BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Saturday, August 09, 2003
O'Malley's mysterious signals.
Archbishop Seán O'Malley today is receiving well-deserved
credit for making a concrete (if underfunded) proposal to settle with
the victims of pedophile priests (Globe coverage
here;
Herald coverage here),
and for announcing that he'll move out of the archbishop's mansion in
Brighton.
What strikes me as a ruse, though,
is the notion that the archdiocese will not sell the chancery
property even though O'Malley will decamp for more-austere quarters
in the South End.
The Herald
quotes a "source familiar with church finances" as saying, "The
chancery is categorically not for sale." The Globe
offers, more obliquely: "O'Malley suggested he did not plan to sell
the heavily mortgaged Brighton residence, which is coveted by Boston
College, but instead would use it for church offices."
Why would O'Malley want his staff
across town, inaccessible to him? Why does he need to keep St. John's
Seminary, also located on the property, when the number of priest
candidates is way down and another, cheaper location could easily be
found?
The answers are obvious. Which is
why it makes sense -- purely as a matter of sheer speculation -- that
O'Malley is being coy in order to drive up the price. If he publicly
announced he was going to sell the property and commenced
negotiations with Boston College, then BC would hold the upper hand
in a down market.
This way, he can delay negotiations
indefinitely, and allow another potential buyer to come along and
blow him away with an offer that he can't refuse. Assuming the
settlement is behind him by then, that would mean more money for the
Church's mission -- including its extensive social-services network,
which has been badly hurt at the worst possible time by the
mind-boggling misdeeds of his predecessors, especially Cardinal
Bernard Law.
If I'm right about what O'Malley
may be thinking, then he deserves all the credit in the
world.
posted at 10:34 AM |
comment or permalink
Friday, August 08, 2003
Extra! It now turns out that
New England Cable News had the story about the Vatican document on
July 28 -- a day earlier than the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette and the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune. Click
here and watch "Church
Critics Seek Charges."
Okay, let's get this out of the way
once and for all: Media Log does not rule out the possibility that
another news org reported this even before NECN. Hey, maybe someone
even reported it in 1962!
And not only did CBS News not
"uncover" this, but we now know that its Wednesday report wasn't even
"the first time that this has been reported on television," as CBS
spokeswoman Sandy Genelius told me yesterday.
posted at 11:46 AM |
comment or permalink
Curioser and curioser. The
story about the story regarding that
secret 1962 Vatican document
is getting increasingly convoluted.
The website Catholic World
News posted an
analysis yesterday
attempting to show that the conventional interpretation -- that the
Vatican was giving marching orders to cover up the misdeeds of
pedophile priests -- is just plain wrong.
According to CWN, the
document pertained to a much narrower matter -- priests who solicit
sex inside the confessional:
The Vatican document deals
exclusively with solicitation: an offense which, by definition,
occurs within the context of the Sacrament of Penance. And since
that sacrament is protected by a shroud of absolute secrecy, the
procedures for dealing with this ecclesiastical crime also invoke
secrecy.
In short, by demanding secrecy
in the treatment of these crimes, the Vatican was protecting the
secrecy of the confessional. The policy outlined in that 1962
document is clearly not intended to protect predatory priests; on
the contrary, the Vatican makes it clear that guilty priests
should be severely punished and promptly removed from
ministry.
CWN specifically blasts CBS
News, which claimed on Wednesday to have "uncovered" the document,
and which reported that the Vatican "calls for absolute secrecy when
it comes to sexual abuse by priests." In fact, though, the existence
of the document had already been reported a week earlier by the
Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the Lawrence
Eagle-Tribune, and the Boston Herald.
Today's Herald includes
this
piece by Eric Convey that
covers much the same ground as the CWN analysis.
Yesterday, even as I was posting my
own item on the scuff-up over CBS's self-aggrandizing "uncovered"
claim, the Herald's Convey, the Eagle-Tribune's
Gretchen Putnam, the Telegram & Gazette's Harry Whitin,
and CBS News's Jim Murphy were going at it hot and heavy on
the
letters page of Jim
Romenesko's MediaNews.org website.
And contrary to my report yesterday
-- and to Whitin's assertion to Romenesko -- it now appears that the
Telegram & Gazette did not break the story all by itself,
but rather finished in a first-place tie with the
Eagle-Tribune. Both papers broke the story on July
29.
The T&G's, by Kathleen
Shaw, has slid into the paper's paid archives, but the
Eagle-Tribune's, by Meg Murphy, is still online for free
here.
posted at 11:07 AM |
comment or permalink
Thursday, August 07, 2003
It depends on the meaning of
"uncovered." This morning, while I was driving to work, I heard a
curious report on the radio. The announcer said that CBS News had
uncovered a confidential 1962 document from the Vatican specifying
how the Catholic Church should respond to complaints of child sexual
abuse.
Curious because I knew that a copy
of the report had been sitting on my desk at work since last week --
and that my colleague Kristen Lombardi had obtained it a few days
earlier than that.
Upon looking into it further, I
learned that the first report on the existence of the document was
published on July 29 in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
The 923-word page-one piece, by Kathleen Shaw, began like
this:
The hierarchy of the
Catholic church has been instructed by the Vatican at least since
1962 to keep certain cases of clergy sexual abuse secret under
pain of excommunication, according to Boston lawyer Carmen L.
Durso.
A copy of the directive was sent
yesterday to U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan at his Boston
office by Mr. Durso, who said he believes the church has been
obstructing justice.
The next day, the Boston
Herald's Robin Washington covered much the same ground in a story
on page eight. His lead:
A Latin document bearing
the seal of Pope John XXIII outlined a 1962 Vatican procedure for
shielding sexually abusive priests, two lawyers for plaintiffs in
cases against the church maintain.
Yet when the CBS Evening
News began last night, here's how anchor Scott Pelley introduced
the story:
We begin tonight with a
surprising development in the sex-abuse scandal in the Roman
Catholic Church. For decades, priests in this country have abused
children in parish after parish while their superiors covered it
all up. Now it turns out the orders for this cover-up were written
in Rome at the highest levels of the Vatican. Correspondent Vince
Gonzales has uncovered a church document kept secret 40
years, until now.
The transcript does not appear to
be freely available online (I got it from Lexis-Nexis). But you
can read a version of the story on the
CBS News website that
includes this: "CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales has
uncovered a church document kept secret for 40
years."
What is going on here?
Houston lawyer Dan Shea, who
represents some of the alleged victims, is the person who has called
the document to the attention of much of the media. Earlier today he
told me,
"The real credit for this goes
to Kathy Shaw and Robin Washington. Hey, smoke and mirrors." As for
CBS, Shea said, "They interviewed me for the piece. They spent an
hour-and-a-half with me in my office in Houston. And I never even
showed up in the piece."
I couldn't reach Shaw. But
Washington's comment was succinct: "This is ridiculous. It's beyond
the pale."
CBS News spokeswoman Sandy
Genelius, though, defended her network's actions. She said of the
T&G and Herald reports, "I think they did a great
job, and I think that we did our own reporting about it and put a
piece on the air. It's that simple."
Genelius added that Gonzales could
have broadcast his report earlier, but that he expended considerable
effort trying to authenticate the document.
When I asked whether CBS's claim
that Gonzales had "uncovered" the document might be fairly
interpreted as meaning that the network was claiming an exclusive,
she replied, "We never claimed any exclusivity on it, nor would
we."
Well, maybe CBS makes a distinction
between "exclusive" and "uncovered," but I seriously doubt that it's
a distinction any typical news consumer would make.
The broadcast strongly implied that
CBS was breaking news. It wasn't.
posted at 2:52 PM |
comment or permalink
The Bulger aftermath, and
questions for Chancellor Lombardi. After having spent a good part
of the morning reading almost every word the Globe
and the Herald
have to offer on the resignation of UMass president Bill Bulger --
and having glanced at coverage in the New
York Times and
Washington
Post as well -- I have
come to a sad conclusion:
I've got nothing to say, beyond
what I've
already said.
Bulger's $960,000 get-out-of-town
package seems excessive, given that his pension should run about
$200,000 a year. He might have been talked into taking less rather
than staying to face a newly constituted board of trustees with Alan
Dershowitz screaming at him through every meeting.
Still, the man was under contract,
and it wasn't going to be cheap to make him go away.
But with the Bulger matter having
been so thoroughly chewed over, let's shift to a sidebar: the story
that UMass Amherst chancellor John
Lombardi may be named
president -- interim, permanent, or both.
The Globe's Marcella
Bombardieri reports that
Lombardi -- who's been at Amherst for a year -- did a terrific job
during his nearly 10 years as president of the University of
Florida.
What Bombardieri does not report is
that Lombardi failed to distinguish himself, to say the least, in a
troubling academic-freedom case that came up last fall.
Economics professor M.J. Alhabeeb,
an Iraqi native and a staunch opponent of Saddam Hussein, was paid a
visit in his office by an FBI agent and a campus cop after they
learned that he was against President Bush's plans to invade
Iraq.
Alhabeeb pronounced the matter "not
a big deal." But the fact is that a naturalized American citizen was
informed upon and questioned because of his political views and his
national origin.
Yet when the faculty senate met to
discuss the matter, the Springfield Union-News quoted Lombardi
as saying:
I have had, at some time
or another, had my friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors
asked about my activities, views, and politics in order to get one
job or another. When we are talking about the FBI on campus asking
questions, we ought to be clear about which activity we
have.
Lombardi also urged that the UMass
community "not be distracted over cases that are not fundamental
attacks on free speech."
For his spineless performance in
the face of a challenge to academic freedom, Lombardi was recently
singled out for a Boston
Phoenix Muzzle Award.
It's something he ought to be
called to account for before anyone starts talking seriously about a
promotion. The Dersh would be just the one to ask Lombardi the
questions that need to be asked.
The next Sony?
BusinessWeek has a fascinating piece by Jane Black on
Apple's
ongoing attempt to reinvent itself
-- from a boutique computer maker that, despite its cutting-edge
reputation, is slowly fading away to "a high-end consumer-electronics
and services company à la Sony."
Her examples: the to-die-for
iPod
portable music player (the envious take note: Mrs. Media Log got me
one for Father's Day) and the iTunes
Music Store.
Thanks to FarrellMedia
for pointing this out.
New in this week's
Phoenix. I've got a problem with the Vatican's recent
statement on same-sex
marriage -- and its demand
that democratically elected politicians toe the line.
Also, a
Harvard study shows that
the so-called liberal media are far more tolerant of conservative
arguments than the conservative media are of liberal ones. But
you
already knew that.
posted at 9:13 AM |
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Times signs write-o-matic
Brooks. David Brooks is a fine writer, a provocative thinker, a
sensible conservative, and a hell of a nice guy. He is also
dangerously overexposed.
You can read him in the Weekly
Standard, the Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, the
New York Times Book Review, the New York Times
Magazine, the Times of London, and on the Wall Street
Journal editorial page. You can see him on The NewsHour with
Jim Lehrer. You can hear him on All Things Considered.
Several years ago he wrote a briskly selling book about the nouveau
riche called Bobos in Paradise. If he were a pop star, his
agent would tell him to lay low for a while and cultivate an air of
mystery.
Today we learn that he will soon
begin writing an op-ed-page column for the New York Times. The
news comes in the oddest of places: buried
inside a Times feature
today on summer jobs. Brooks is quoted on the subject, and his
forthcoming new gig is revealed as an afterthought. (Note: After posting this item shortly before 9 a.m., I was immediately informed that Brooks's appointment is not news. Must have happened while I was on vacation.)
I'm sure Brooks is not looking for
Media Log's advice, but I'm going to offer some anyway. Brooks can be
a terrific op-ed columnist. But he's going to have to devote most of
his attention to it and cut way back on the outside work. The
Times job will be the most important thing he does.
Besides showing that the liberal
media are far more open to conservative voices than the conservative
media are to liberals, Brooks's addition will be welcome because he's
so good at what he does. But if he doesn't cut way back on his
outside work, he runs the risk of becoming not a writer, but a word
processor.
Slick Howie. The Howard Dean
described this morning by Boston Globe columnist
Scot
Lehigh sounds like someone
who is pragmatic to the point of being cynical.
Lehigh doesn't draw the analogy
directly, but that whatever-it-takes attitude, unattractive though it
may be to those who have to interact with him personally, calls to
mind another politician whom many Democrats are pining for these
days: Bill Clinton.
Joe Fitz, paragon of
objectivity. The funniest thing about Boston Herald
columnist Joe
Fitzgerald's screed
(sub. req.) today is that you have to pay to read it online.
The second-funniest thing is his lame-o attempt to wag his finger at
the Episcopal Church for confirming
Gene Robinson, an openly
gay man, as the bishop of New Hampshire.
Fitzgerald claims Delphic powers of
insight, writing, "To more objective observers ... Robinson's
ascendancy is an abomination, which is precisely how Scripture
describes the kind of lifestyle he maintains." I guess Fitzgerald
considers all that love stuff attributed to Jesus as a bunch of
'60s-style hooey.
Even better, Fitzgerald quotes
Martin Luther King Jr. as an authority for his side of the argument.
Give Fitz this much: he knows King isn't going to complain.
Media Log update. Due to
some recent changes in Blogger.com's software, I am now going to
upload each morning's items as one post, rather than as individual
tidbits. It'll save me a minute or two, and make it easier to post
items in the order that I want.
This should only create a minimum
of hassle to websites seeking to link to Media Log items. It is also
the practice followed by many other weblogs, including that of the
prolific Andrew
Sullivan.
posted at 8:59 AM |
comment or permalink
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
How to lose $400 million and not
pay any taxes. First, make
$400 million.
posted at 8:47 AM |
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Do as he says, not as he
does. Here is the original Lawrence Eagle-Tribune story
from Sunday on Lawrence superintendent of schools Wilfredo
Laboy, who can't pass a
mandatory English-proficiency test and who outrageously asserts that
he shouldn't be held to the same standard as his teachers.
A couple of great
quotes:
What brought me down was
the rules of grammar and punctuation. English being a second
language for me, I didn't do well in writing. If you're not an
English teacher, you don't look at the rules on a regular
basis.
And:
I should have never taken
the test because I came here with a very clear understanding
[from the state] that I had licensure.
This is really amazing stuff. Even
if Laboy is technically correct about not needing to be as proficient
as an English teacher, his inability to grasp the symbolism of the
situation is appalling.
Even more appalling is that city
leaders in Lawrence don't
seem to care. And most
appalling of all, neither does Governor Mitt
Romney, the scourge of
bilingualism, who is demagoguing the Democrats on minor changes they
made to the voter-approved anti-bilingualism ballot
question.
To be fair, Romney makes it clear
that Laboy must pass at some point. But his solicitousness toward
Laboy contrasts sharply with his bullying stance on bilingual
education.
posted at 8:47 AM |
comment or permalink
Judge not anymore. Now
here's some quick action. On Monday, Herald columnist
Joe
Sciacca (sub. req.)
reported on Thomas Rango, the federal immigration judge whose
outrageous behavior reportedly included making Tarzan jokes to a
Ugandan woman named Jane who was seeking political asylum.
Today Rango's
gone.
posted at 8:47 AM |
comment or permalink
Monday, August 04, 2003
Defending terrorism futures.
Last Friday, during my weekly appearance to discuss media issues on
WRKO Radio (AM 680), talk-show host Pat
Whitley said he was going
to take a controversial stance: in the 10 a.m. hour, he would come
out in favor of John Poindexter's idea to create an Internet-based
futures market aimed at predicting acts of terrorism.
Well, Whitley's attempt to make
waves got overwhelmed pretty quickly. To an extent one couldn't have
imagined, what seemed like a
bona fide terrible idea
when it was first reported last week was quickly embraced by media
pundits seeking to be counterintuitive.
Here are the examples I saw -- and
I'm sure I missed a few:
- Beating Whitley to the punch,
New Yorker financial columnist James
Surowiecki wrote a piece
for his alma mater, Slate, on July 30 in which he argued,
"If the price of getting better intelligence is having our
sensibilities bruised, we should be willing to pay
it."
- On Sunday, the New York
Times' Floyd
Norris suggested that
the idea was a useful one, and explained why the US government had
to get involved in order for it to work: "The answer is that
Uncle Sam had been picked to play the role of designated loser in
the gambling." In other words, if the terrorism-futures market
were private (and there already is one), it wouldn't be as useful,
since there would be some bets that no one would take.
- Also on Sunday, the Boston
Globe's Gareth
Cook (ex of the
Phoenix) reported that the market idea was just one of a
number of creepy and potentially vital projects being undertaken
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the office that
Poindexter will continue to head for at least a few more
weeks.
- McGill University lecturer
Reuven
Brenner, in an op-ed
piece for the Wall Street Journal last Friday that was
posted to the free OpinionJournal.com site on Sunday, writes in
defense of the market idea -- but, in true WSJ fashion,
argues that there is "no reason" for government
involvement.
- This morning, the
Globe's Hiawatha
Bray offers a defense.
Unfortunately for him, he writes that "there's nothing to stop
some businessperson from launching a similar project," showing
that he didn't read Norris's Times piece. Or maybe he read
Brenner's piece instead.
- Also today, the Boston
Herald's Ted
Bunker, his weekly
"Capital Focus" column, interviews former DARPA scientist Vincent
Cerf, who complains that the political pressure being exerted
today might have hampered the development of the Internet, an
earlier DARPA innovation.
So, was the Policy Analysis Market,
as the terrorism-futures lottery was formally known, a good idea?
Damned if I know. I remain deeply suspicious for two reasons: the
involvement of Iran-Contra figure Poindexter, and the notion that
futures markets are far better at predicting mass behavior -- say, a
presidential election, or changes in soybean prices -- than they are
at predicting the behavior of a few mayhem-minded
individuals.
But this much is certain: what had
seemed like a deeply controversial idea when it was first revealed
may not actually be very controversial at all.
posted at 9:06 AM |
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Turning away readers at the
Atlantic. The New York Times' David
Carr reports this morning
that David Bradley, owner of the Boston-based Atlantic
Monthly, has a radical
idea: turning a profit.
He plans to do it by raising
subscription prices and cutting circulation, a move intended as a
signal to advertisers that Atlantic readers are willing to pay
a premium.
It's a fascinating piece on the
daunting economics of publishing a high-quality magazine of
ideas.
posted at 9:06 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
