I’ll agree with Payne on this: Last night we witnessed the political suicide of Tom Reilly. Good grief. More later.

Update: Some folks are telling me I’m wrong — that Patrick really was sweating. One yes-he-was-sweating observer was sitting several feet from the candidates. Sorry, but I’m going to stick with my lying eyes on this. After all, I was several inches from the candidates. I was primed to look for sweat. I walked up to the TV, inspecting Patrick’s face as carefully as I could. He wasn’t sweating.

Update II: Dan Payne writes, “I watched debate at home on TV, not at K School. Maybe it was bad lighting but Deval Patrick looked like he was sweating the whole night. But why sweat the small stuff?” OK, OK. Time for my modified limited hangout. I’ll give WBUR a pass on running a correction — too many people agree with Payne that Patrick was sweating. But they’re all wrong!

Boston Globe publisher Richard Gilman has announced his retirement. The first non-Taylor to run the Globe, Gilman — dispatched to Boston by the New York Times Co. in 1999 — has presided over successes (bringing in Marty Baron as the editor in 2001) and disasters (the mindboggling failure to protect customer credit-card records).

New publisher Steve Ainsley’s priority will be to build the Times Co.’s chief New England asset. No, not the Globe, but Boston.com. Despite steeply declining circulation, the Globe and its chief rival, the Boston Herald, may have about as many readers as they’ve ever had when you count Web visitors.

Ainsley’s job will be to figure out how to make that pay.

I’m no expert on Iranian politics, so maybe I was wrong about former president Mohammed Khatami. I’d always thought he was a somewhat pro-Western reformer, albeit one who was gutless enough to do nothing when his enemies thwarted his agenda and jailed his supporters. (Not that the president of Iran is anything more than a front man for the theocrats who actually run the country.)

But the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby, writing yesterday, and the Boston Herald’s Brent Arends, following up today, note that Khatami helped create and continues to praise Hezbollah. Which shows that, as Ronald Reagan learned in the 1980s, the phrase “Iranian moderate” is something of an oxymoron.

Still, the State Department has paved the way for Khatami to visit the United States, and Harvard has invited him to speak. So for Gov. Mitt Romney to refuse to provide State Police protection amounts to something of an assault on Khatami’s right to speak, since Khatami is obviously someone who will be in dire need of protection during his time here. There’s more than a whiff of hypocrisy here as well. As Channel 4’s Jon Keller observes, “The governor had no qualms about chowing down with and paying for police escorts for Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during his visit here in 2003. Isn’t China a major-league human-rights violator, or have I missed something?”

Good for Mayor Tom Menino for offering the Boston police as a substitute.

What precisely is to be gained by trying to silence Khatami? The Kennedy School’s Graham Allison tells the Globe that he will insist that Khatami answer his successor’s call for “wiping Israel off the map.” That’s a yes-or-no question that’s worth hearing the answer to.

Please note that I’m not saying that inviting Khatami to Harvard is a great idea. Marty Peretz, a Harvard professor and co-owner of The New Republic, tells the Crimson:

[Khatami is] “a front for a despicable dictatorial regime” and that the event would not provide an opportunity to rigorously challenge the former leader.

“Why don’t they invite him to a tough seminar?” he said, adding that he believes the often-crowded question-and-answer sessions at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum are “bullshit.”

Peretz may be right. We’ll see. Certainly Harvard and Kennedy School officials know that the public is counting on them to demand some accountability from Khatami.

Nevertheless, it’s easy to imagine some good coming of this. Even if the “moderate” label doesn’t really fit, Khatami is known to be a bitter enemy of the current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner who denies that the Holocaust took place and who is the public face of Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb. Unsavory though Khatami might be, bolstering his prestige could hurt Ahmadinejad. No doubt that’s why the State Department is bringing Khatami over here.

But all of this is really beside the point. Romney has an obligation to provide security for a controversial speaker so that he can exercise his First Amendment rights — rights that neither Khatami nor anyone else possesses in his own country. As the Globe editorializes today:

Romney saw fit to declare that the Kennedy School’s invitation to Khatami is “a disgrace to the memory of all Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of extremists.” The kindest thing to say about this denunciation of Harvard’s devotion to active and open dialogue is that it illustrates the crucial difference between political thinking and the real thing.

Romney may have “a genius for free PR,” as the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly writes. Unfortunately, crowd-pleasing assaults on free speech play well with the conservative voters whom the governor is courting in his pandering campaign for president.