Missing in action (II)

My friend Larz raises a good point, noting that there are at least 54 people running for president, yet only a handful ever get invited to debates or covered by the media.

I'm not naive. Based on poll numbers, fundraising, experience and the conventionality of their views, I'd say there are only six plausible candidates for president: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards among the Democrats, and Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain among the Republicans. (Sorry, Governor, but the Republicans are not going to commit Huckacide.)

But why should we be screening anyone out before a single vote has been cast? What should the standard be? It seems to me that if a candidate is competing in enough states to win the nomination of either major party, then he or she deserves at least some coverage. How much? I don't know.

Then there's the perennial conundrum over what to do in the general election, when independent and minor-party candidates come into play. Again, it seems to me that if a candidate is on the ballot in enough states so that she or he could theoretically win the presidency, then coverage is warranted.

Should such candidates be included in the televised debates? I'd say yes. Maybe for the final debate you could restrict it to candidates who are pulling at least 15 percent in the polls. But I don't see how you can exclude people until they've had a chance to make their case.

Missing in action

I'm not one of those purists who believes all candidates, no matter how marginal, must be included in all media coverage. But it strikes me as pretty lame if you can't find a way to wedge everyone into a chart explaining where they all stand on the issues.

So I was struck by a chart on pages 14 and 15 of today's New York Times that excludes Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel and Republican Duncan Hunter. I can think of no reason why the Times' editors would have left them out other than poll numbers so minuscule that they can't be taken seriously. So let's take a look.

First, the most recent national poll — a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey taken in mid-December — shows, on the Democratic side, Kucinich and Gravel with 1 percent each. That's very low indeed, but not quite as low as the virtual zero scored by Chris Dodd. And, given that the margin of error is plus or minus 5 percent, those numbers are really no different from Bill Richardson's 2 percent or Joe Biden's 3 percent.

On the Republican side, Hunter scores a lowly 2 percent, just below Ron Paul's 3 percent. Again, no real difference — a point that becomes even clearer if you look at Hunter's and Paul's numbers over time, which essentially show each bouncing around 1 percent to 3 percent.

What prompts the Times chart today, of course, are the Iowa caucuses, which will be held on Thursday. So do the Iowa polls show Kucinich, Gravel and Hunter lagging so badly behind everyone else that they uniquely deserve to be left out? Well, sort of, but not really.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll of likely Republican caucus-goers, also conducted in mid-December, Hunter scored just 1 percent, while the next-lowest candidate, John McCain, had 6 percent. (I'm excluding Tom Tancredo, who's left the building.) So there's at least an argument to be made for Hunter's not making the cut. Among likely Democratic caucus-goers, though, no such rationale emerges. Kucinich and Dodd are tied at 1 percent each and, in previous polls, Kucinich did slightly better than Dodd. (Gravel was left off the most recent survey, although his Web site shows that he's still doing campaign events.)

By leaving off Kucinich, Gravel and Hunter, the Times demonstrates a clear bias toward conventional thought. Among the Democrats, Dodd has performed as poorly as anyone, yet he's included — and he has been included in every debate, unlike Kucinich and Gravel. The difference is that Dodd is a mainstream liberal and a senator, well-liked by the media and a proven provider of good quotes.

Kucinich, on the other hand, is a radical congressman with a prickly personality. He's got some interesting ideas, but when does that ever have anything to do with it? Gravel, admittedly, is a loose cannon. But if you're going to start excluding candidates from issues charts, debates and the like, then Dodd, and even Richardson and Biden, are no more serious about winning the nomination than Kucinich or Gravel are at this point.

It's at least somewhat clearer among the Republicans. Paul has raised a ton of money and is the darling of Internet libertarians. Although he's not going to win the nomination or the presidency, he may run as an independent, which would be one of the big political stories of the year. Given that, Hunter really is the least plausible Republican, the longest of longshots. But he's a congressman and he's just one guy. Why leave him out?

The Des Moines Register has an issues chart online as well, and everyone is included. Not that that proves anything — the Times' online issues chart also includes everyone, even candidates who've dropped out. (Locally, the Boston Globe has a similar feature online.)

This was the Times' last chance before the voting begins to tell readers of the print edition — and there may be more than a few Sunday subscribers in Iowa — where all the candidates who are still running stand on a variety of issues. Yes, it's graphically pleasing to make it appear that there are six Republicans and six Democrats running; the column widths are easy on the eye. But it's not true.

Teenage wasteland

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at the sad story of Jamie Lynn Spears — Britney's 16-year-old sister, role model and, as we all now know, pregnant.

How graphic?

The Phoenix's Adam Reilly flags a post on Wonkette, of all places, that includes a gallery of extremely graphic photos taken after the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Wonkette's Megan Carpentier writes:

These are pictures of real violence, and of the horrible things people all over the world will do to one another, and it isn't conveyed by seeing the reaction of another person.

But though Carpentier imagines that the U.S. media won't touch such images, the New York Times today offers a narrated slide show containing many of the same pictures, taken by John Moore of Getty Images. It's not quite as grotesque as Wonkette's raw feed, but believe me, you'll get the idea.

My own instinct is to show everything as long as it's newsworthy. Obviously these pictures are. (I'm refraining from posting one only out of copyright concerns.)

Among other things, seeing the true horror of yesterday's attack provides a context for the polite Pakistani man who called a BBC radio program and told the shocked host that he thought Bhutto's assassination was a good thing, since it would open the way for a new generation of political leaders.

Benazir Bhutto is killed

And the scariest place on earth gets a little scarier.

Corrections and blogging standards

The New York Times' Virginia Heffernan, blogging at The Medium on NYTimes.com, recently wrote that neo-Nazis were portraying Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul as one of them. She didn't check with Paul. Hence the lengthy "Editor's Note" that now precedes the item.

As it turns out, this is interesting fodder for a consideration of blogging ethics. If Heffernan had contacted neo-Nazi groups, gotten their version of events, and then failed to do the same with Paul, well, that would be an obvious journalistic lapse. But that's not what she did. Instead, in classic blogger style, she pointed to accounts elsewhere, particularly in Little Green Footballs, which, as she notes, has a reputation for being "rigidly empiricist."

Which means that I'm not sure how I come down on this. I don't think any blogger believes you should have to verify independently everything you link to as long as you're linking to a reasonably reputable source. On the other hand, there's no question that the New York Times can do a lot more damage to someone's reputation than Little Green Footballs. So perhaps the standard does need to be different.

There's also the matter of how blogs root out stories. This became a subject for discussion at a New England News Forum conference at Southern New Hampshire University recently, as we pondered Talking Points Memo's efforts to determine whether or not Mitt Romney had ever said he would never appoint a Muslim to his Cabinet. (As we now know from the Martin Luther King Jr. story, you would first have to figure out how Romney defines "never," "appoint," "Muslim" and "Cabinet.")

TPM has been doing it open-source-style, putting half-vetted stuff out incrementally and letting the story emerge over time in a very public way. It's a fascinating methodology, and one quite different from the closed-system model used in traditional journalism. But it can be pretty devastating to someone's reputation if it turns out to be untrue — a position taken at the conference by, among others, David Tirrell-Wysocki, an Associated Press executive who's also the executive director of the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications in Manchester, N.H. From the "running notes":

"I'm held accountable," said Tirrell-Wysocki. "But who is holding the blogger accountable? That's the downside as I see it." He said blogs are akin to the conversation at the doughnut shop: "It's what people are talking about."

Essentially that is what LGF is doing, preceding its post on Paul by saying, "Take this one with a grain of salt, please," but then laying out the accusation. Heffernan's post is equally skeptical, as she concludes that "maybe it was only a matter of time before Paul got roasted on his own spit, i.e., the Internet." Now Heffernan is getting roasted on the Internet, too.

What war against Christmas?

Donna Halper exposes the anti-Semitic roots of the campaign to stamp out the non-existent war against Christmas.

Don't you love Comcast?

Sometime within the past few months, C-SPAN2 and ESPN Classic disappeared from our cable package, which is as basic and non-digital as you can get. This morning I took a walk down to our local Comcast office and asked why — and was told two untruths in two minutes:

1. It was the fault of "Senator Markey" that C-SPAN2 was gone. Well, I have no proof to the contrary, but I'd say the idea that Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey was somehow responsible for a regulation that had banished C-SPAN2 from my basic Comcast line-up approached zero.
2. The same guy told me that ESPN had discontinued ESPN Classic. Hmmm ... uh, wait, here are today's listings.

Comcast's Web site continues to say that both stations remain in the basic line-up. In reality, C-SPAN2 is up in the 200s somewhere, and I would need a digital cable box to get it. Fortunately, if I want to watch it, I can do so online.

Cross-ownership and new media

Ten years from now — maybe a little sooner, maybe a little later — we'll receive what we currently refer to as "television" through a thick Internet cable. As with today's Internet, we will theoretically have an infinite number of choices. Rupert Murdoch (and, yes, I am convinced the man is going to live forever) may own nine of the 10 most-viewed video sites. But anyone will be free to start his or her own video operation, whether it's the major metropolitan news site in your region (we may still be calling them "newspapers," but strictly for nostalgia purposes) or the sort of community-minded folks who today volunteer at local-access cable television outlets.

As long as we can preserve net neutrality, such a mediascape is almost certain to come into being. And, at that point, there will no longer be a rationale for regulating the media. For some 80 years now, the FCC has regulated the content and ownership of over-the-air television and radio stations because of a very simple principle of physics: there is only so much broadcast spectrum available, and therefore it makes some sense to make sure that spectrum is used in the public interest.

Since the Reagan years, though, the FCC, with an occasional assist from Congress, has been moving away from its regulatory mission. The Fairness Doctrine and the equal-time provisions no longer exist, and corporations are allowed to own many more properties, both locally and nationally. Most famously, this led to the situation in Minot, N.D., a few years ago, when a train accident led to a deadly outbreak of poisonous gas — and there was no one at the local Clear Channel station to get the word out. (I should note that the story is at least partly apocryphal.)

Last week FCC chairman Kevin Martin led an effort to loosen ownership rules still further, allowing one company to own both a newspaper and a television station in the same city, an arrangement known in the trade as "cross-ownership." The reaction to this has been remarkably low-key. Maybe it's because Martin's proposal is cautious and complicated: it would only apply to the 20 largest cities in the country, and it would pertain only to one of the smaller TV stations in a given market. Maybe it's because he simultaneously proposed new limits on cable companies. Or maybe it's because the news business is in such a diminished state that critics are accepting of, or at least apathetic toward, what they once would have railed against. I might fall into this category; and I find myself half-agreeing with Martin that allowing television and newspaper operations to combine might result in more and better journalism.

To be sure, some are vehemently opposed to this. Media-reform advocate Robert McChesney's group, Free Press, is unleashing a campaign to overturn the loosening of the cross-ownership ban. A group of journalism-school deans, represented locally by Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times arguing that "we do not believe that the market can be absolutely trusted to provide the local news gathering that the American system needs to function at its best."

New-media cheerleader Jeff Jarvis wrote a post for his Buzz Machine blog claiming that the j-school folks just don't get it. Now, I agree with Jarvis in part. I don't like either Martin's or the deans' suggestion that the news content of broadcast operations should somehow be monitored and regulated. I do not lament the demise of the Fairness Doctrine or of equal time, and would prefer that the FCC limit itself to breaking up monopoly ownership. By ensuring local, diverse ownership, you don't need to regulate content.

But Jarvis bases his argument on the belief that local television news is essentially worthless, which simply isn't true. Yes, it could be infinitely better. But, certainly on breaking news, local newscasts keep newspapers on their toes. Let a media company that already owns a newspaper in a given city to add a TV station to its holdings, and you might have better, deeper journalism in both the paper and on television. Or you might just get more cost-cutting.

Overall, Jarvis' tone suggests that because technology is breaking up the mediascape as we know it anyway, then we should let creative destruction take its course. Well, maybe. But economists like to talk about a "soft landing," a way of managing a recession so that it causes as little human damage as possible. A soft landing for the news business as we know it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

As I pointed out in a response to Jarvis' post, FCC regulation was directly responsible for the golden age of television news in Boston. In the early 1970s, the FCC stripped the Boston Herald Traveler of its licenses for Channel 5 and a radio station. That allowed a community group to purchase Channel 5 and transform it into WCVB-TV, the most highly regarded local television news operation in the country during the 1970s and '80s. Unfortunately, the investors eventually cashed in, and today Channel 5 is not much different from other corporate-owned stations. But that's hardly an argument for deregulation. If anything, it's an argument for requiring local ownership.

There's no question that the FCC's few remaining rules governing ownership seem increasingly archaic. Consider what the New York Times Co. has been able to do around here. In addition to the Boston Globe, it owns the Worcester Telegram & Gazette; nearly 14 percent of New England Sports Network; and 49 percent of Metro Boston. It also has a content-sharing arrangement with New England Cable News. (I'm only talking about media holdings. Let's not forget that the Times Co. owns 17 percent of the Red Sox.) Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell, who has long lusted after a radio station, must wonder why it's OK for the Times Co. to amass that much concentrated power in Eastern Massachusetts while FCC rules prevent him from making a move that would be important to his survival but that would be relatively trivial within the overall scheme of things.

Let me bring this up to date. We live in an era when some of the best news video appears on newspaper Web sites — when WashingtonPost.com, for instance, can win an Emmy. At some point very soon, the platform is going to become irrelevant. But that time hasn't come yet, which is why I'm skeptical of what Martin is trying to do by loosening the cross-ownership ban. Let's not get too far ahead of the technology.

News for sale

Here's something from a story in today's New York Times about a new advertising campaign for Ritz crackers that would have stirred outrage 10 years ago but that, today, sadly, seems like business as usual:

The "Ritz. Open for Fun" campaign may fly, or it may thud, but one thing is certain: It will be hard to miss. Starting at dusk on Monday, light projections scattered across Manhattan will show Ritz crackers merrily bouncing in and out of a box. Anyone at home watching "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" on ABC will see local newscasters asking celebrants to describe their idea of fun — with a Ritz logo on the screen.

And, of course, there will be commercials.

Sounds to me like the commercials will be redundant.

The multimedia journalist

I've set up class blogs for the two courses I'm teaching this spring — Reinventing the News: The Journalism of the Web and Journalism Ethics and Issues. I expect I'll be putting a lot of energy into those sites over the next few months. If you're interested in what we're talking about, I hope you'll bookmark them or add them to your RSS reader.

I've already posted to Reinventing the News, using two examples from today's Boston Globe to show that print journalists are now routinely stretching themselves with video and audio. Reinventing the News will also feature student blogs once the semester begins.

Bernstein bites back

Defenders of Mitt Romney are very excited about a story by the Politico's Mike Allen reporting that two women actually saw the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Michigan Gov. George Romney marching together in Grosse Pointe in 1963. As well they should be. "I remember it vividly," says one alleged eyewitness. "I was only 15 or 20 feet from where both of them were."

But memories play tricks. And David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix, who broke this story on Wednesday, says contemporaneous news coverage makes it clear that while Romney was marching on behalf of King's agenda in Grosse Pointe, King himself was hundreds of miles away, speaking at an AFL-CIO gathering at Rutgers University.

Bernstein is withering in his contempt for the Romney campaign's dumping this stuff on the Politico, writing, "Those facts are indisputable, and quite frankly, the campaign must have known the women's story would eventually be debunked — few people's every daily movement has been as closely tracked and documented as King's."

This is not a small mistake for the Mittster. As Bernstein noted in his original story, Mitt Romney had claimed not just that his father and King had marched together, but that he had personally observed it. And in a devastating piece in the Boston Globe on Friday, Michael Levenson noted that Mitt had on at least one occasion gone quite a bit further, telling the Boston Herald in 1978, "My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit."

Nor is Washington Post columnist David Broder likely to say anything helpful to Romney. Broder co-authored a George Romney biography in the '60s in which he reported the claim that the elder Romney and King had marched together. But here's what the Post had to say earlier today:

The Romney campaign initially cited a 1967 book co-authored by Washington Post staff writer David S. Broder, which stated that Romney "marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit." But the book did not provide a source for the event, and Broder told The Post that he cannot remember where he heard the information.

What an astonishing muddle the Republican presidential campaign is now in.

Into your mind it will creep

Regardless of what may or may not be going on at WRKO Radio (AM 680) with Todd Feinburg, I am sure the is-he/isn't-he act is not aimed at making Jessica Heslam and Brian Maloney look bad. Which is what Brian seems to think.

Fuzzy math over fuzzy dice

Jason Schwartz, blogging for Boston magazine, reports that Gov. Deval Patrick is relying on casino revenue numbers so wildly optimistic that even noted casino cheerleader Clyde Barrow of UMass Dartmouth doesn't buy them.

Don't you hate it when this happens?

Having let my spam folder build up to more than 2,500 messages, I decided to delete them all without looking at them. Gmail has gotten much better at handling spam, so I thought I was safe. Naturally, as everything was in the process of disappearing, I saw a message from someone that was clearly personal and valid. Too late.

If you've e-mailed me during the past few weeks and I haven't responded, my apologies. And please try again.

Explaining Dapper O'Neil

The Phoenix's Peter Kadzis says farewell to former Boston city councilor Dapper O'Neil, who died earlier today.

Kadzis, who understands Boston's neighborhood politics as well as anyone, manages the difficult task of explaining Dapper's unique appeal while refraining from paying him tribute, writing that O'Neil "began his career as a political joke, and he ended it as a municipal embarrassment. But along the way, he won the affections of legions of blue-collar Bostonians by tirelessly defending their interests."

Unlike, say, the late Jimmy Kelly, O'Neil did not grow in office. His nasty exterior masked a nasty interior. But I'm sure he was loyal to his friends and nice to his neighbors, and they're entitled to miss him. No doubt Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, who wrote a column about the ailing Tom Finneran today that was hateful even by Carr's standards, is penning a tribute to the Dap even as we speak.

George Romney's phantom march

Did George Romney ever march with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.? Romney's son Mitt has said he did, most recently in what struck me as a pretty effective appearance on "Meet the Press" this past Sunday. But now David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix reports there's no evidence.

Follow-up: The Romney campaign appears to be taking the line that George Romney really did march with King, only not in the same city and not on the same day. Huh?

Catching up with the 2008 campaign

Because I no longer make my living by covering media and politics full-time, I've been less engaged in the 2008 presidential campaign than in any I can remember. So when I got a chance to head north on Monday to catch a Rudy Giuliani event, I leapt. My editor at the Guardian, Richard Adams, provided me with a letter in case I needed to produce credentials. And we were off.

My traveling companion was Seth Gitell, an old friend who's covering presidential politics for the New York Sun. Gitell is probably best known for his stint as Boston Mayor Tom Menino's spokesman, but before that he covered politics for the Boston Phoenix. He and I covered the Republican and Democratic national conventions together for the Phoenix in 2000, probably the most fun I've ever had in the news business.

We arrived at Goss International in Durham, N.H., where Giuliani was scheduled to speak, ridiculously early. The only evidence that we'd come to the right place was a lone campaign worker who was planting Giuliani signs in the snow. So we headed over to a coffee house near the University of New Hampshire campus to kill some time.

When we got back, the second-floor function room, next to the company cafeteria, was beginning to fill with reporters. It was a decent-size media crowd — not exactly what you'd call a horde, but respectable, especially given the consensus that Giuliani, despite leading in the national polls for months, was starting to see it slip away.

The media were kept at a distance. Giuliani was scheduled to speak at 12:45 p.m., but he didn't arrive until about 1:15. What appeared to be several hundred Goss employees had filled the room, leading to a quip or two about whether they'd be allowed to extend their lunch break so that Rudy wouldn't be speaking to an empty room. There were also a few jokes among reporters about the irony of covering an event at a company that manufactures printing presses, not exactly a growth industry these days.

Finally, Giuliani walked out onto the stage, wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a red striped tie — no soft tones for the Mayor of America. He made a lame joke about ink from Goss presses rubbing off on his hands, and then — moving back and forth in front of a sign that said "Tested. Ready. Now." — spoke for about five minutes. Giuliani offered some free-market boilerplate about taxes and government regulation and, of course, revisited his favorite theme, "the terrorists' war against us." After that, he took questions from the employees — certainly not from the press — for about a half-hour.

Giuliani cuts an impressive figure on stage. He has a knack for coming off as conversational and informal while still managing to speak in complete sentences. Compared to the perpetually stiff John Kerry or the perpetually tongue-tied George W. Bush, he comes off well indeed. The content of what he said, though, seemed tired even to me — and I was seeing him in person for the first time. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be one of the reporters traveling with Giuliani, like Brian Mooney of the Boston Globe, who wrote a blog item on the event but nothing for the print edition.

Illegal immigration? Give legal immigrants "tamper-proof photo ID" cards. Public education? A school choice plan that would "empower parents" and, in particular, "empower poor parents." Health insurance? "We need a private competitive market with millions of people in it, then costs will come down." Someone even asked him to tell everyone about what 9/11 was like, a pitch so fat that you might have thought the questioner was a plant.

"There's no way I can describe how difficult it was to get through the day," Giuliani began before describing, in some detail, how difficult it was to get through the day.

I don't mean to be quite as dismissive as this sounds. Giuliani is a smart, serious candidate with proven leadership qualities and a whole lot of personal baggage. He's as interesting a story as there is in this campaign. But these town-meeting-style gatherings, safe and innocuous, don't exactly give people what they need to know before walking into the voting booth.

For reporters who were present, the Giuliani story of the day was very different from what the candidate was talking about in front of the Goss employees. From the beginning of the campaign, Giuliani has pursued an odd strategy of hoping to do just well enough to get by in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire while rolling to victory later, in big states like Florida, where voters are presumably more tolerant of a thrice-married moderate Republican. In pursuing this strategy, Giuliani has seemingly ignored the first rule of momentum: A lead in the national polls and in the big states tends to disappear overnight if you get creamed in Iowa and New Hampshire.

On Monday, the press was buzzing over news that Giuliani was cutting back on his advertising in New Hampshire. So a seeming throwaway line at the end of his talk — "I'll be spending some of my Christmas holiday here in New Hampshire" — came across as at least somewhat significant. His New Hampshire campaign chairman, Wayne Semprini, reinforced that message afterwards, telling reporters, "Rudy Giuliani is not pulling out of New Hampshire."

We milled around for a bit afterwards. Seth is a semi-regular on New England Cable News, and he did an interview with NECN's Brad Puffer in which he said, "They [the Giuliani campaign] are still trying to have a foothold in New Hampshire and not abandon it. When you exclusively focus on a national campaign and don't concentrate on Iowa and New Hampshire, then you may not get to have a national campaign." (Seth's piece for the Sun is here.)

David Saltonstall, a Massachusetts native and alumnus of the MetroWest Daily News who's covering Giuliani for the New York Daily News, told me, "The news going into this news cycle is that Rudy's withdrawing his ad dollars from New Hampshire." Saltonstall saw Giuliani's remarks as an attempt to have it both ways: "He's walking kind of a tightrope with voters here, I think."

All of this has precisely nothing to do with whether Giuliani would make a good president. Yet at this stage of the campaign, that's what the media focus on — who's up, who's down, the polls, the fundraising. It's not that the press never does substantive coverage (indeed, the Globe's Mooney did a terrific profile of Giuliani in early November). It's just that, late in the game, when ordinary voters finally start to tune in, the journalistic instinct is to cover the campaign as though it were a sporting event.

So let me indulge. Right now, on the Republican side, it looks as though Mitt Romney and John McCain have put themselves in the best position to win, assuming Mike Huckabee fades the way everyone thinks he will. Unless Giuliani can turn it around, he'll be remembered as the winner of 2007 in an election that won't be held until 2008. At least that's what I wrote for the Guardian. (I gave Fred Thompson some props, too, so I may have been hallucinating at the time.)

Then again, who knows what will happen? It's not as though anyone has actually voted yet.

Giuliani's semi-retreat

My latest for the Guardian is on Rudy Giuliani's semi-retreat in New Hampshire. I had a chance to cover a Giuliani appearance in Durham, N.H., yesterday. I've got more — including pictures — and will try to post something later today or tomorrow.

A bad week for Chris Daly

I have been watching with interest as Boston University journalism professor Christopher Daly gets raked over the coals for criticizing a Washington Post reporter who wrote a story about Barack Obama's ties to Islam without sufficiently observing that those ties are non-existent. So, far, though, I've refrained from writing about it.

And I'm going to remain in the shallow end of the pool, at least for now. I'm heading up to New Hampshire to cover a Giuliani event for the Guardian, and I don't want to make the same mistake that Daly did: committing pixels to screen without giving it quite enough thought.

Still, I am amazed at the amount of vitriol Daly has received, including a scorching note from Post executive editor Leonard Downie taking the legendary Jim Romenesko to task merely for linking to Daly's missive. Today, the dispute makes the New York Times, which is why I'm taking note of this now.

If you're interested, here are a few links that the Times doesn't give you:

• The original Post story, by Perry Bacon Jr.
• A critical column by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell
• A short item I posted in which I endorsed a withering critique of Bacon's story that had been published at CJR.org
• Daly's critique and a follow-up he wrote in response to the attacks he received
• Downie's letter to Romenesko (scroll through letters for other posts, both attacking and defending Daly)
  
• Two very tough anti-Daly posts by journalist Seth Mnookin (here and here)

My quick take: Bacon's story was already under heavy attack before Daly weighed in because of the peculiar manner in which it had been constructed. Supposedly the story was about false rumors being perpetrated by fringe elements of the paranoid right that Obama's Muslim roots are a lot deeper than he's let on, or even that he's some sort of secret agent for Islamist extremists.

Even though Bacon describes Obama as a church-going Christian near the top of his story, the rest of the article wallows in rumorville without quite making it clear that those rumors had been thoroughly debunked months earlier. Unfortunately, given the mainstream media's role in sliming past Democratic presidential candidates, especially Al Gore and John Kerry, liberal bloggers were on full alert and perhaps overreacted to the flaws in Bacon's piece.

As far as I can tell, Daly's principal mistake was to whack Bacon for being 27 years old. If an experienced editor had run Bacon's story through the mill for just another 15 minutes, the result probably would have been a piece that no one could complain about. Reporters deserve no less, regardless of whether they're 27 or 51, an age I (ahem) do not pull out of a hat.

Postscript: Politicians in general spend more time being seen going to church than ministers, especially just before an election. So why would the Associated Press assert that Obama's decision to go to church yesterday was "a rejoinder to the e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the United States"? Obama attended a Congregationalist church. He is a Congregationalist. Hello?

We ain't gonna play Sun City

Somewhere in my record collection is an album called "Sun City," a project put together in 1985 by Steve Van Zandt, Miles Davis, "News Dissector" Danny Schechter and others to protest the apartheid regime in South Africa. Please click on the clip below — if you haven't seen it before, you'll be amazed. It might be the greatest music video ever made. It's certainly the most socially conscious.

Sun City was a resort casino aimed at luring a wealthy white clientele. The idea was that money from high rollers would be used to prop up a crumbling, corrupt system that had exploited and oppressed the black population, whose most visible symbol, Nelson Mandela, had been imprisoned for many years. Eventually, of course, the regime fell, but not until incalculable damage had been done.

Who would be willing to profit from such evil? Sol Kerzner, for one. In today's Boston Globe, Sean Murphy reports that Kerzner was the developer of Sun City, earning him accolades from Frank Sinatra as "the world's best saloon keeper." It's not a secret. I had known about Kerzner's South African ties. But I hadn't made the connection to Sun City.

The main theme of Murphy's story is not Sun City, but the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. It seems that Kerzner and Len Wolman, the principal investors in Mohegan Sun, found a loophole in a federal law that has allowed them to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars while the Indian tribe that nominally controls the casino receives relative pennies.

Getting rich by exploiting an oppressed native people? Well, that's really old hat to Kerzner.

Kerzner and Wolman, as you may have heard, are also the lead investors in the proposed Middleborough casino. And Kerzner, as Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan remind us in today's Cape Cod Times, "was charged in 1986 with bribing a South African official in exchange for exclusive gaming rights. The charge was dropped in 1997, but it has followed him each time he has bid on a casino license."

The Middleborough deal was negotiated on behalf of the investors by Glenn Marshall, who chaired the tribal council of the Mashpee Wampanoags until he was forced to resign in August after his lies about his military service and a past rape conviction were brought to light. Tribal members tell the Globe that the details of the Middleborough deal remain a secret to them to this day.

And so it goes. This is what you get when you try to make common cause with casino gambling. This is what the Middleborough selectmen fail to understand. This is what Gov. Deval Patrick thinks he can avoid through extensive governmental regulation.

What legislators need to understand is that the best way to avoid such sleaze is not to head down this road in the first place. We ain't gonna play Sun City.

Casino opponents are winning

When Middleborough's town meeting approved the selectmen's deal with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe last summer, there was an ominous context: Town officials were telling voters that the tribe would build a casino either with a deal or without one, and the town might as well get the best package it could.

That, indeed, is the most logical explanation for the fact that town meeting approved the deal, and then turned around and overwhelmingly voted "no" on an advisory question asking whether a casino should even be built in Middleborough.

Now Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan are reporting in the Cape Cod Times that the tribe continues to insist it has a right to build a casino in Massachusetts regardless of state law. As Vosk and Brennan note, it's a position that state officials reject. Ultimately, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs will decide.

The Casino Facts blog goes into this in more depth. But the bottom line is that casino opponents should keep fighting. As Matt Viser writes in today's Boston Globe, Gov. Deval Patrick is making little headway with a key legislative committee in his bid to saddle us with three casinos.

Opponents are winning. This is going nowhere. Even if the feds rule that the Mashpee can build a casino in defiance of state law, I would think opponents could keep it tied up in the courts for years to come. No one should feel intimidated by the alleged inevitability of casino gambling.

My last disclosure: Enough, already. Last month I was the guest speaker at a fundraising event in Middleborough sponsored by CasinoFacts.org. Middleborough is my hometown. My opposition to casino gambling is not a secret. I have neither taken money from nor donated money to anyone associated with this issue. From this point on, I'm traveling disclosure-free.

Talking casino gambling

I'll be a guest on WRKO Radio (AM 680) on Saturday from 8:30 to 9 a.m. Host Christy Mihos and I will be kicking around casino gambling, which we both think is a lousy idea.

The return of Media Log

If today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish wrap, what's a five-year-old blog post worth? Not much, I'd say. Nevertheless, I've been able to rescue the archives of Media Log, the blog I wrote for the Boston Phoenix from 2002 to '05, which had disappeared one or two redesigns ago. As I'm sure you know, the current author of the blog — now called Don't Quote Me — is Phoenix media columnist Adam Reilly. If you're not checking in on Adam every day, you should be.

Today's media scandal

How was it that the names of players who were not in the Mitchell Report wound up being identified as steroid users earlier in the day? As Dan Shaughnessy writes in the Boston Globe, "Some of the names were pretty interesting. Where do those players go to reclaim their reputations?"

By many accounts, the false positives originated with WNBC in New York, which posted a correction late in the afternoon, after George Mitchell had finally released his report. But was WNBC alone, with others merely following the station's lead? Or were there others who also broke this toxic non-story?

Howard Owens on community nudity

Howard Owens, GateHouse Media's chief online guy, has weighed in on the Somerville Journal's video/photo coverage of the Naked Quad Run at Tufts. An excerpt:

This is no time for community journalism to be squeamish — and keep in mind, we're talking about a video that shows, essentially, nothing. What it does capture is the spirit of the moment. What it does record for posterity is a real event, in a real community, that is seemingly important to a lot of people in that community.

Isn't that an essential part of journalism's role, even if offends some people's sensibilities, even some of the participants (read the comments on the story)?

Should journalists really be in the role of hiding the truth of what really goes on in a community? I feel like that is what Dan Kennedy is suggesting.

You should read the whole thing. Increasingly, local newspaper editors are going to be dealing with issues like this. And I'm certainly not in favor of "hiding the truth of what really goes on in a community." Text-only coverage wouldn't have been as entertaining, but it would have gotten the essential truth out.

By the way, Owens goes slightly astray in referring to the Boston Herald's Jay Fitzgerald as a blogger, and then criticizing him for not linking to the Journal's coverage. Fitzgerald wrote his story for the print edition and would have had nothing to do with whether any links were added for the Web.

Owens also slams a Facebook group formed to protest the Journal's actions, writing, "Think about it — [a] group of students throw privacy concerns to the wind by running around naked in public (even posting pictures to Flickr), and then get upset when that event is covered by a media outlet. How ironic."

In fact, the Facebook group he links to appears to be a parody. Check out the video.

Friday morning update: Jay responds to Howard: "I didn't mind the Journal's coverage. I also like what WickedLocal is doing on the web in general, though I could do without the hair-trigger self-righteousness at the slightest whiff of controversy."

Speedy recovery, Mr. Speaker

Best wishes to Tom Finneran, who'll be off the air for a few weeks while he prepares to undergo and recover from surgery for prostate cancer.

(Rotten) apples and oranges

Shouldn't we make a moral distinction between Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, who've been accused of taking steroids in order to throw harder and hit the ball farther, and Andy Pettitte and Mo Vaughn, who alleged took human growth hormone so they'd be able to bounce back from injuries more quickly? It seems to me that the former compromised the integrity of the game, whereas the latter was merely dangerous and stupid.

Here's a PDF of the Mitchell report. Search for Pettitte's and Vaughn's names and you'll see what I mean.

Roger Clemens

Only one thing surprises me about the news that Roger Clemens looms so large in George Mitchell's report on steroids. I had been under the impression that a pitcher couldn't use steroids for very long without breaking down. On that basis, I had been willing to give him a pass. But I guess I was wrong.

OK, back to work.

Just because you can ...

Universal Hub has the lowdown on the Somerville Journal's decision to post photos and a video of the Naked Quad Run at Tufts University. The Journal is getting slammed with comments, some of them funny, some of them questioning the Journal's ethics.

Now, don't get excited — you won't find any full frontal nudity, as they used to say on "Monty Python." And allow me to lower the excitement level a little more by picking up on the ethical theme.

The Journal is part of GateHouse Media, which has unveiled an aggressive online initiative called Wicked Local. GateHouse's online guru, Howard Owens, is a huge proponent of video. I hope he weighs in on the Tufts shenanigans.

Greg Reibman, editor of the GateHouse territory that includes the Journal, tells Jay Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald: "For students to be shocked that newspapers would show up and take photos, I don't see how they can be so naive in this day and age."

My reaction? Neither the video nor the photos are offensive. I don't think anyone is recognizable except for the guy who's wrapped himself in the Israeli flag. You can also find slightly more revealing photos of the event at Flickr. (No, I'm not going to help you, but it's not difficult.)

Still, posting pictures of drunken students running around in their birthday suits is not the sort of thing a community newspaper ought to be doing. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

This isn't a big deal, but it does illustrate how technology is changing not just the content of journalism but the ethical decision-making that goes into it.

Crowdsourcing Severin

In today's Boston Herald, Jay Severin writes: "Just this week the august Columbia School of Journalism presented a panel on public speech. A Harvard law professor listed various types of speech that must be made illegal."

I'd like to track this down. I've searched Google and Google News and tried a couple of things on LexisNexis — nothing so far. Does anyone know what Severin is talking about?

Case closed: Media Nation's readers come through again. Carl noted that there was a panel discussion at Columbia recently featuring the notorious anti-speech activist Catharine MacKinnon. I'd seen the same thing, but she's not at Harvard. Except that she is: Steve discovered that MacKinnon is the Roscoe Pound Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Latter-day Willie Hortons

In my latest for the Guardian, I consider how Mike Huckabee's and Mitt Romney's reactions to their own latter-day Willie Hortons illuminate their character.

Northeastern's mystery building

Not to engage in any special pleading on Northeastern University's behalf. But I keep looking at this photo of a building used to illustrate a blog post claiming that NU has one of "The 20 Ugliest College Campuses in the USA," and I'm convinced that it's not at Northeastern.

I could be wrong. I'm not the most visually oriented person in the world. But I think I'm right, and commenters on Digg agree with me. If this is the best evidence they've got, can Northeastern truly be said to be ugly?

Mystery solved: Jim Chiavelli, editor-in-chief of the Northeastern Voice, tells me that it's a building on the Dedham campus. My point exactly.

Heavy grading, light blogging

I'm up to my neck in end-of-semester grading, and I'm coming down with a cold. So don't look for much fresh content this week.

I do want to call your attention to a conference held at Southern New Hampshire University last week on blogging the New Hampshire primary. We ended up talking about everything but that, but that's OK. The New England News Forum, which sponsored the discussion, has an account here. Christine Stuart of CT News Junkie writes it up here.

Also, Robert Weisman of the Boston Globe reports that Google's Street View will arrive in Boston today at 10 a.m. I'm figuring there's a pretty good chance I'll be captured coming out of the Northeastern Au Bon Pain with a medium regular.

No comeback for Marshall

Peter Kenney of Cape Cod Today and Stephanie Vosk of the Cape Cod Times cover the election to fill two seats on the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council. No word of disgraced former chairman Glenn Marshall seeking write-in votes, as Kenney had predicted on Saturday — though he does say that Marshall was seen "cheerfully chatting" with his successor, Shawn Hendricks, and others.

But both Kenney and Vosk report that Brailyn "Bright Star" Frye — the tribe's "Pow-Wow Princess" — was barred from voting even though she is the daughter of a council member and is so involved in tribal activities that she often appears at events in traditional Mashpee garb. Apparently Frye's status as a voting-eligible member was questioned, although there is no information about the reason yet. Several other members of her family were barred from voting as well.

Vosk: "Multiple sources witnessed Frye's mother, Cheryl Frye in a verbal spat with tribal council Chairman Shawn Hendricks outside tribal council headquarters yesterday. This is the tribe's second election since former tribal council Chairman Glenn Marshall was forced to resign after his rape conviction and military lies were exposed. In both elections, tribe members have raised concerns about people who should be on the tribal rolls not being allowed to vote."

Kenney: "She [Bright Star Frye] apparently fell victim to the mysterious virus that has taken hold of the tribal rolls. This once unknown ailment attacks the central record system of the tribe, rendering it uncertain whether life-long members will be recognized and allowed to vote. Those who oppose tribal leadership appear more likely to fall victim than those who remain silent."

Crossing the infomercial divide

I watched in slack-jawed amazement last night as WBZ-TV (Channel 4) took up 1:58 of its newscast for this Song of Itself — a gushing tribute to a CBS-branded sports bar to be built at Gillette Stadium. (CBS, of course, is WBZ's corporate owner.) Yes, WBZ disclosed. Then it oozed. The piece was a truly odious use of airtime.

You know that little plug the Boston Globe gave to a Red Sox DVD that its corporate cousin NESN produced and that I poked fun at? I take it back. Not a problem. Not when a network-affiliate newscast broadcasts a two-minute commercial for a bar that its parent company is opening. I'd rather drink alone.

Glenn Marshall, comeback kid?

The Great Gadfly, Peter Kenney, writes that Glenn Marshall — the public face behind the proposed Middleborough casino — may be trying to make a comeback.

Marshall, the former chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council, was forced to resign last August after Kenney broke the news that Marshall had a hidden rape conviction in his past and had lied about his military record. Marshall is now under investigation for his management of the tribe's assets.

Despite all that, Kenney hears that Marshall is trying to gather support as a write-in candidate for one of two open seats on the tribal council. The election will be held tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Matt Viser reports in the Boston Globe that well-organized casino opponents are outflanking Gov. Deval Patrick, taking advantage of the "tepid effort" he has made thus far to advance his three-casino proposal.

Gee, do you think Patrick now realizes his plan is a loser, and he's hoping it will just fade away?

My standard disclosure.

An inside pitch

"Looking for the perfect gift this holiday season for the baseball fan in your life? Look no further than NESN's DVD that chronicles the championship journey of the Red Sox." — Nancy Marrapese-Burrell, writing in today's Boston Globe. The Globe, of course, is owned by the New York Times Co., which also owns 13.6 percent (if I've done by math right) of NESN.

If the phone don't ring ...

It's beginning to dawn on the Middleborough selectmen that there will be no casino coming to town. Alice Elwell reports in the Brockton Enterprise that officials just can't understand why they're not hearing anything from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which, as recently as this past summer, was very hot to build the world's largest casino in Middleborough.

Of course, that was all a tribal-leadership meltdown and a federal (and state) investigation ago. It seems like such a long time.

The anti-casino group Casinofacts.org has a take on what's going on here. And the inimitable Gladys Kravitz comments on Gov. Deval Patrick's claim that anti-casino arguments are nothing but mindless emotionalism.

My standard disclosure of mindless emotionalism.

Brooks captures Romney perfectly

The most astute commentary I've seen on Mitt Romney's religion speech is David Brooks' column in today's New York Times. Brooks starts out on a positive note, writing, "It is not always easy to blend an argument for religious liberty with an argument for religious assertiveness, but Romney did it well." But then Brooks brings down the hammer:

When this country was founded, James Madison envisioned a noisy public square with different religious denominations arguing, competing and balancing each other's passions. But now the landscape of religious life has changed. Now its most prominent feature is the supposed war between the faithful and the faithless. Mitt Romney didn't start this war, but speeches like his both exploit and solidify this divide in people's minds. The supposed war between the faithful and the faithless has exacted casualties.

The first casualty is the national community. Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious.

That's exactly right. Indeed, on "Imus in the Morning," CBS News analyst Jeff Greenfield noted that even President Bush has taken pains not to kiss off non-believers the way Romney did yesterday.

The normally astute Peter Canellos writes in the Boston Globe today that Romney's speech was aimed "at all the people of the United States. With its breadth of spirit, it was the most presidential moment of the 2008 campaign."

I have to disagree. It was a good speech, but hardly a great one. And it was deliberately divisive, aimed not at the American people as a whole but at those evangelical Christians who are thinking of voting for Mike Huckabee.

A smart move if it happens

The Boston Herald reports that beleaguered relief pitcher Eric Gagné may accept arbitration and give it another shot with the Red Sox next year. Good. Yes, he became the human surrender flag. But he's one of the great relievers in baseball history, and he was pitching well before coming to the Sox in mid-season. He may have been hurt. He may heal over the winter. Why dump the guy when he might prove to be valuable?

Saturday update: Gagné's gone, according to the Globe. Too bad.

Taking Romney on faith

A few quick observations on Mitt Romney's just-concluded speech on religious freedom:

1. The atmospherics. It was well-written and well-delivered. No surprise. But it's interesting to ponder how much more compelling Romney seems giving a speech than he does participating in debates with 57 other candidates, a format that somehow diminishes him. The same could be said of Barack Obama.

2. Hypocrisy watch. Romney argues for the right of Mormons to be full partners in the political process, but he has no problem throwing non-believers over the side of the boat:

And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion — rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith.

Govenor, I'm not an atheist, and I don't mind seeing crèches on public property. But, on a more substantive level, freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.

Of course, we're also still awaiting word on whether Romney actually said he would not name a Muslim to his Cabinet if he's elected president.

3. Will it work? Romney's speech has been endlessly compared to John Kennedy's 1960 address to Protestant ministers in Houston. Kennedy, though, had a far easier task — persuading the public that a Catholic politician could embrace the separation of church and state.

Romney's goal was to persuade the evangelical Christians who vote disproportionately in Republican primaries that a Mormon is enough like them that they should support him rather than waste their vote on a longshot candidate like Mike Huckabee. The problem is that many of these people will not vote for a candidate who isn't a Christian. And — sorry, Governor — Mormonism differs sufficiently from the central tenets of Christianity that you could make a very respectable case that Mormons are not Christians.

Romney's been running away from Massachusetts ever since he decided he wanted to be president. He may be about to learn that Blue America, where we truly don't care what your religious beliefs are (as long as they don't run up against point #4), is far more hospitable to a Mormon than are the red-state Christians with whom he is trying to make common cause.

4. The real issue. Romney said repeatedly that there should be no religious prerequisite for public office. Indeed, the Constitution says that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." But all that means is that Congress can't pass a law banning a member of a particular religion from running for office.

In fact, there is a perfectly legitimate religious test, and the voters will apply that test. I'll summarize it as follows: Are a candidate's religious views compatible with the office of president as defined by the Constitution?

Personally, I can think of a few examples where that would not be the case.

We know, for instance, that there are some very extreme Christians who favor environmental collapse, or even world war, because they think such a calamity would bring on the Apocalypse predicted in the Book of Revelations. A candidate who held such views could not be disqualified by law, but he could certainly be disqualified by the voters on Election Day.

Romney himself took a few moments this morning to bash "radical Islamists." Obviously the embrace of violent jihad would be completely incompatible with running for the presidency.

Finally, in January of this year, The New Republic ran an essay (PDF) arguing that Mormonism's core beliefs — especially as they relate to the United States' special status in the divine plan — are worrisome enough with respect to how a Mormon president might govern that we shouldn't shy away from asking some tough questions.

I'm not sure I agree with that proposition, but I do know this: Romney's speech today was designed to prevent such questions from being asked. The next few weeks will tell us how well it worked.

Online sidebars to the Everett fire

The local media have gone all out in their coverage of the Everett fire. I'm not going to try to evaluate it — from what I've seen, it's all been good. Instead, I want to call your attention to what's taking place just outside your peripheral vision.

Both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have done some interesting work on their Web sites. The Globe has two slide shows, one on the ground, the other from on high. The Herald has a gallery as well, although it's on a page that doesn't allow me to provide a direct link. Click here and scroll down.

I particularly like an interactive map the Globe has posted (above). It takes you through the accident step by step and gives you a much clearer idea of what happened than the static graphic that appears on page one of the print edition. The Globe is also asking readers to send in photos (I don't see any yet) and to share their stories (so far, it looks like people are mainly interested in pointing out that the Globe has mislabeled Route 99 in some of its coverage).

The Herald has posted a couple of videos — a two-minute clip that was shot at the scene of the fire, and an interview with a witness. They're not slick, but they have a compelling raw-video feel to them that you don't get from television newscasts. Unfortunately, the Globe is hampered in experimenting with video because of its content-sharing arrangement with New England Cable News, several of whose stories are posted alongside the Globe's content.

I was somewhat surprised that I couldn't find any amateur content on Flickr. However, I did come across a nearly six-minute video on YouTube, taken at the scene, that was uploaded by someone who goes by "97K." Overall, though, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of citizen journalism coming out of the fire. Adam Gaffin, who does a great job of rounding up such things at Universal Hub, has very little. Adam did lead me to a local blog called the Everett Mirror (link now fixed; thanks, Ron), but so far there's not much there, either. I'm not sure why, but it could be that Everett, as a working-class city, has fewer citizen-media types wielding video cameras than some other communities.

A little more than a year ago, an immense explosion in Danversport, right down the street from Media Nation, resulted in no deaths and little in the way of injuries. This week, another miracle occurred.

Backward reels the mind

From a story by Dave Wedge in today's Boston Herald:

Governor's Councilor Mary-Ellen Manning came down hard on Superior Court Judge Francis Fecteau during a confirmation hearing on his nomination to the appeals court, asking him if he's made any controversial rulings in the past that could come back to haunt the board or Gov. Deval Patrick.

"Are there any cases where you've been publicly criticized for light sentences for criminals?" Manning asked Fecteau during a hearing yesterday, State House News reported. Manning also asked Fecteau if any of his decisions had been overturned by a higher court. He said that 16 of 117 civil and criminal decisions had been overturned.

"Are there any cases where you've been publicly criticized?" This reads like something out of the Onion. Madame Councilor, why haven't you checked the clips? The judge isn't going to do it for you. Neither am I. But surely someone would be willing to give you a hand.

Buenos días, Mitt!

The Boston Globe's hit on Mitt Romney today for continuing to use a landscaping company that hires illegal immigrants is both unfair and fair.

It's unfair because the story suggests that Romney should be held to a ridiculous standard. If you hire a private contractor to work at your home, you don't take steps to make sure the contractor's employees have legal status. Romney says he made it clear to the contractor a year ago that he'd have to clean up his act. And, frankly, that's as far as any homeowner should have to go.

But it's also fair, because Romney has been so flagrantly hypocritical on this issue, taking an interest only after his presidential campaign had begun. There is virtually no evidence out there that, prior to last year, Romney's thought process on illegal immigration ever went much deeper than greeting the folks who mowed his lawn with a cheery "buenos días."

"Not since Gary Hart told reporters to 'follow me around' has a presidential candidate displayed such an amazing degree of arrogance, indifference and abject stupidity," writes the Outraged Liberal today.

Well, I'm not sure I'd go that far, but Mr. O.L.'s entire outraged post is worth reading.

There's no doubt that Romney is going to take a pounding in the days and weeks ahead. It's unfair. But given his nasty rhetoric about illegal immigrants — rhetoric that I'm not even sure he believes — he deserves what's coming to him.

A stupid idea withdrawn

I thought this would take about three days. Instead, it took less than one. Good. And good for Gov. Patrick.

Outsourcing the nasty stuff

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at a new effort by the Democratic National Committee to enlist the public in making videos attacking Republican presidential candidates. But is Democratic chairman Howard Dean going to wind up having to apologize for this? Two words: plausible deniability.

Yes, McPhee is leaving the Herald

Boston magazine's Joe Keohane confirms rumors that crime reporter Michele McPhee is leaving the Boston Herald, and reports that she's taken a full-time job at WTKK Radio (96.9 FM).

Given that McPhee just lost her 10 a.m.-to-noon slot in the Imus shuffle, it would seem like a good bet that she's moving to evenings. Intriguing, given that talk stations generally fill the post-drive-time evening hours with cheap syndicated programming.

Wednesday morning update: The Herald's Jessica Heslam confirms that McPhee will be on WTKK from 7 to 10 p.m. each weekday. We'll see how that works out. As a talk-radio talent, McPhee is still pretty raw. And she's chosen to thumb her nose at Howie Carr's First Rule of Talk Radio: Never, ever give up the newspaper gig, because you just don't know what will happen.

Plugged in, tuned out

I'll be taking part in a panel discussion tomorrow evening on young people and the news. Titled "Plugged In, Tuned Out," the program — sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC) — will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Back Bay Events Center, in the Dorothy Quincy Suite at 180 Berkeley St. in Boston.

Other panelists will be Adam Gaffin, the impresario of Universal Hub; Bianca Vazquez Toness, a reporter for WBUR Radio (90.9 FM); and Dante Ramos (scroll down a bit), deputy editorial-page editor of the Boston Globe. The moderator will be Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix.

The panel is an outgrowth of an article I wrote for MassINC's quarterly magazine, CommonWealth, which you can read here. For more information and to RSVP, click here.

Is McPhee parting ways with the Herald?

On a day when publisher Pat Purcell is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the birth of the modern Boston Herald comes word that one of the paper's more recognizable bylines may soon be departing. The Phoenix's Adam Reilly writes that crime reporter Michele McPhee is rumored to be leaving.

Oddly enough, the McPhee rumors come at exactly the same time that her 10 a.m.-to-noon program on WTKK (96.9 FM) has been displaced by Michael Graham, who was moved out of the morning drive-time slot to make way for the new Imus show. Perhaps McPhee will pop up elsewhere on the station. Stay tuned.

And speaking of Imus, the Herald's Jessica Heslam reports that I-buddy Mike Barnicle will be doing local commentaries during the show on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Gee, the excitement just never ends, does it?

Just say no, Theo

Over at Boston.com, it's running 82 percent to 17 percent against trading Jacoby Ellsbury as part of a package to land Johan Santana. And I didn't even vote.

Yes, by any traditional baseball measure, the Red Sox should be willing to give up kids to get a great pitcher like Santana — even kids who thrived in the World Series spotlight, like Ellsbury and Jon Lester, or who have incredible promise, like Clay Buchholz.

But it shouldn't be all about winning — sometimes it should be about winning a certain way. As a fan, I'm tired of seemingly every star player whose current team has decided it can't afford ending up with either the Red Sox or the Yankees. Major League Baseball is not healthy right now. After the steroid scandal, the second-biggest problem is the economic dominance of Boston and New York.

Of course, I realize that if Santana doesn't wind up with the Sox, the Yankees are likely to land him. Let them do it. It won't be good for the Red Sox, and it won't be good for baseball. But I'd rather see what the kids can do than land yet another proven star and pencil in a guaranteed (barring injury) 18 to 20 wins.

It's supposed to be competition, not annihilation.

Judge Tuttman and the truth

The easy vilification of Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman, the Mitt Romney-appointed judge who freed Daniel Tavares, is looking more problematic by the day. Tavares, who'd been imprisoned for killing his mother, is now suspected of murdering a couple in Washington state.

Earlier this week, the Boston Herald reported that an oversight by Tuttman's office several years ago, when she was an Essex County prosecutor, resulted in a child rapist's being improperly released from prison rather than recommitted in civil court.

But, now, Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett tells Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reporter Noah Schaffer that Tuttman was being "magnanimous" when she took the rap in a 2005 interview with the Daily Item of Lynn. And an anonymous source informs Schaffer that the paperwork had landed on the desk of an assistant court clerk and died there. As a prosecutor, Tuttman would have had no authority over a clerk, who was an employee of the judiciary.

Also, in an editorial, Lawyers Weekly presents a strong argument that the bail hearing leading to Tavares' release was, from the point of view of any judge, absolutely routine, and that if there was any fault to be apportioned, it was a failure on the law-enforcement side to place all relevant facts before Judge Tuttman.

There's also an especially nice description of a Herald column by WTKK (96.9 FM) talk-show host Michael Graham: "a lazy rant ... that was bereft of any sort of research whatsoever," leading up to "a caveman-level conclusion: that Tuttman had been appointed only because Romney wanted to add some 'chicks' to the bench."

Finally, Jonathan Saltzman and Keith O'Brien report in the Boston Globe today that the Bristol County district attorney's office had evidence that Tavares had killed a Fall River woman — Tavares actually led officials to her grave in 2000 — but that Tavares was never charged.

Add this earlier report that the Worcester County DA's office had been lax in tracking down Tavares, and you begin to see that blaming Tuttman for what happened — or, at least, blaming Tuttman solely for what happened — is ridiculous.