The Boston Phoenix
October 9 - 16, 1997

[Features]

The Globe vs. Ray Flynn

Part 3

by Dan Kennedy

Walter Robinson is one of the Globe's toughest and most accomplished reporters. In the late 1970s, his reporting on then-governor Ed King's expenses established King's reputation as an unparalleled consumer of taxpayer-funded lobsters. In 1982, Robinson exposed embarrassing inconsistencies in gubernatorial candidate John Lakian's résumé. A former Washington correspondent and metro editor, the 51-year-old Robinson, a Northeastern graduate and Vietnam veteran, is now an assistant managing editor, serving as the paper's roving foreign and national correspondent. Just this year he's broken important stories on the Clinton campaign finance scandals and on art stolen by the Nazis.

Robinson insists that doing in Ray Flynn was the last thing on his mind when he saw Flynn, on August 6, weaving on Hanover Street in the North End, drunkenly hailing him and insisting that he and a friend join him for a drink.

"My role at the time was simply to get him off the street, because he was making a fool of himself," Robinson says, adding that he called a Flynn "acolyte" and told him: "This is a serious problem."

Robinson says he was prepared to let the matter drop until September 3, when Joe Kennedy quit the governor's race and Flynn made it clear that he was serious about seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. Suddenly, Robinson's Good Samaritan act was transformed into journalistic fodder.

"If he were back as a private citizen, we wouldn't have written the story. No question," says Ben Bradlee, deputy managing editor for projects.

Robinson's published account of his North End encounter with Flynn is rough stuff, dwelling as it does on Flynn's "disheveled" clothes, his "slurred speech," and his factual inconsistencies in later trying to deny that he was drunk. At times it seems excessive. Robinson is unapologetic, though, saying Flynn's gubernatorial candidacy makes his public drunkenness an issue. "If a guy's spending a lot of nights in pubs in Rome and his staff is saying he's not doing any work, I think it's a legitimate question to ask whether the two might be related," he says.

Still, there's no question that Robinson's account veers deeply into the zone that at one time was considered private territory. Certainly the Globe's editors must have felt squeamish about it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have ordered up the sidebar by Scot Lehigh, which attempts to delineate the circumstances by which a politician's drinking becomes a legitimate issue.

Certainly not everyone in the Globe newsroom is convinced. One staffer says the paper's attempt to conflate legitimate concerns about Flynn's job performance with an ethically dubious examination of his drinking was a "cheap shot." Several others are known to feel the same way.

Also troubled is Marvin Kalb, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School. "I suspect the information is accurate, but I wonder why at this particular point it is relevant," he says, adding he might feel differently "if we were on the verge of a gubernatorial campaign."

Kalb's response is thoughtful, but the bottom line is that we are on the verge of a gubernatorial campaign. Politics is a year-round sport in Massachusetts, and the 1998 election has been a hot topic in media and political circles from the moment the polls closed in November 1996. And if Flynn is no longer a viable candidate, he remains one of the noteworthy political figures of his generation. He's beaten long odds before. The paper really had no choice but to treat Flynn as a serious gubernatorial hopeful. "You get into a situation where writing about it or not writing about it becomes controversial," says Matt Storin.

Andrew Gully, managing editor for news at the Herald and political editor during most of Flynn's mayoralty, thinks the Globe was right to go ahead with the story (although he says he found the sourcing "a little thin").

"My only regret is that the Herald and Globe didn't do these stories years ago," he says, recalling reporters' enjoying all-night drinking sessions with Flynn. "Unfortunately, nobody ever did anything about it. We're all culpable."

Back to part 2 - On to part 4

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.
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