Vol. 4, No. 841W
BETRAYAL AND APOLOGY UNDERSCORE GLOBE'S
REAL
ELOQUENCE
Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent
Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON
-- The Boston Globe has a reputation inside and outside
journalism as being a writer's newspaper, allowing its columnists space
and freedom to roam and think and write as pundits, philosophers and
poets. All the Globe asks in return is honesty, and it initiated a
columnists' checking system to assure the integrity of their work.
Last week, the Globe got burned, but even in the ashes of a good
writer's betrayal, the eloquence that the newspaper encourages shone
through. Its published self-analysis of the five days in June should be
required reading for all journalists.
The newspaper on June 23 published an unusual editorial apology.
"A newspaper's worth and its place in society are based on only one
thing -- its integrity," a brief editorial said.
The newspaper's voice spoke of the "failure of one of its own to live
up to standards," and concluded, "this editorial is to express
our
apology to our readers and to renew our commitment to the truth."
Prompting this unusual expression was the story that one of its
Metropolitan columnists, Patricia Smith, confronted by her supervising
editor after an internal review of her writing, admitted she fabricated
persons and quotations in several of her columns during the year. At
one point, the Globe disclosed, Smith fictionalized an entire account
of a woman dying of cancer.
Globe Editor Matt Storin asked for and got
Smith's resignation,
saying,
"There is no middle ground on something like this."
Storin said the newspaper several years ago began monitoring its Metro
columnists -- with the writers' knowledge -- after it received
complaints about the truth of some of the writings. Supervising editors
demanded that columnists provide identifiable information for every
person they wrote of or mentioned in their columns.
The system went through periods of enforcement and laxity, but it was
this kind of cross-checking that eventually turned up suspicions about
Smith.
The 42-year-old Smith, an accomplished and known African-American poet
as well as a columnist, was awarded a prestigious prize this year by
the American Society of Newspaper Editors for her commentary. She also
made the list of finalists in the competition for the Pulitzer Prize
for commentary.
Ironically, her Metropolitan colleague who won the Pulitzer, Eileen
McNamara, was in San Diego being honored as "Columnist of the Year"
by
the National Society of Newspaper Columnists when the news of Smith's
resignation broke.
According to an Associated Press story, McNamara told the gathered
columnists when asked of the Globe's scrutiny, "There is nothing
insulting about being asked to stand up for the integrity of your
work."
Indeed, in a gracious overture, the Globe
published a final column
from
Smith the same day it published the story of her fabrication and her
resignation.
"There are always excuses," Smith wrote in her apologetic last
column.
"Usually they point to the cursed fallibility of human beings, our
tendency to spit in the face of common sense, zigging when the world
says zag."
Pointing to what she said was her "heady mixture of naivete, ambition,
and an almost insane love for the powers of language," Smith said she
pushed herself and lost sight of her priorities. She wanted her pieces
to "jolt," she said, and so she "tweaked them to make sure
they did."
The Globe's ombudsman, Jack Thomas, writing two days later, said
response to the situation was running 3 to 1 in sympathy with Smith and
that one caller said Smith's apology "was so well-written and so
poignant that it ought to be nominated for a Pulitzer."
Thomas cut through the sympathy, however, by recording the betrayal
that Smith's colleagues felt, especially the African-American women of
the Globe's staff.
"For all her skill at writing," Thomas noted, "what Smith
had done was
to take the language she says she loves and twist it into something
grotesque. She had manipulated readers, betrayed colleagues and made a
burlesque of what is the soul of not only journalism, but all writing,
and that is to write the truth."
The Globe's decision to scrutinize its columnists' offerings was
stimulated in large measure by rumors concerning another Metro
columnist, Mike Barnicle. For 25 years Barnicle has been chronicling
life around the neighborhoods of Boston, drawing much of his material
from local establishments populated with characters that some suspected
were figments of Barnicle's imagination.
With Smith's forced resignation as fodder,
flamboyant Harvard professor
and defense attorney Alan Dershowitz charged the Globe with racial,
gender and ethnic duplicity in getting rid of Smith and retaining
Barnicle. Dershowitz and Barnicle clashed almost a decade ago over a
racial slur attributed to Dershowitz that he claims the columnist
fabricated.
While Barnicle, vacationing in Ireland, again denied Dershowitz' claim,
The Globe, in the wake of the Smith incident, initiated a new
investigative review of Barnicle's last three years of columns and
published its support of the writer. Storin wrote, "He has collected
a
good number of critics and enemies over the years. But that does not
justify linking him to the misdeeds of Patricia Smith."
Two days later, writing from Dublin, Barnicle, demonstrating that his
smart-alecky, street-savvy style has a mellow and serious side,
responded to what he labeled as Dershowitz' "contempt."
"Few have been allowed my privilege," Barnicle wrote, "to
record
stories of our time.
"To have people share their grief or their delight with you is a
humbling thing," he wrote. Paying tribute to his mentors at the
newspaper, Barnicle said they "taught me to report the truth, to be
unafraid of controversy, and to avoid writing for the approval of
colleagues or to satisfy 'uptown' encampments."
Using an anecdote from the streets that
police told him readers
would
think he made up, Barnicle concluded, "It is still astounding to me
how
much daily drama happens out of the headlines." When the lives of those
considered "consistently normal" are chronicled, Barnicle said,
their
tales are "thought to be fiction by the isolated or the affluent."
Expressing pride in his work and casting a sideward literary glance at
his former colleague, Barnicle wrote, "I am proud of what I do, yet,
believe me, no paycheck is worth a reputation."
At the time of this writing, Allan R. Andrews was
an executive news editor with
The Stars & Stripes in Washington, D.C. and a prize-winning
columnist. He is a former copy editor and reporter for The Boston
Globe now teaching high school. He can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.net
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