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On fire
Was the arson in West Roxbury racially motivated? Depends which paper you read.
by Dan KennedyThe Boston dailies of Monday, September 23, led with an ugly and familiar tale: a story that a house fire in West Roxbury may have been set by an arsonist enraged that its white owners were selling it to a black family. In a city long plagued by racism, the headlines in the Globe (W. ROXBURY FIRE RAISES THE SPECTER OF BIGOTRY) and the Herald (RACIST ATTACK EYED IN HUB ARSON FIRE) were all too believable.
By the next day, though, the papers diverged along sharply different paths.
The Herald's lead story -- beating out even the marriage of gossip-page favorite John F. Kennedy Jr. -- concerned a pledge by Mayor Tom Menino to help the black family find a new home to buy. "These are the things that disgust you as mayor because you try to work to make the city work for all people," Menino said. Inside were sidebars headlined RACIST MOOD PREVAILS and DISCRIMINATION DESCRIBED AS `ALIVE AND WELL.'
The Globe, on the other hand, in an article that barely nudged over the fold on the front page, reported that a black neighbor was convinced racial motives had nothing to do with the fire. "In all the time I have lived here, I have never been the object of anything you could call a racist incident," said Leonard Carr, described as a black man who has lived in West Roxbury for two years. "I don't think -- and nobody else I know on this street thinks -- that this was a racially motivated fire." The Globe's sidebar described West Roxbury as a neighborhood that has grown increasingly tolerant.
It continued that way all week. The Herald interviewed the white couple who wanted to sell their home and the black couple who wanted to buy it, with the white family talking about the "chilly reception" they received from their neighbors when they learned a black family would be moving in. The Globe reported that city officials were backing off their initial theory that race was a motive, and Michael Rezendes weighed in with a think piece Thursday on the uneasy intersection of "race, crime, politics and the media."
The Herald's handling of the story wasn't particularly unusual: the fire was a classic crime story, and the paper went after it in its characteristically gritty fashion. For the Globe, though, moving away from the racial motive was a real departure. Over the course of two decades, the paper has often been accused of exaggerating racial incidents. In particular, former Massachusetts Senate president Bill Bulger and Boston City Council president Jim Kelly, both of South Boston, have accused the Globe of blowing incidents out of proportion whenever there's a hint of race, especially when the victims are black.
The fire raises some interesting questions about the role of news organizations when it comes to reporting what might be called "official news." The first reaction of Menino and Police Commissioner Paul Evans was that the fire was racially motivated. Clearly the papers had an obligation to report that reaction. What's not so clear is what should happen after that.
An instructive recent example is that of Richard Jewell, the security guard hailed as a hero following the Olympic bombing in Atlanta -- and then fingered as a suspect by the FBI. Some media critics, such as New York University's Jay Rosen, have argued that reporters should have questioned the FBI's motives right from the beginning. I disagree, but now that the case against Jewell appears to have fallen apart, the media are obliged to take a hard look at the FBI and to consider, as Rosen has suggested, whether the agency was using the media to put pressure on a suspect against whom they had no evidence.
What's interesting about the coverage of the West Roxbury fire was how the papers followed up on the official news. The Herald never seriously questioned the first-day spin, and its reporters found plenty of compelling information to support that spin. The Globe, by contrast, dug up considerable evidence that there may well have been more to the story than met Menino's and Evans's eyes. I don't fault either approach, although I think each paper could have done a better job of laying out both theories. I also think the Globe's caution was well-considered, given how little it takes to set off a real racial incident in this still-divided city.
Brudnoy, er, speaks
The Boston Herald's September 27 interview with WBZ Radio talk-show host David Brudnoy, complete with some 300 words' worth of excerpts from his forthcoming book, Life Is Not a Rehearsal, may sink a deal Brudnoy's publisher has with Boston magazine to run a 5000-word excerpt next month. The book is a brutally honest tell-all about Brudnoy's past drug abuse, his coming to terms with his homosexuality, and his near death and dramatic recovery from AIDS."Put us down for reconsidering this deal," says Boston executive editor John Strahanich. "You don't want to buy something when everybody else gets it for free -- and it comes out before you." He adds that he expects the magazine will make a final decision in about a week.
Doubleday, which is planning to put the book on sale December 30, accuses the Herald of breaking an embargo by running excerpts in advance of the publication date. "The Herald did not follow the typical procedure that we would expect them to follow," says Suzanne Herz, the publisher's director of publicity.
But there have clearly been some crossed signals here. The only warning that's printed on the book's galleys, sent to several Boston reporters last week, was: "This is an uncorrected proof. Any quotes for reviews must be checked against the unfinished book." And it's pretty obvious that Brudnoy, who spoke voluminously to the Herald's Dean Johnson, had no idea that any rules were being broken. "We basically have to tell David to cease and desist," admits Doubleday publicist Tammy Blake.
Johnson, for his part, says he would have omitted the excerpts if he'd known there would be a problem. He says he called Brudnoy shortly after receiving the galleys, "and David's comment to me was that if Doubleday sent you that, then they must want you to use it." Johnson concedes that he never contacted Doubleday.
Brudnoy declined to comment.
Another domino falls
What is the largest independently owned daily newspaper in New England?If you answered the Boston Herald, maybe you should contact the booking agents for Jeopardy. Because after last week's $1.5 billion purchase of the Providence Journal Company by the A.H. Belo Corporation, parent company of the Dallas Morning News, Pat Purcell's tabloid -- itself owned for many years by Purcell's mentor, Rupert Murdoch, and before that by Hearst -- is the biggest regional paper not owned by out-of-state interests. (The biggest of them all -- the Boston Globe -- was sold to the New York Times Company in 1993.)
What's more, news reports made it clear that Belo is more interested in the Journal Company's nine television stations than in its flagship Providence Journal, leaving the paper's staffers -- beleaguered by several years of downsizing -- wondering just what the future will hold.
A satisfied reader
With ultraconservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh talking up Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby's 80 reasons to vote against Bill Clinton, can a Globe ad featuring the Rotund One be far behind?
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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www1.shore.net/~dkennedy/