Boston Globe – Page 9

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”

Pulitzer notes: The Globe’s harrowing story on child abuse is named a finalist

The word “harrowing” is an overused cliché, but it’s exactly the right word to describe Janelle Nanos’ story about an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse, published by The Boston Globe Magazine last summer. Nanos’ 11,000-word account of Kate Price’s long quest to learn the truth about what had happened to her was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing; this year’s Pulitzers were announced on Monday.

Price remembers being raped by her father — possibly starting when she was as young as 3 — and being pimped out to other men who he would contact via CB radio. She has spent her adult life trying to nail down the details, and by the end of the story we learn that she’s succeeded in coming about as close as she’ll probably ever get to proving that her memories are real.

Nanos, a reporter and editor for the Globe’s business section, has been following Price for 10 years and is currently expanding it into a book. The personal tone she takes is handled deftly, enhancing the narrative by making herself part of Price’s journey. Her story also helps puncture the argument, still made in some circles, that claims of childhood sexual abuse are not to be believed because memories of such abuse are not reliable.

A smart analysis of Andrea Estes’ ‘compelling and consequential’ career

Scott Van Voorhis offers some important context about Andrea Estes’ departure from The Boston Globe. In his Contrarian Boston newsletter, Van Voorhis calls her work “compelling and consequential,” and observes that her reporting uncovered a kickback scheme that resulted in a federal prison term for former House Speaker Sal DiMasi and exposed the $300,000-plus salary of Methuen’s now-former police chief.

The current controversy involves two lengthy corrections the Globe published after an Estes-bylined story reported that nine top MBTA managers were working remotely. According to the corrections, the actual number was six, and there were other problems as well. Van Voorhis writes that “to pin the alleged mistakes in the story solely on Estes seems grossly unfair. Where was her editor? And with the prominent play the Globe gave to the story, there surely were other editors involved in at least reviewing the piece.”

Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s “working to unravel all of this,” adding: “We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists.”

Earlier:

Globe editor Nancy Barnes tells her staff she’s working to unravel the MBTA fiasco

Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that the paper plans to offer an explanation about what went wrong with former reporter Andrea Estes’ story about MBTA managers who work remotely. Her email was passed along to me by a trusted source and closes with this:

Finally, I want to acknowledge the concerns individuals have raised about the multiple corrections in the recent MBTA story about executives living remotely. I am still working to unravel all of this and so there is not a lot I can say publicly for now except this: We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists

This is good news and sends exactly the right message. Barnes took over for Brian McGrory just a few months ago, and this is her first public crisis. I look forward to reading the Globe’s account of what happened.

Earlier:

Andrea Estes has left the Globe following an error-riddled story about the MBTA

Update: Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood confirmed this morning that Andrea Estes “no longer works at the Globe.” I have edited the headline to reflect that.

Update 2: Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s working to unravel what went wrong.

Boston Globe reporter Andrea Estes, an investigative journalist whose recent error-riddled story about absentee managers at the MBTA led to a lengthy correction, has disappeared from the Globe’s online staff directory. You can still find her official Globe listing, though. She’s described as a “former reporter,” and her bio begins: “Estes was an investigative reporter specializing in government accountability.”

On Wednesday evening I sent an email to Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood asking, “Has Andrea Estes left the Globe?” Flood’s response: “Thanks for reaching out. The company does not comment on personnel matters.” I also emailed Globe editor Nancy Barnes, who did not respond. I tried emailing Estes at her Globe address earlier this morning, and it bounced back.

It seems pretty clear that Estes is gone. And though no reason has been given, her most recent story, which led the Sunday paper on April 23, has proved to be an embarrassment for the Globe. The idea that some of the T’s leading executives were working virtually from distant places while bus drivers, subway operators and maintenance workers were putting themselves on the line every day was enraging. Here’s the heart of her story, which comes from a PDF of the print edition:

The MBTA is facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence in its service, punctuated by slow trains, endless delays, and gruesome accidents. Yet, many top T managers live far from the troubled system they’re trying to rescue and some are rarely seen in person by their employees. A Globe review has found that nine senior managers (including one who has left the agency) have a primary residence more than 100 miles from the nearest T station — and some much farther.

The story was later revised to cut that number from nine to six, and was appended with a lengthy correction:

Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that three MBTA managers live primarily in homes far from the T’s service area. Dennis Lytton, the deputy safety chief, has an apartment in Brighton and says he has not worked remotely since starting the job in February. Michele Stiehler, the T’s chief of paratransit, lives in Boston and walks to work. Jennifer Tabakin, who oversees the T’s South Coast Rail project, also has a home in Boston within walking distance of T headquarters. In addition, the story incorrectly reported that Ronald Ester’s “primary residence” is in Chicago; Ester said he considers his home in Massachusetts as his primary residence.

Estes’ story led to an editorial that has now also been appended with a correction. That correction includes a wrinkle that doesn’t appear in the one attached to Estes’ article: “The original editorial also incorrectly stated where Dennis Lytton, an MBTA safety official, was when reached by reporters. He was in Boston.” Estes’ original story said, “When contacted by the Globe recently, Lytton, who makes $175,000 a year, said he was home in Los Angeles at the time.” That sentence was deleted from the revised version.

Reporters make mistakes. We’ve all had corrections appended to our work. But to level such a serious accusation against three MBTA managers by name and then have to retract it is unusual.

As for Flood’s comment that the Globe doesn’t comment on personnel matters, I would note that there have been a number of prominent situations in the past when people have been fired, pushed into leaving or suspended, and the paper has gone into considerable detail in telling its audience what happened. We all know who they are, and I’m not going to drag their names into this.

I wrote last week that the Globe should have an ombudsman — an in-house reader advocate paid to look into fiascoes like this and write about them. At one time, many news outlets, including the Globe, had such a person on their staffs, but that’s pretty rare these days.

Even in the absence of an ombudsman, though, the Globe still owes us an explanation of what went wrong, and it should be published in a prominent spot.

An ombudsman could have explained what went wrong with the Globe’s MBTA story

A Red Line train at Charles/MGH. Photo (cc) 2018 by Eric F. James.

There was a time when many major news organizations, including The Boston Globe, had an ombudsman — a reader advocate who would report on the inside workings of the newsroom when problems arose.

Well, I’d really like to know what happened with the Globe’s reporting on MBTA managers who live far from Boston. The story was written by Andrea Estes and led Sunday’s print edition. It told a pretty compelling tale of inequity, with subway operators, bus drivers, maintenance workers and others required to show up to work every day while some of the agency’s top executives checked in from distant locales.

Trouble is, the story has now been appended with this:

Correction: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that three MBTA managers live primarily in homes far from the T’s service area. Dennis Lytton, the deputy safety chief, has an apartment in Brighton and says he has not worked remotely since starting the job in February. Michele Stiehler, the T’s chief of paratransit, lives in Boston and walks to work. Jennifer Tabakin, who oversees the T’s South Coast Rail project, also has a home in Boston within walking distance of T headquarters.

Estes is a fine reporter who’s done a lot of important work, and it does appear that absentee executives really are a problem at the MBTA — but not these three. I think the Globe owes us an explanation. An ombudsman could have told that story.

Should the Globe have used private data to try to expose a toxic commenter?

Boston City Hall. Photo (cc) 2005 by Ken Lund.

A story in The Boston Globe reports that a caustic online commenter appears to be posting “vicious Internet attacks” against Mayor Michelle Wu and others from a city email address and a shared subscription used by city councilors and staff members. The comments have been published under the handle “Interested Party.”

Globe reporter Emma Platoff writes that “the comments posted by the Interested Party account stand out because they appear to be authored by one or more of those public officials’ colleagues — members of the City Council or council employees — according to account details and people with knowledge of the subscription.”

It’s not the first time I’ve seen a news outlet do this. The one that stands out in my mind involved a Haverhill city councilor who was exposed years ago by the local newspaper. I’ll get to that. But, first, more on the Globe’s story.

Although the Globe doesn’t have enough information to identify the person (or persons) behind the comments, Platoff appears to have used internal information provided by every user (“account details”) in order to get as far as she did. If you look at comments on the Globe’s website (or just about any other website), you won’t find any email addresses — that’s information you provide when you sign up, but it doesn’t appear alongside your screen name. Likewise, the Globe almost certainly has access to each commenter’s IP (internet protocol) address, which can help the paper locate where a user is based.

Nor does the Globe warn users that it reserves the right to use information commenters provide in order to track them down. If you try to post a comment, you’ll find guidelines that speak to what’s allowed and what isn’t; but there’s nothing about the possibility of being outed. (The guidelines refer not to the Globe but to its free sister site, Boston.com. I’m not sure whether that means the rules haven’t been updated for years or if it’s simply an indication that the same rules are in effect at both places.) Another message advises you, “This comment may appear on your public profile.” But when you click on the “Public Profile FAQ,” you hit a 404.

The question is whether it’s ethical to use information that the Globe’s subscribers freely give the paper in order to track them down. Users have a right to expect that their information won’t be used to violate their privacy. Platoff wasn’t able to expose “Interested Party,” but she’d clearly like to. Is that fair?

All of that brings me to the Haverhill situation I mentioned up top. In 2008, The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover reported that a Haverhill city councilor named James Donahue had posted comments on the paper’s website under at least 38 different screen names, an accusation that Donahue partly confirmed, though he claimed that some of the comments had actually been posted by someone else. As I wrote at the time, Donahue’s activities included lambasting the mayor and some of his colleagues. The Tribune apparently used the IP address attached to Donahue’s multitudinous screen names in order to locate him and to figure out that all those screen names were coming from the same computer. The Tribune defended its actions in an editorial:

It is not the general practice of this newspaper to seek the identity of those who comment on stories, although there is no explicit guarantee of anonymity. Virtually all the management of the comments section of the online edition is aimed at removing posts that are profane, racist or personal attacks.

However, one of the forum moderators noticed a pattern of posts under dozens of different names, and then discovered that they had all come from the same computer address. When it became clear that they were coming from the computer of an elected public official, it became our obligation to let the public know.

The average citizen does not take an oath to serve the public. An elected official does. An attempt to deceive the public is clearly not serving it, and a public official who does so is not only undeserving of the protection of confidentiality, but deserves public criticism.

I was uncomfortable with the Tribune’s actions, and I said so, writing: “It seems to me that the paper has chosen to humiliate Donahue for doing something the paper itself implicitly invited him to do, and that it used information available to no one else.” But many of my commenters disagreed with me and sided with the Tribune, arguing — as the paper itself had — that Donahue’s status as a public official overrode any expectations of online privacy that he might have had.

Which brings me back to the Globe and “Interested Party.” Arguably, there is a public-interest reason to try to expose the commenter. The comments are being posted by a public official or officials, whether they are members of the city council or employees. It’s a story, and it will be interesting to see whether the Globe is able to take the next step and name names. It makes me a little queasy, as The Eagle-Tribune’s actions did 15 years ago. On balance, though, I think my commenters were right in 2008 and that the Globe is right now.

A final observation: The Globe’s comments are a toxic-waste pit. The paper shouldn’t have them unless it’s willing to screen all of them before they’re posted. If that’s impossible, then get rid of them. Plenty of news organizations have, and no one seems to miss them.

The Globe and the Times publish remarkably similar stories about a troubled chef

It’s the end of the semester at Northeastern, so you’ll have to forgive me for weighing in rather late about the remarkably similar stories that The New York Times (free link) and The Boston Globe published about Barbara Lynch, a celebrity chef whose abusive behavior has finally caught up with her.

Although I’m speculating, what happened seems fairly obvious: Tim Dearing, the former lead chef at Menton, almost certainly contacted both papers after he told Lynch he was going to “drag” her when she fired him at a particularly volatile meeting following the overdose deaths of Dearing’s beloved predecessor, Rye Crofter, and a younger chef Crofter had mentored. No doubt both stories were close to being ready when one paper learned that the other was about to publish. Both stories were published Thursday within about a half-hour of each other.

Still, I’ve never seen anything like the structural similarities in two long stories like this. The Globe’s Janelle Nanos and the Times’ Julia Moskin open the same way, repeat many of the same anecdotes, reproduce the same sorry-not-sorry statement from Lynch (OK, that’s not surprising) and reach the same conclusion: that Lynch is out of control, and her chain of restaurants is in serious trouble. Please understand that I’m not suggesting any ethical violations here — it was just striking to see two good reporters approach the story in exactly the same way.

There was, though, one difference. The Times noted that Lynch is the first cousin of U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, a powerful South Boston Democrat, and has connections to the influential lobbyist Tom O’Neill, a former lieutenant governor. As my old colleague Adam Reilly of GBH News tweeted:

Currently comparing the Globe's Barbara Lynch piece to the NYT's. Lots of common ground, but this particular part of the Times story jumped out pic.twitter.com/1NExWyhDnI

— Adam Reilly (@reillyadam) April 21, 2023

Adam’s implication is that the Globe should have included that fact as well, and I agree with him. Perhaps editors at the Globe decided not to pull Lynch’s connections into the story given that they are not responsible for her behavior. Still, readers may reasonably wonder if that had something to with why she got away with her act for as long as she has.

On the other hand, the Globe’s story, unlike the Times’, observes that the food has gone downhill at Lynch’s restaurants as her behavior has spiraled out of control. Nanos — with contributions from the paper’s food critic, Devra First, as well as reporter Dana Gerber — writes:

What’s more, restaurants have changed, in part reshaped in part by both the #MeToo movement and the pandemic. Long overlooked behavior is no longer being tolerated. Workers are demanding fairer treatment. And Lynch’s world of fine dining is shifting beneath her feet amid staffing shortages and rising food costs, particular challenges for the pricey, labor-intensive model of haute cuisine.

And indeed, on a recent evening, Menton seemed to have lost the luster of its early days, when the food was plated like precious jewels, both delicious and beautiful, and customers were cosseted by multiple servers at once. Menton now serves one $180 six-course chef’s tasting menu each night, but the dishes feel less inventive and refined than they did a decade ago when it first opened. Flavors are less precise, portion sizes are small, and the lag time between courses can be overly long. It was fine dining in the most literal sense of the word.

This is not an insignificant part of the story, and it’s telling that it appears in the local paper rather than in the outlet from out of town. The Globe also has some cringey details missing from the Times about crude T-shirts that Lynch wanted her employees to wear.

I have never eaten at any of Lynch’s restaurants as the prices are well out of my range. The food scene in Boston, though, is a vital part of our local culture, and the Globe has devoted a lot of resources to covering it over the years. It will be interesting to see whether Lynch’s problems are isolated, or if they represent the first cracks in that culture.

A remarkable set of front pages mark Trump’s day in a New York courtroom

Tuesday was, as we keep being told, historic. We don’t know what will happen to Donald Trump next, and he may be faced with more serious charges in Georgia and Washington. These front pages, though, tell quite a story about the former president’s arraignment on felony charges in New York. (From the Freedom Forum’s indispensable Today’s Front Pages website.)