The Boston Herald’s Debate and Twitch

October 2, 2012

Big relief: In the aftermath of last night’s debate (co-sponsored by the Boston Herald) between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, the feisty local tabloid didn’t run ten pages of coverage the way they did yesterday.

It ran THIRTEEN pages, which featured everything from a scorecard to a fashion critique to enough thumbsucking to fill a maternity ward. (Roll your own here.)

The Boston Globe, after ignoring the debate yesterday, actually covered it in today’s edition, which provided a news report, news analysis, and a thumbsucker trifecta. (Ditto here.)

You’ll find coverage by the hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider here.

And let the wild rumpus recommence.

 

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The Boston Globe’s Ryder Cup-Out

October 2, 2012

Here’s how Monday’s Boston Globe reported the throat-grabbing collapse of America’s Ryder Cup team on Sunday, after it had built a supposedly insurmountable 8 1/2 – 3 1/2 lead over the European squad.

Europe turns tables on US

It rallies, avenges galling 1999 loss

MEDINAH, Ill. — Move over, Brookline, and make room for Medinah. There’s a new location that forever will be locked in Ryder Cup lore.

Turning the tables on a day from 13 years ago that still stings, Europe staged the greatest comeback — or benefited from the biggest collapse, depending on your perspective — in Ryder Cup history, pulling off a victory just as improbable as the one grabbed by the United States at The Country Club in 1999.

Just as emotional, too, at least to the Europeans, who sang and danced and hugged and sprayed champagne over their fans from a bridge near the clubhouse when it was over. Keeping former Ryder Cup icon Seve Ballesteros close to their hearts all week — and wearing his image on their sleeves Sunday — the Euros would have made the late Spaniard proud, somehow finding a way to win when the situation 24 hours earlier seemed hopelessly lost.

The Globe even provides this helpful graphic:

But it was the Boston Herald that cut to the chase on its back page:

 

 

Yeah, that’s more like it.

Only one question left:

How’s that Monday morning hangover, Herald columnist Ron Borges? Borges wrote this in Sunday’s edition:

No shot, Europe

U.S. lead too daunting

MEDINAH, Ill. — For the European team to win the 39th Ryder Cup competition today it won’t take a comeback. It will take a resurrection.

The Euros find themselves buried in a deeper hole this morning than the Greek economy. They don’t need a bailout plan. They need a concession speech.

Actually, Ron, you need a concession speech.

Not to get technical about it.

 

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Brown/Warren Debate and Ditch

October 1, 2012

Scott Brown (R-Clearly I’m Not) and Elizabeth Warren (D- Oh Yes He Is) have their much anticipated second U.S. Senate debate tonight. And since the debate is sponsored by UMass-Lowell and the Boston Herald, it’s also much hyperventilated in the feisty local tabloid, which devotes ten – count ’em, ten – pages to the bakeoff, including Page One (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

Beyond the obligatory tale of the tape (which the hardsearching staff can’t find on the Herald’s website,) their are five – count ’em, five – thumbsucking columns. Chinstrokers Row comprises Joe Battenfeld, Jessica Heslam, Holly Robichaud, Kimberly Atkins and Andy Hiller of WHDH-TV, which will broadcast the debate.

PLUS . . . an editorial AND an op-ed by our BU colleague Tobe Berkovitz.

Whew!

As for the Boston Globe, they have exactly zero – count ’em, zero – mentions of the debate.

We’ll check back in when it’s the Globe’s turn to sponsor a debate.

 

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Mass. State Police Drug Lab(yrinth)

October 1, 2012

The current Massachusetts crime-lab rumpus is nicely revealing the true nature of Boston’s local dailies.

From Sunday’s Boston Globe (boink! sorry, paywall):

How a chemist dodged lab protocols

Close supervision is key in a lab, specialists say, and Annie Dookhan’s appeared to lack it

State drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan labeled the vials as containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But when another chemist ran the vials through a machine to confirm Dookhan’s analysis, one had little THC, and another was mixed with morphine and codeine.

The second chemist sent the vials back to Dookhan to resolve the discrepancies, asking her to repeat the screening test the lab used to tentatively identify the drugs in an evidence bag. When she resubmitted them, the machine showed the vials contained pure THC.

The incident, detailed in a 100-page State Police report obtained by the Globe last week, illustrates one of the many ways Dookhan was able to circumvent safeguards intended to ensure that drug evidence was properly handled and analyzed by workers in a now-closed lab formerly run by the state Department of Public Health.

Forensics specialists interviewed by the Globe say the lab’s procedures appear to have been fairly standard, including having two chemists test every sample, but they were still not enough to prevent an ambitious chemist’s rampant breaches of lab protocol, apparently to boost her performance record. In the process, investigators say, Dookhan has jeopardized the reliability of drug evidence used in 34,000 cases during her nine-year career.

Substantive, no?

Not so in Sunday’s Boston Herald:

Lab-freed ‘villains’ eyed as Deval’s downfall

Horton effect could sink gov’s future

Every accused drug dealer sprung from jail thanks to the state crime-lab fiasco could be another Willie Horton waiting to snuff out Gov. Deval Patrick’s aspirations for higher office, political watchers say.

“If Deval Patrick were to run for president, this would be a huge issue,” former state treasurer Joe Malone, a Republican, said. “This is a case where every American would understand that this kind of malpractice on his administration’s part puts criminals back on the street. Willie Horton certainly comes to mind.”

Horton is the convicted murderer whose violent crime spree while on weekend furlough from prison under Michael Dukakis’ watch was the subject of an infamous attack ad that helped sink the former governor’s 1988 presidential bid.

And now Patrick, who has said he will not run for re-election and is seen as a rising Democratic star on the national stage, must watch as offenders in potentially thousands of cases try to use evidence tainted by alleged rogue chemist Annie Dookhan, who was arrested Friday, as their ticket to freedom.

No investigation. Just speculation.

That’s right: The Herald.

 

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Lab Rate

September 30, 2012

The Massachusetts State Police Drug Lab kerfuffle produced very different front-page coverage in Saturday’s local dailies.

(Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

Check inside for further details.

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Native Americans Whomp ‘Em in Massachusetts Senate Race

September 28, 2012

Elizabeth Warren’s soi disant Native American heritage has drawn fire not just from incumbent Sen. Scott Brown, but also from Native Americans.

Except it’s hard to know that from the Boston Globe coverage.

Cherokee chief rips Brown campaign

The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation denounced Senator Scott Brown’s campaign staffers on Wednesday for what he called offensive and racist behavior against Native Americans, and he called on Brown to apologize.

A day earlier, Democrats released a video filmed outside a Brown campaign event showing Republican staff members, including an aide in Brown’s Senate office, performing tomahawk chops and shouting war whoops amid a crowd of boisterous supporters of both candidates.

The gestures appeared to mock Elizabeth Warren’s professed Native American ancestry.

“The conduct of these individuals goes far beyond what is appropriate and proper in political discourse,” the chief, Bill John Baker, said in a statement. “The use of stereotypical ‘war whoop chants’ and ‘tomahawk chops’ are offensive and downright racist. It is those types of actions that perpetuate negative stereotypes and continue to minimize and degrade all native peoples.”

But . . .

Buried deep in the piece was this:

[Sen. Brown’s] campaign also released a comment from a member of the Pequot tribe calling Warren a fraud for her undocumented claims of Native American ancestry.

Cut to . . . the Boston Herald’s coverage:

Native Americans rip Scott and Liz

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown delivered his “one and only warning” to staffers about their behavior after a video captured tomahawk-chopping supporters, but while a top Cherokee official demanded Brown apologize, other Native Americans said they’re still waiting for Elizabeth Warren to admit she’s no Cherokee.

“For the most part, I saw it as stupid behavior,” Twila Barnes said of the clip featuring Brown supporters doing war whoops and toma-hawk chops. “But Elizabeth Warren has stolen our entire identity. If she had been a real Cherokee, they wouldn’t have behaved like that. They were doing it because she’s fake.”

Fake heritage, fake issue, fake outrage – take your pick.

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Split Decision on ‘Last Resort’

September 27, 2012

The fall television season is upon us, which means the return of familiar shows and the debut of new ones. It also means TV reviews, to see which one are worth watching.

Or not, if you read both local dailies.

Case in point: the ABC’s new drama series Last Resort.

The Boston Globe’s Matthew Gilbert likes it, he really likes it:

‘Last Resort’: Paranoia below the sea

There’s no question in my mind that most TV sci-fi dramas have some precedent in “The Twilight Zone.” Rod Serling’s stark, brilliant anthology series, which ran from 1959-63, messed with all kinds of cosmic possibilities – about existence, about childhood, about time and space, about good and evil, about politics, technology, and the future. There were humans, aliens, robots, mutants, dreams, and apocalypses, the last of which are particularly popular these days in primetime. From “Lost,” “FlashForward,” and “Fringe” to “Revolution” and ABC’s fascinating new “Last Resort,” TV is still toying with the what-ifs and watch-outs explored in TV’s great uber-ancestor.

But the Herald’s Mark Perigard? Not so much.

‘Last Resort’ aptly named

Nuke-happy network drama’s a bust

An anti-Muslim video created by an idiot and posted to YouTube has provoked violence worldwide.

Tonight, a commercial network releases an expensive-looking drama that casually drops two nuclear bombs on Pakistan and obliterates millions — off-screen, thankfully.

It gets better.

Our “hero,” late in the hour, detonates a nuclear bomb on American soil — just to prove a point.

To be fair, “Last Resort” does not insult ideology — it merely knocks your intelligence.

Anybody got a coin we can flip?

 

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Brown Rally Goes Chop Chop To Globe Front Page

September 26, 2012

Yesterday’s rally shenanigans by staffers of Sen. Scott Brown (Whomp ’em) went straight to the front page 0f today’s Boston Globe.

Republican aides shown doing war chants

Warren decries actions outside Brown event

In a tough new ad and in his attacks at last week’s debate, Senator Scott Brown has stoked questions about Elizabeth Warren’s professed Native American ancestry. But the difficulty of seizing on the controversy without crossing into uncomfortable racial territory became apparent Tuesday with the release of a video showing Republican staff members, including an aide in Brown’s Senate office, performing tomahawk chops and war whoops outside one of his campaign events.

Brown said such behavior is “not something I condone,” but declined to apologize.

“The apologies that need to be made and the offensiveness here is the fact that Professor Warren took advantage of a claim, to be somebody, a Native American, and used that for an advantage, a tactical advantage,” Brown said.

Pretty lame. But there was no ‘splainin’ from Brown in the Herald, which dismissed the story with a page 4 squib:

Warren on tomahawk chop video: Cut it out!

Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren says she was “appalled” at a video that appeared to show supporters of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown — including at least one staffer — performing war whoops and tomahawk chops, saying if one of her campaign workers did such a thing there would be “serious consequences.”

Asked whether she was appalled as an American Indian, Warren told reporters: “I am appalled as an American.”

“I think everyone knew what he was up to,” said Warren, who has been dogged by a growing scandal over her unsupported claims of Cherokee heritage and her professional claims of minority status.

This isn’t going to get any prettier, folks.

 

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Elizabeth Warren’s No Apology Tour

September 25, 2012

The Naive American – sorry, Native American – heritage of Elizabeth Warren continues to be batted around in the local dailies today. Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan tells Warren running for office means always having to say you’re sorry.

Elizabeth Warren, it’s not too late to say ‘sorry’

Here’s what might help Elizabeth Warren in this oh-so-close U.S. Senate race: some apologies, some mea culpas.

Yesterday during an interview with Jim Braude and me on News Talk 96.9, Warren was asked — yet again — about the issue that just won’t go away.

“Do you feel that guilt that you checked the box?” asked a caller from Wellesley, who admitted that she, too, had checked the Native American box when pursuing a government job in the ’80s, and still feels bad about it.

Had Warren said what she should have said when the Herald first broke the Native American story months ago, it wouldn’t be a big story anymore. That is, that she regretted checking her own Native American box. That it was a mistake. That she was sorry.

Far from apologizing, Warren has doubled down on her dual heritage, as the Globe reports today:

In ads, Warren defends heritage after Brown attacks

US Senator Scott Brown and his Democratic rival Elizabeth Warren launched dueling ads Monday over her claims of Native American heritage, an issue that has provoked the most serious personal attacks in their race.

The sniping began when Brown launched a 30-second spot, entitled “Who knows?” The ad features grainy clips of television reporters talking about Warren “identifying herself as Native American to employers. . . . Something genealogists said they have zero evidence of.”

At the conclusion, a reporter asks Warren: “Is there anything else that’s going to come out about you that we don’t already know?” The Democrat laughs in response. “You know, I don’t think so, but who knows,” she says . . .

By late afternoon, Warren unveiled a 30-second spot that struck back at Brown’s, defending her heritage. “As a kid I never asked my mom for documentation when she talked about our Native American heritage. What kid would?’’ Warren asks, looking directly into the camera. “But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part Cherokee and part Delaware. So my parents had to elope.’’

“Let me be clear,” she adds, “I never asked for, never got any benefit because of my heritage. The people who hired me have all said they didn’t even know about it.”

Well, we all know about it now. And it’s not going away anytime soon.

 

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Debate and Switch

September 24, 2012

Both local dailies front-page debate stories today as campaign season shifts into high(er) gear.

Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:

 

 

 

The Globe piece is pretty straightforward:

First debate called critical for Mitt Romney

Higher stakes than for Obama

After months of sniping from a distance, President Obama and Mitt Romney are nearing the unsparing crucible of one-on-one debates that could alter the dynamics of the presidential campaign.

For Romney, particularly, the stakes are enormous.

After a month of missteps and missed opportunities — from his convention speech, to his reaction after the US ambassador’s death in Libya, to a video in which he described nearly half the country as government-dependent “victims” — Romney faces three debates in the national spotlight, beginning Oct. 3 in Denver, that could bolster or bury his chances.

“Unquestionably, he has to do well in the first debate,” said Rob Gray, a Republican strategist who was a senior adviser in Romney’s successful 2002 campaign for Massachusetts governor. “There’s more on the line for him, whereas Obama has proven before that he can handle it.”

The Herald, on the other hand, has three – count ’em, three – columnists on debate patrol. Start with Joe Battenfeld’s cover story:

A glimpse inside Mitt’s strategy

He’s not Mitt Romney, but he got to play one in debate practice. And he says the real Mitt needs to resurrect his personable performance from 10 years ago to beat President Obama in their upcoming face-to-face showdowns.

Jeffrey Robbins, a Boston attorney who played the role of Romney as Democrat Shannon O’Brien prepared for the debates in the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race, divulged for the first time key details of the Democrats’ strategy to turn Romney into “Gordon Gekko” — a strategy that ultimately failed then.

Robbins predicts Obama’s debate plan will come right out of the playbook 10 years ago, when Democratic gubernatorial nominee O’Brien tried to reinforce Romney’s image as a greedy, out-of-touch businessman.

Bit of a stretch there, eh?

Next up is Holly Robichaud’s piece giving advice to Romney.

Like Brown, Mitt must pack a punch in his debate

Last week it was great to see an aggressive U.S. Sen. Scott Brown take on Lizzy Warren. After months of her endless whining commercials, Brown called her out on multiple issues — including her fake American Indian status, helping Travelers Insurance avoid paying poisoned asbestos workers and her whopping $350,000 salary for teaching one class at Harvard University.

Brown had the right combination of talking directly to voters and discrediting Fauxahontas. He showed how a candidate can remain likable, but still deliver a solid punch.

Our former Gov. Mitt Romney would do well to take a page out of this playbook. President Obama is not going to be forced out of the White House if Romney keeps playing defense. It is time to put points on the board.

Finally, Kimberly Atkins weighs in:

Wisdom of pols’ rules is debatable

WASHINGTON — The debate season is in full swing, and with it we are seeing the emergence of a nifty approach by some candidates as they prepare to face their rivals face-to-face: avoidance by agreement.

The true pioneer of this debate is U.S. Rep. John Tierney who, as the Herald reported, insisted sponsors of two of four scheduled debates with GOP challenger Richard Tisei focus only on certain topics and preclude the participants from asking questions of one another.

Of course, this conveniently will allow Tierney to avoid an issue both Tisei and national Republicans have focused on: his in-laws’ gambling ring and his wife’s federal tax-evasion conviction.

Atkins goes on to relate other debate-related kerfuffles before offering some free advice to candidates, such as “[Elizabeth Warren] could try to throw U.S. Sen. Scott Brown off  his well-rehearsed game by demanding that the candidates be barred from using the word ‘professor,’ thanking the moderator after each question or referring to a truck at any point.”

The hardreading staff would be all for that.

 

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