Boston Herald Has Good Trolley Karma

October 6, 2015

The feisty local tabloid has two MBTA-related stories pretty much to itself today.

First, Kimberly Atkins’ column on an advertising rumpus that’s shadowed the T for two years now.

T ad issue may merit court’s consideration

Free-speech dispute on Supreme’s radar

WASHINGTON — A free-speech dispute over political ads in MBTA buses, trains and stations is likely headed for the U.S. Supreme Court and could have far-reaching effects on Screen Shot 2015-10-06 at 2.35.04 PMpaid messages on public property.

The case stems from 2013, when the MBTA agreed to post paid ads from pro-Palestinian group Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine that read: “4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the U.N. as refugees.” But the T then rejected the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s ad, submitted in response, which read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

 

So far, as Atkins reports, “[t]wo federal courts had backed the MBTA’s decision to reject the AFDI ad, under its policy barring ‘disparaging’ or ‘demeaning’ messages.”

Prior to those two decisions, the MBTA’s batting average in ad dustups was well below the Mendoza Line, as the hardreading staff noted two years ago. And Atkins also writes that “[i]n New York and Philadelphia, by contrast, courts have ordered transit agencies to run paid ads they had rejected, including one that claimed Muslims believe ‘killing Jews is worship.'”

So who knows if it even gets to the Supremes, and who knows how they’ll lean.

But we’re guessing the MBTA loses this one too.

Elsewhere in today’s Herald, there’s this news from the T’s Ghost of Winter Past.

Scott bows out of bid for NTSB post

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President Obama has withdrawn his nomination of former MBTA chief Beverly Scott to the National Transportation Safety Board, abruptly ending her controversial bid to the $155,000-a-year post, the Herald has learned.

Obama officially rescinded her nomination yesterday, according to a White House document viewed by the Herald. A White House spokesman said last night Scott requested that her nomination be withdrawn “due to personal reasons related to her family.”

Efforts to reach Scott were unsuccessful.

 

That’s a surprise, eh?

(To be fair graf goes here)

To be fair, today’s Boston Globe does have a squib (via the State House News Service) about Scott, although it tells a slightly different story.

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-06 at 2.24.30 PM

 

Huh. Maybe we need Scott herself to come forward as the tiebreaker.

Yeah – that’s coming just like a Riverside train.

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Why We Won’t Be Reading Alan Dershowitz’s ‘Security vs. Civil Liberties’ Boston Globe Series

September 15, 2014

The undoubtable Alan Dershowitz has penned a five-part polemic for the Boston Globe, promoted this way on Page One of yesterday’s edition:

 

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And here’s the first installment in the series, published in yesterday’s Ideas section.

War of principles

How should a democracy decide when to compromise its ideals in pursuit of victory?

part1-dershowitzart-1188

WHEN DEMOCRACIES seek to protect their citizens against new threats posed by terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and Boko Haram, the old rules — designed for conventional warfare among nations — sometimes become anachronistic. New balances must be struck between preserving people’s civil liberties and protecting them against terrorist violence. As Aharon Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel — a nation that has confronted this issue over many decades — once put it: “Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand.”

Barak was right on two scores: The commitment to the rule of law constrains democracies in fighting terrorists who have no concern for international law; yet although we must fight terrorism with one hand behind our back, that does not mean that we cannot use the other hand forcefully, effectively, and legally.

 

So why skip the five-part series?

Start with this gonna-drive-us-nuts graf:

None of these issues is amenable to simple answers. They require nuance and calibration — qualities often lost in the emotional debates engendered by the controversial practices employed against terrorists.

 

Nuance and calibration?

Sounds a lot like “roll your own.”

That’s a one-part series as far as we’re concerned.

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Why Boston Globe ‘Capital’ with an A?

August 8, 2014

It’s been a couple of months since the Boston Globe launched its weekly section Capital, and for the most part it seems pretty fat (12 pages) and happy (exuberant layouts). The only thing even vaguely controversial about the sections is the spelling of its name.

Globe editor Brian McGrory has a running gag with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on WGBH radio about why it’s Capital with an a not an o. McGrory keeps wriggling out of revealing the paper’s reasons, but here are three possible ones from today’s edition.

 

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Would those ads likely have run in the A or B section if there were no Capital? Probably. But you have to believe a section geared toward political junkies is a more appealing environment for all three advertisers. For the first two, it’s obvious. For Steward Health Care, it’s a bit more oblique.

From Bruce Mohl’s CommonWealth piece last month on why Steward “is missing from the group of health care competitors that have banded together to fight the consent agreement negotiated by Partners HealthCare and Attorney General Martha Coakley”:

Some think the company decided to sit this one out because of its close ties to Coakley. The attorney general in 2010 approved the acquisition by Cerberus/Steward of six Caritas Christi hospitals owned by the Boston archdiocese. Coakley also retains some regulatory oversight over Steward, including a say in whether the health care system can shut down any of its hospitals.

Steward executives, led by CEO Ralph de la Torre, gave big to Coakley when she ran for the US Senate in 2010 and ponied up again earlier this year as she mounted her run for governor. Campaign finance records indicate de la Torre and his wife Wing led a group of Steward executives and spouses who made $500 donations to Coakley on February 26. More Steward officials contributed to Coakley in late March.

In all, Steward executives have contributed more than $18,000 to Coakley since late last year. No other health care system has taken such an interest in the gubernatorial campaign, which may help explain why Steward is less interested in the legal fight over the Partners expansion plans.

 

Interesting. But back to the original question: Why Capital with an a? Maybe because that’s what it hauls in.

P.S. Needless to say, none of the above ads ran in the Boston Herald.

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MBTA = Money Being Thrown Away? Again?

November 8, 2013

From our Or You Could Just Set Your Money on Fire desk

DownloadedFileIt’s been a good ten years since there was a serious legal rumpus over the MBTA’s rejection of an ad campaign. But from all preliminary indications, we’ve got a doozie in the works right now.

First, some background. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has a long history of a) banning controversial transit ads (everything from abortion rights to animal cruelty), b) winding up in court, and c) losing. A 2002 Boston Globe piece (via – hide the kids! – Cannabis News) called the roll:

Since 1974, the T has lost three federal suits brought by advertisers: Preterm Inc., an abortion clinic, in 1974; Citizens to End Animal Suffering and Exploitation, in 1992; and the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, in 1994.

 

Add a fourth loss in 2002: Change the Climate sued over the MBTA’s refusal to run the group’s pro-marijuana ads. At which point the MBTA instituted what T spokesman Joe Pesaturo told us were “court-approved guidelines [that] haven’t been challenged.”

Until now.

This latest scuffle has a prologue: Two weeks ago, the T played peek-a-boo with an ad campaign placed by a pro-Palestinian advocacy group, The Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine. From Boston magazine’s Boston Daily blog:

 

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After receiving multiple complaints about large signs depicting a shrinking Palestinian landscape, which were put up around the MBTA system, the T’s advertising partner, Titan, pulled them down.

The ads went up around the transit system on Monday, and were paid for by The Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine, a group that describes itself as “a diverse, community-based group dedicated to organizing activities and educational events that advance the cause of peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis.”

 

But almost as quickly the ads reappeared. An MBTA official said, “The ads are going back up. Their removal was the result of a miscommunication between the MBTA and its contractor, Titan. There was a breakdown in our established procedures for handling complaints about specific ads.”

Now we have the flipside to the Incredible Shrinking Palestine ads: An ad campaign from an “anti-Islamist advocacy group” that the MBTA has refused to accept.

From today’s Boston Globe:

Pro-Israel group sues MBTA over proposed ads

An anti-Islamist advocacy group is suing the MBTA after the transit agency rejected a proposed subway advertisement on the grounds that it was “demeaning or disparaging.”D.C.BusAd

The ad, funded by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a New York-based organization that seeks to combat a purported spread of Islamism in the United States, reads: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel; defeat Jihad.”

MBTA officials rejected the ad Monday on the basis that it violated their advertising guidelines, and today said they would be willing to change their stance if the activist group modifies the ad.

But lawyers for the organization say they have received no overtures from the MBTA, and wouldn’t be willing to change the advertisement anyway.

 

 

(The Boston Herald had nothing in today’s print edition, belatedly slapping an AP story on its website.)

The MBTA’s statement in response to the lawsuit:

The MBTA has reached out to the plaintiff in an attempt to resolve this matter.  The MBTA is asking that the message be modified to meet the requirements of the MBTA’s advertising standards.  The MBTA is not opposed to groups expressing their points-of-view, but it must be done in a respectful manner that recognizes and appreciates the cultural diversity of a public transit environment.

 

And spokesman Pesaturo kindly sent us the “court-approved ad guidelines” as he referred to them. Relevant section:

Advertising Standards

(a)        The MBTA intends that its facilities constitute nonpublic forums that are subject to the viewpoint-neutral restrictions set forth below. Certain forms of paid and unpaid advertising will not be permitted for placement or display on or in MBTA facilities.

(b)       The MBTA shall not display or maintain any advertisement that falls within one or more of the following categories:

(i)         Demeaning or disparaging. The advertisement contains material that demeans or disparages an individual or group of individuals. For purposes of determining whether an advertisement contains such material, the MBTA will determine whether a reasonably prudent person, knowledgeable of the MBTA’s ridership and using prevailing community standards, would believe that the advertisement contains material that ridicules or mocks, is abusive or hostile to, or debases the dignity or stature of, an individual or group of individuals.

 

Of course the thing about “court-approved” is which one? Might not be the court you land in this time.

So, to recap: Is the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority about to get involved in yet another money-pit defense of its pick-and-choose advertising policies? The T says it won’t lose this time.

Time will tell.

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‘David’ Ad in David Daily

October 10, 2013

The Boston Herald has an unusual ad on Page 8 of today’s edition.

 

Picture 4

 

JNS – the Jewish News Service – describes itself this way:

JNS.org is an independent, non-profit, business resource and wire service covering Jewish news and Israel news for Jewish media throughout the English-speaking world.

We provide objective, non-partisan reporting from Jewish communities throughout the U.S., Europe, South America, South Africa, Australia and a wide array of Israel news. We also provide a rich assortment of photos and art, cultural news and features, commentary, and holiday-specific editorial packages around which our subscribers can sell seasonal-themed advertising.

 

But here’s how the Jewish Daily Forward describes it.

Fledgling Jewish News Service Rocks Boat With Strident Pro-Israel Message

Challenges JTA for Slice of Jewish Newspaper Market 

A new, right-leaning Jewish newswire is seeking to displace the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as the Associated Press of the Jewish media.w-jns-062713

Nearly two years after its launch, Jewish News Service is growing fast by promoting its pro-Israel perspective, offering ad-friendly special sections — and by giving it all away cheap.

“Some papers choose to use us versus anybody else because they think we are more respectful of Israel’s challenges,” said Russel Pergament, publisher of JNS. “Other editors prefer us because we’re less expensive. And I’ll take either.”

 

That would be old Boston hand Russel Pergament, one of the founders of the Tab chain of local weeklies. In a 2007 Boston Phoenix profile of Pergament (who had returned here to launch a new publication), Adam Reilly wrote, “Russel Pergament, the indefatigable publisher of BostonNOW, has been described as having ‘the metabolism of a white rat on amphetamines.'”

The Forward piece is long and involved – far too detailed to summarize here, but definitely worth reading. While you’re doing that, the hardreading staff will try to contact Pergament to ask, among other things, if he’ll be advertising in the Boston Globe anytime soon.

 

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Boston Herald: The Official Newsletter of Scott Brown

November 23, 2012

Our feisty local tabloid has been keeping close tabs on ‘Round Town Scotty Brown (R-Indian Given).

Here’s the tally just from today (call it  his Turkey (Day) Trot), starting with a political piece:

Scott Brown intensifies support for Israel

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown drew a clear line in the sand yesterday in support of Israel, an indication of fierce congressional backing for America’s key Middle East ally no matter what the outcome of its tenuous Egypt-brokered cease-fire with the militant Hamas group.

“They have a right to defend themselves, and Hamas needs to stop,” said Brown, who serves on Senate committees on armed services and homeland security. “If we’re going to have any kind of lasting peace, then there needs to be a change of policy with a lot of the groups over there. They cannot think that Israel is going to be wiped off the face of the Earth. Iran needs to step back from that position and so does the rest of the region.”

When he made those comments Brown was at the Pine Street Inn (thus the apron), an appearance that got him into a human interest story, this one headlined “Pine Street misses ailing mayor.”

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and his wife, Gail Huff, said they plan to make volunteering at Pine Street a family tradition.

“We brought our time, we brought a check, and I encourage others to do that,” Brown said. “I’m very thankful for my wife and kids, and I’m thankful I can be here again this year.”

But wait! There’s more!

There’s video!

Just to whet your appetite, a screen grab:

 

 

Enjoy!

 

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