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From the time Wall Street Journal editorial writer Dorothy Rabinowitz almost single-handedly revived the Fells Acres child-molestation case two years ago, the media have been as much a part of the story as the defendants, Violet Amirault and her children, Gerald Amirault and Cheryl LeFave. J'accuse
Fells Acres agendas in the media. Plus, a gushing welcome for Rick Pitino, and the sensational Spotlight series.
by Dan Kennedy
And so it goes. Nearly lost in last week's startling news that the two women had (again) been granted a new trial were two touchy media-ethics stories.
At the center of both was Boston Herald reporter Tom Mashberg, who in December 1995 co-reported (along with Ed Hayward) the definitive overview of the case, but who in recent months has become an increasingly outspoken advocate for the Amiraults.
On May 8 Mashberg reported that radical journalist Alexander Cockburn had accused Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara of falsely claiming to have attended a child-abuse conference in Salem last January. LeFave was one of the featured speakers at the conference, where participants compared accusations of massive child sexual abuse with the Salem witch trials -- an analogy McNamara, in her January 15 column, dismissed as "nonsense." The upcoming issue of Cockburn and Ken Silverstein's magazine, CounterPunch, contains an analysis of McNamara's column titled "Eileen McNamara: Put Up or Shut Up." Highlights will be published this Friday in CounterPunch's regular back-page ad in the Nation, a magazine for which Cockburn is also a columnist.
McNamara's column offered no suggestion that she actually attended the conference -- indeed, I recall thinking that it appeared she hadn't when I first read it, since she touched on the conference only in a cursory manner. But she did begin with a Salem dateline, as well as a reference to a conference "here," i.e., in Salem.
"She was in Salem, and she talked to people," says editor Matt Storin. She didn't actually attend the conference, he adds, because it didn't get under way until after her deadline.
Asked whether McNamara's recent Pulitzer played a role in his determination to expose what he calls her "fake dateline," Cockburn responded by fax: "I most certainly think the Pulitzer did make the story even more interesting. After all, Rabinowitz nearly got a Pulitzer for her Amirault pieces a year ago. So there's a kind of ironic symmetry to all this that is very striking and newsworthy in and of itself."
Yet McNamara points out that even though she is a strong advocate for victims of child sexual abuse, "I have never registered an opinion on the guilt or innocence of the Amiraults in public."
Granted, McNamara and her editors should've been more careful to make it clear she hadn't attended the conference. But Cockburn -- like Mashberg, a supporter of the Amiraults -- is making a tidal wave out of a water droplet.
More problematic was the Boston Globe's front-page piece of May 6, by David Armstrong and Dublin-bound Kevin Cullen, reporting that a few people on the fringes of those who support the Amiraults also oppose laws that prohibit sex between adults and consenting children, and have written favorably of the notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
Anyone who's spent much time researching Fells Acres can't help but be struck by the involvement of such figures. The problem is establishing relevance. I waded into this muck myself two years ago, reporting that a psychologist who had helped discredit the testimony of children in other cases had said some disturbingly positive things about pedophilia. My attempts to tie this to Fells Acres, though, were pretty much a failure. So were Armstrong and Cullen's.
In a blistering op-ed piece on May 9, Mashberg -- who used to work at the Globe (and was a Phoenix contributor for a time) -- accused his old paper of "a crude and irresponsible bit of manipulation" that "comes right out of the Joe McCarthy playbook."
Even though the Globe piece carefully noted that the Amiraults' more-mainstream supporters are horrified by the pro-pedophilia views held by a tiny minority of their allies, I have to agree with Mashberg's conclusions, if not his strident tone. Those of us who find the evidence against the Amiraults persuasive nevertheless have to acknowledge that critics have raised some difficult questions about the case. Smearing those critics with guilt-by-association helps no one.
Besides, one of the people singled out -- Bob Chatelle, of the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression, who helped organize a pro-Amirault rally in Cambridge recently -- complains that the Globe wasn't even accurate about his views. In a letter to the Globe that he's also circulating on the Internet, Chatelle charges that Armstrong and Cullen misrepresented his support for NAMBLA's free-speech rights by making it appear that he is a NAMBLA supporter.
Chatelle's essay "The Limits to Free Expression and the Problem of Child Pornography" (http://www.eff.org/pub/Groups/BCFE/limit2.html), from which the Globe quoted, does call NAMBLA's literature "thoughtful, clearly reasoned and provocative." But Chatelle also writes that he is "skeptical about claims that the sexually immature [can] freely consent to sex with adults." Thus it appears that Chatelle's views may be more complicated than Armstrong and Cullen would have it.
Finally, while Mashberg is raising questions about media ethics, he might ask one of himself: should a reporter who's become such a passionate partisan of an issue continue to write straight news stories about that issue? After all, that was Mashberg's byline on the front of the May 10 Herald, reporting on a Superior Court judge's decision to overturn the convictions of Violet Amirault and Cheryl LeFave.
"It's a good question," responds Mashberg. "I've discussed that at length with the editors here. They're watching me very closely."
Though there's no evidence that Mashberg has crossed any ethical line, he has, through his opinion pieces, created the appearance of bias. He ought to stick to advocacy, and leave the reporting to journalists who have not taken a public stance.
No doubt Rick Pitino, the new coach/president/designated savior of the Boston Celtics, is enjoying the hero's welcome he's received from the local sporting press. And it's understandable. After all, since winning its last championship, in 1986, Celtics management has been both phenomenally unlucky (to wit: the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis) and incompetent. The arrival of Pitino from Kentucky really does promise a new era.
How huge has this story been? "Boston has never seen anything like this before, and it may never see it again," wrote Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley of Pitino's FleetCenter news conference.
The lone dissenters were Herald columnists Joe Fitzgerald and Howie Carr, who whacked Pitino for promising a new Kentucky recruit that he (Pitino) wasn't going anywhere.
In the midst of this media gushfest, the experience of Boston's other would-be sports revivalist -- Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette -- is instructive.
When Duquette arrived in early 1994, he was hailed. "It makes so much sense. How can it be true?" enthused the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy on January 27, 1994.
Now, just a little more than three years later, Duquette is widely reviled as an inhumane martinet more interested in obedience than winning. Indeed, the Duke must be wondering why moving 77-year-old icon Johnny Pesky out of the dugout while keeping him on the payroll is considered so horrible, given the praise Pitino received for the far more thorough housecleaning he initiated.
Pitino's task may be even more daunting than Duquette's. As Globe basketball writer Peter May pointed out, it could be a long, long time before the Celtics are competitive again, thanks to the high-priced, long-term contracts Pitino's predecessor, M.L. Carr, handed out to his mostly inept players.
Which is why Pitino's 10-year guarantee is so vital. For one thing, as the Herald's Steve Bulpett reported, Celtics owner Paul Gaston was reluctant to pursue Pitino last summer because of Pitino's well-established history of moving on every few years. Now there's little doubt that Pitino is staying put. For another, in a league dominated by star players with multimillion-dollar salaries and even bigger endorsement deals, Pitino's package -- estimated at $50 million -- instantly establishes him as a lot more than just another journeyman coach who lacks the power to enforce his will.
Pitino is, by all accounts, an extraordinary coach. But the Boston sports media's bottom line is simple: win or be gone. (And both, if you're Bill Parcells.) Pitino probably already knows that. If he doesn't, he should talk it over with Dan Duquette.
An uncharacteristically sensational presentation undermined the Globe's two-part Spotlight Team series (Sunday and Monday) on hospitals that boost profits by improperly locking up patients in psychiatric wards.
The second part of the series opens with the tale of Dana Davis, handcuffed and dragged out of his home by police. "All he had done, all he was guilty of," according to the lead, "was cracking wise to a psychiatrist he barely knew and didn't like." The story is accompanied by a Rescue 911-style re-enactment photo of Davis lying on the floor and demonstrating how he was cuffed.
Deep inside, we learn more -- a lot more. It seems that the psychiatrist had asked Davis, who has long suffered from depression, if he might commit suicide. "I'm no soothsayer," he sarcastically responded. The psychiatrist then told him that, under the circumstances, she couldn't allow him to leave. He walked out anyway, and she apparently notified police.
That's exactly the sort of crisis that involuntary commitments are designed to respond to. Spotlight Team reporter Mitchell Zuckoff, though, argues that the psychiatrist and the police abused the law by taking Davis into custody even though no "imminent threat of suicide" was present. "You really have to have an extremely high standard, because it is such an intrusive law," Zuckoff told the Phoenix. "An offhand remark does not qualify."
That may be true, but a poor judgment call on the part of a psychiatrist who thought she had a potentially suicidal patient on her hands hardly qualifies as a gross abuse.
The Spotlight Team dug up some real horror stories -- and some even more horrifying statistics -- that suggest hospitals are abusing the state's involuntary-commitment law in order to cash in on Medicare and Medicaid benefits. By Monday, legislators were promising reforms. That's all to the good.
But informing readers, inaccurately, that Dana Davis was dragged off to a mental hospital simply for telling off his shrink was a disservice.
The Don't Quote Me archive
Dan Kennedy's work can also be accessed from his Web site: http://www1.shore.net/~dkennedy/
Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com
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