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