Thoughts on Ted Kennedy's illness

In my latest for the Guardian, I try to explain what it's like for Ted Kennedy to be one of our senators rather than a world and national symbol — and how it feels to be preparing for his passing.

Ted Kennedy has brain cancer

Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson writes that Sen. Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Though the prognosis is uncertain, this is truly bad news both for the Kennedy family and for Massachusetts.

According to Johnson's story, the usual course of treatment is radiation and chemotherapy, with survival ranging from less than a year to five years or more. Obviously it's way too soon to tell whether Kennedy might be able to return to a vigorous and effective Senate career, but it's a real possibility.

Sen. Arlen Specter, for one, has served while battling various forms of cancer, including a brain tumor, since the early 1990s.

Photo (cc) by diggersf and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The amazing Jon Lester

If you were writing the fictional story of Jon Lester's comeback from cancer, you might ponder how you wanted it to end. Do you have him winning the last game of the World Series? Or pitching a no-hitter?

How about both?

Correcting a correction

Can't editors at the New York Times check their own archives before subjecting one of their reporters to the ignominy of a published correction? On May 14, Times sportswriter William Rhoden wrote a column about the New York Knicks that contained the following passage about former coach Isiah Thomas:

No coach in recent Knicks history was treated as harshly as Thomas. From the moment Thomas was named team president to the moment he was forced to coach the team he assembled, Thomas was the object of an intense dislike that, near the end, bordered on hatred. Some old-timers in the news media never forgot his comment about Larry Bird (if Bird were black, he would be regarded as just another player).

But you'll no longer find the passage about Bird in the online version; it's been expunged, as though the Times fears you'll go blind if you read it. There's now a correction at the bottom that says:

The Sports of The Times column on Wednesday, about the harsh environment surrounding the Knicks while Isiah Thomas was the coach, erroneously linked Thomas to a racially charged comment about Larry Bird when both men were top N.B.A. players. It was Dennis Rodman — once a teammate of Thomas's — who famously suggested that Bird would have been regarded as an ordinary player had he been black.

Trouble is, Rhoden got it exactly right. After the Detroit Pistons lost to the Boston Celtics in the 1987 playoffs, both Rodman and Thomas, then the team's star players, made the incisive observation that Bird was, you know, white. Here's how the Times' Ira Berkow described it on June 2, 1987:

In the visiting and losing team's locker room Saturday afternoon in Boston Garden, Isiah Thomas, the Detroit guard, said he didn't want it to sound like sour grapes, and that there was no question that his team got beat, and that they came up short, but he harbored a resentment.

In regard to Bird, he [Thomas] said, ''I think Larry is a very, very good basketball player. An exceptional talent, but I'd have to agree with Rodman. If Bird was black, he'd be just another good guy.''

Dennis Rodman, the teammate to whom Thomas had referred, had said that Bird was ''overrated,'' and that the only reason he had won three straight league most valuable player awards (until this year, that is), ''is because he's white. That's the only reason.''

So, yes, Rodman spoke first. But Thomas agreed with him, and used language that was just as offensive, if you're inclined to be offended. Rhoden was not using quotation marks, so there was no reason for him to capture Thomas' quote word-for-word. But it strikes me that Rhoden's construction comes closer to Thomas than to Rodman. Gee, he must have done his research.

The simple fact is that Rhoden got hung out to dry by editors who apparently couldn't have been bothered to dig out what really happened 21 years ago. Heck, I remember it, which is why I started diving into the archives. Anyone who was following basketball in 1987 remembers Thomas' crass comments — more so than Rodman's, since Thomas was a nationally known celebrity.

Rhoden should demand a retraction.

Zoned out

Recently Miss Media Nation bought a DVD from Amazon UK with her allowance money. She tried to play it on our iMac, and encountered a message that we were in the wrong zone. I switched it for her, but that was hardly an ideal solution for two reasons:

• You can only switch back and forth a few times before the drive locks forever.
• Though she can now watch her British-origin DVD, she can't watch anything else unless I switch it back. See my first complaint.
  

Nor does the DVD play on the unit connected to our television.

As I understand it, this is supposed to be some sort of protection against piracy or trafficking in early-release movies or something. All I know is that my daughter bought a legitimate product, legally, and now she's limited in how she can use it.

There are fixes, but they're more daunting than anything I want to tackle. To say this is abusive treatment on the part of the movie studios is an understatement.

Walking through the fallout

Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan puts the Boston Herald walk-through fiasco in perspective today by pointing out the obvious — that Patriots coach Bill Belichick has forever branded himself as a cheater. Ryan writes:

How could anyone not feel sorry for Bob Kraft?...

His was said to be a model organization, where the owner owned, the personnel people found the right players, and the dour defensive genius coached 'em right up to championships, or close to 'em.

And now?

And now he has to live with the reality that he presides over the most despised and reviled franchise in all of contemporary American sport, and all because the coach he trusted has betrayed him.

In the New York Times, Mark Bowden offers a different sort of perspective, arguing, essentially, that it's not a big deal and that everyone does it.

Bowden compares the Patriots taping scandal to, among other things, Gaylord Perry's spitball. Not to condone what Perry did, but, somehow, I don't buy the comparison. I'm with Ryan on this one.

Ted Kennedy's illness

Sen. Ted Kennedy has fallen ill, and Media Nation extends its best wishes. Meanwhile, there are signs of early media confusion over what's wrong.

The Boston Herald reports that Kennedy experienced "stroke-like symptoms." The Cape Cod Times, whose account of Kennedy's illness is otherwise thorough, makes no mention of the nature of the senator's illness. (Those two links via Universal Hub.)

By contrast, the Boston Globe, relying on an anonymous "official briefed on the situation," tells us that Kennedy suffered a seizure, then a second as he was being transported by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Not that the Herald and the Globe couldn't both be right.

Instant update: The Herald's Casey Ross has more details, and describes Kennedy's "stroke-like symptoms" as "mild." And the AP, among others, is also using the phrase "stroke-like symptoms."

Threatening "the voice of Black Boston"

Interesting story in the Dorchester Reporter on "TOUCH 106.1 FM," a pirate radio station serving the black community that's been targeted for elimination by the FCC. Managing editor Bill Forry writes:

Touch FM (officially LP-WTCH Boston) — which sprang from the bosom of the Grove Hall Neighborhood Development Corporation offices in the fall of 2005 — is unlicensed. They admit it. They're pirates.

And they are unrepentant, even in the face of the most recent broadside from the government: A May 7 forfeiture order from the FCC that levies a $17,000 fine on station founder Charles Clemons. The ruling stems from a pair of site visits made to the suspected TOUCH offices at the corner of Cheney Street and Blue Hill Avenue in 2007. The order accuses Clemons of "willfully and repeatedly" using the frequency without a license and for "failing to permit a station inspection."

This is the Catch-22 of radio. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 destroyed local commercial radio and gave rise to corporate-owned, lowest-common-denominator pap.

Touch FM's 100-watt signal — broadcast from an undisclosed location — puts it between WMJX (106.7 FM) and WROR (105.7 FM), two stations owned by Greater Media, which also employs the likes of right-wingers like Jay Severin and Michael Graham on another of its stations, WTKK (96.9 FM). Who's doing more to serve the local community, TOUCH or Greater Media? Does the question even need to be asked?

Last June I covered a hearing by the FCC on localism in broadcast media. The agency claims to be very concerned about local content. Well, if officials would like to travel to Dorchester, they will find some.

Duxbury's Afghan connection

Here's something you don't see every day. The weekly Duxbury Clipper recently sent columnist Bruce Barrett to Afghanistan to cover the opening of a girls school funded by the Duxbury Rotary Club. Barrett did his reporting in the form of a blog, complete with photos, video, a map of the area, even a real-time weather report from the Afghan capital of Kabul.

An excerpt from Barrett's final dispatch:

Kalashnikovs. In Duxbury, a band of men armed with assault rifles attending the opening of an elementary school would make the national news. But the Zabuli School for Girls isn't in Duxbury. It's in Deh Sabz, Afghanistan, a gritty town of 1,000 families on the outskirts of the capital city Kabul. Out here, standing among men armed to the teeth is calming, not frightening. It means that security is strong. Fear comes when standing among men who have turned their attention toward you, and you can't see their weapons. More unsettling, perhaps, are the moments when you can see their weapons and the barrels are pointed up. That's when they're ready for action.

Not only is the series evidence of some terrific enterprise on the part of Barrett and the Clipper, but the online implementation is state-of-the-art.

Number two with a bullet

McCainiancs nervous over the prospect that their man might pick Mike Huckabee as his running mate needn't worry — Huckabee took himself out of the running earlier today by making a grotesque joke about Barack Obama, guns and assassination. Reuters reports:

Former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, interrupted on Friday by a loud crash as he spoke to the National Rifle Association, joked that the noise was Democratic candidate Barack Obama falling off a chair as he dodged a gun aimed at him.

"That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He was getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him, and he dove for the floor," Huckabee told the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in comments that aired on CNN.

What a sense of humor, eh?

He's sorry, too

I took John Tomase's column to be an apology, but a few people — including Dale Arnold on WEEI Radio (AM 850) — have picked up on the lack of the words "I'm sorry." Tomase has made amends on his blog. (Via Boston Sports Media.)

Deconstructing Tomase's deconstruction

There has been, as some media observers have noted, a question as to why the Boston Herald's apology on Wednesday referred to John Tomase's "sources" when his original story referred only to a "source." Today Tomase puts that to rest. In fact, he had no sources, if by "source" you mean someone who gives you information that you can use in a story.

Look, the Herald has apologized. Editor Kevin Convey has offered a personal mea culpa. And Tomase himself writes, "Turns out I could not have been more wrong. I regret it, and that's something I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life." So there's no need to unload on the guy. He says he's going to keep covering the Patriots. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

Still, there are a few things in Tomase's piece that are worth highlighting and questioning.

1. What stopped Tomase from tracking down a first-hand source? Tomase says he wishes he hadn't relied on anonymous sources for such an important story. But the anonymity isn't as troubling as his admission that he didn't talk with a single source who had direct knowledge of the Patriots' videotaping the Ram's walk-through before the 2002 Super Bowl. This section screams out:

One that I trust said he had been told the walkthrough was taped. A second said he had been told the same thing, but neither had seen a tape.

So Tomase talked with two sources who said they were "told" about the incident. Well, who told them? Wouldn't they have been the keys to the story? He says he was under some competitive pressure from the New York Times, but shouldn't he have kept trying to get an eyewitness account — especially when his sources were suggesting that they had heard such an account?

2. No, Tomase shouldn't violate his promise of confidentiality. A few critics, including me, have suggested that Tomase and the Herald should consider outing Tomase's source if they conclude that the source had deliberately fed him misinformation. Tomase turns that self-righteously on its head, writing:

There has been a clamoring for me to identify the sources used in my story. This I cannot do. When a reporter promises anonymity, he can't break that promise simply because he comes under fire. I gave my word, and the day I break that word is the day sources stop talking to me.

Given Tomase's description of the way the story unfolded, then no, of course he shouldn't reveal his sources, because they weren't trying to set him up. They were passing along rumors that they apparently believed to be true — indeed, as I've already said, they weren't even sources in the proper sense of the word. It was Tomase's decision to type up those rumors before he had finished checking them out.

3. Where were the editors? Convey's "Editor's Note" is solid and unequivocal, but also detail-free. What if any role did he play before Tomase's story was published? What about the sports editor, Hank Hryniewicz? Did they know how thin Tomase's sourcing was? Did they think about hitting the brakes — or did they pour on the gasoline instead? And what steps have they taken to make sure a story this unsourced doesn't make its way into print again?

Significantly, the Patriots saga is still playing out. Matt Walsh is flapping his gums, and Sen. Arlen Specter is flapping his arms. If Tomase is still the Patriots beat writer, how is he going to cover that?

A great journalist once told me, "Access is overrated." I suspect that Tomase is going to be putting that maxim to the test.

Beating the press

I'll be back on "Beat the Press" tomorrow (7 p.m., WGBH-TV, Channel 2). Among other things we'll be talking about you-know-what. Because I'm on the show most of the time, I usually don't bother to take note of it here. But I've occasionally been asked to, so I'll try to remember.

More questions about the Herald

My Northeastern colleague Steve Burgard, director of the School of Journalism, poses a couple of questions in a letter to Romenesko:

1. Why did the Herald's apology offer so few details about what went wrong, forcing us all to wait until John Tomase has his say on Friday?

2. Given the questions that are swirling around this story, why did the Herald let Tomase cover the Arlen Specter angle?

Perhaps we'll find out all tomorrow. Or perhaps not.

No videotaping this walk-through

Can't get enough of the John Tomase story? Oh, I can. I do want to see what he has to say about the whole walk-through mess, but we'll have to wait until Friday for that. Meanwhile, here are a few tidbits while we wait for his version of what happened, whether he got used by a source and what comes next.

— The Boston Globe reports today that the Patriots are unlikely to sue the Boston Herald for libel as Patriots owner Bob Kraft has pronounced himself to be satisfied with the Herald's apology. With U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter demanding further investigation into whether the Patriots have cheated, it's no doubt best for the Krafts not to take action that would require opening themselves up to a bruising discovery process.

— Herald editor Kevin Convey weighs in with an "Editor's Note" in which he adds his personal apology to yesterday's unsigned mea culpa, but goes on to say that he stands behind the sports department in general and Tomase in particular. Convey closes by saying that Tomase will offer his version of events in tomorrow's Herald.

— Herald columnist Tony Massarotti writes a belittling, defensive piece today that, given the timing and the circumstances, is ill-advised. Which is why you should read it. It's highly entertaining in its institutional self-pity. Tony Mazz: "The media is a sordid business." If that's his world view, well, reader beware.

— David Scott writes a long analysis at Boston Sports Media that Patriots junkies might find interesting. (I'm in the camp that believes the condition of Curt Schilling's arm is a more important sports story than, say, the Super Bowl, but that's just me.) Scott's always a good read, but I don't know why he questions the sincerity of the Herald's apology. It seems pretty abject to me.

— Specter's news conference, at which he demanded an "objective" investigation of the Patriots, makes the front page of the New York Times and the sports front of the Washington Post. The Herald's role in this gets a quick brush-off in both stories. Perspective, folks.

— In reading Scott and a few others, I learned that Tomase was briefly celebrated/reviled in June 2005, when he wrote a column for his then-employer, the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, questioning Manny Ramírez's heart. Click here, scroll down, and there it is. Scott also points to this, which suggests that Tomase's criticism of Ramírez was off-base. I'll call a foul on Tomase for the phrase "a contract that could have inspired Coleridge to poeticize albatrosses," but maybe he's gotten better since then.

— A lot of folks have made much of the Herald's admission, in its apology, that the paper "neither possessed nor viewed a tape of the Rams' walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI, nor did we speak to anyone who had." That's bad journalism, needless to say, but it's hardly a revelation.

Tomase's original Feb. 2 story makes it clear that he never "possessed" or "viewed" the tape. As for whether his source had seen the tape, the story is ambiguous. But it should have been perfectly obvious that this story was never properly nailed down.

Tomase to speak

The Herald football writer says:

I just wanted to make one thing clear — I know I screwed up on the Rams taping story and I don't intend to hide behind today's apology or an editor's note. In Friday's Herald I will explain as clearly as I can where that story went wrong and begin the journey of restoring your trust in my reporting.

I'm glad hasn't been thrown under the bus — and I can't wait to see what he's got to say.

NECN appearance

I appeared on New England Cable News earlier today to talk about the presidential race.

Can't we all just get along?

There is something truly weird about reading the vicious, hateful comments (422 at this moment) to the Herald's apology — and, at the bottom of every page, seeing a come-on that says, "Join the BostonHerald.com community." Yes — sign up today and you, too, can post an illiterate attack.

More on the Herald apology

Smart stuff from Adam Reilly of the Phoenix and Paul Flannery of Boston Magazine. Also, Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) interviewed me for a story he's doing.

As I told Keller, one of the big problems the Herald faces is that its sports section is a prime reason that people plunk down 50 cents rather than simply grabbing a Metro.

Today, angry Patriots fans are demanding blood and threatening a boycott. Unlikely to happen, but this is nevertheless a scary moment for Pat Purcell and company.

Rough play

After Peter Lucas, then a columnist for the Boston Herald, erroneously reported in 1983 that Mayor Kevin White would seek a fifth term — "WHITE WILL RUN" was the front-page headline — his unnamed source turned out to be none other than Kevin White.

Lucas offered to resign anyway, but the editors were not about to let him be punished for falling victim to a dirty trick.

This morning it looks as though the Herald is trying to close the books as quickly as possible on its erroneous Feb. 2 report about the Patriots' having videotaped a St. Louis Rams walk-through before the 2002 Super Bowl, running an apology that's teased in huge type across the front and back covers.

In a perverse twist, the Globe runs the covers online, while, at least at the moment, they are not available on the Herald's Web site.

The theme of the day seems to be whether the Herald reporter who wrote the walk-through story, John Tomase, should be fired. That's what they're talking about on WEEI Radio (AM 850).

But Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media remains struck by the specificity of Tomase's story. "The situation isn’t as cut-and-dry as it might appear at a casual glance," Allen writes.

Let's get a grip. It's not like Tomase wrote false, anonymously sourced stories that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But I would like to know more. I keep thinking about what happened to Peter Lucas, and wonder if the reason Tomase got it so wrong was because his source was so good.

If Herald editors have reason to believe that Tomase's source was not acting in good faith, will they out him? Today's apology would seem to preclude that. But, like Paul Flannery of Boston Magazine, I hope we haven't heard the last of this.