The Daily Grasshopper

OK, folks - The Daily Grasshopper is back. Sorry for the interruption. Old posts are available online at http://www.patrickkeaney.org. On to the news...

For the past month, I've been writing these e-mails and urging people to really think about the reliability of the news that we get from what I call "mainstream sources" (large, corporate-owned and controlled media organizations like CNN and the New York Times, for example). I've tried (often unsuccessfully, I admit) to avoid editorializing and just give people an alternative perspective on the news that, when analyzed alongside information we receive from "mainstream sources," allows us to engage in meaningful dialogue and debate about the many crises that confront us. I've been encouraged by many of you to keep writing and keep insisting that people reflect on all sides of the stories we hear and read about. I intend to.

In an ironic example of life imitating something else (I dare not call these ramblings "art"), in the last 48 hours, I have gone from writing essays about what appears (and doesn't appear) in our daily papers to being the subject of articles in our daily papers. Today's Boston Globe and Boston Herald both ran stories about my arrest yesterday morning, and both give me the opportunity to comment on the quality of reporting from the perspective of the subject of a story, rather than as an observer. Plus, I can give you the lowdown on what REALLY happened in Kerry's office. More on that later.

We'll start with today's Boston Globe, which chose once again to bury the story about the sit-in and arrest in its "New England in brief" section on page B3. You can link to the story here, but you have to scroll down the page to find it:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/036/metro/News_in_brief+.shtml

Here's the full text:

Two men critical of Senator John F. Kerry's stance on a potential war with Iraq were arrested early yesterday in his downtown Boston office after a 12-hour sit-in. The men, identified as Patrick J. Keaney, 32, of Brighton and Matthew C. Osborn, 24, of Brookline, arrived in Kerry's Bowdoin Square office around 3 p.m. Monday. Police were called around 2:45 a.m. when the men began moving furniture and yelling at employees monitoring the protest, police said. Keaney and Osborn were charged with trespassing and arraigned in Boston Municipal Court yesterday where they pleaded not guilty, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office said.

The first thing you notice is that in a story that is all of five sentences long, they manage to get official reaction from everybody but the people who were arrested. Read it again - you have the Senator's staff, the DA's office, and the cops all offering information ("...said Kerry spokesman Kyle Sullivan... police said... said a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office"). Despite having sent out a press release with my contact information and having done a lengthy interview with Globe reporter Cindy Roy by phone from inside Kerry's office, my statements appear nowhere in the piece. The thing to remember is that this is standard journalistic practice when dealing with protesters. Report on the fact that they were there, but not what they said. It's easier to marginalize dissent when readers have no idea of what the protesters are actually protesting about.

For those who didn't see yesterday's Globe (or looked for the story and couldn't find it because it didn't run in all editions), I'll reproduce their first crack at reporting on the incident (from the "New England in brief" section, February 4, 2003):

Three men staged a sit-in last night in the office of Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry, hoping to persuade the presidential candidate to back a resolution drafted by Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The resolution would require that Congress reconsider a war on Iraq. The three men said they planned to stay in the office until they have informed people about Kerry's stance on the resolution, or until he pledged to back the resolution, a prospect they said is unlikely. Patrick Keaney, 33, said the three were committed to an extended protest. The other protesters were Michael Gainer, 29, and Matthew Osborn, 24. Kerry was not in his office when the men arrived. When asked whether the police would be called to remove the protesters, Kerry spokesman Kyle Sullivan said his staff would stay in the office with the men "for the time being."

Again, I had done a lengthy phone interview with the reporter from inside Kerry's office at around 8 p.m., Monday night - five hours into the sit-in. None of the material from that interview was ever used, in either story. When I wrote her an e-mail asking her about it, she replied "the original story did have quotes. They had to be cut out though because there wasn't enough space to make it a big story."

Now, who decides what "had to be cut"? Well, it's a good question, and you can bet it's not the reporters who write the stories. The people who "cut" and place the articles (or decide not to run them at all, in many cases) are the editors - they determine what appears in your paper every day. And if they decide that a reporter's story contains unflattering information about the man that the Boston Globe is very likely to endorse for the Democratic nomination and the presidency next year, then they shorten the story up and stick it in the "New England in brief" section of the local paper. Maybe it's also just a coincidence that the story didn't run in all editions of yesterday's paper, and didn't appear in the Boston Globe online.

The Boston Herald did a better job yesterday, I thought, and I forwarded you that link already. I'll reproduce the story here:

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Three anti-war protesters occupied the Bowdoin Square office of U.S. Sen. John Kerry last night to draw attention to Kerry's opposition to a Senate resolution against attacking Iraq. "We're not leaving until we get a promise that Sen. Kerry will back (the resolution) sponsored by Sen. (Edward) Kennedy," said protester Patrick Keaney. Kerry's office declined to comment. But it was unclear how long the protesters could hold out because building rules did not permit them to return to Kerry's office if they used the restroom.

http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/lnib102042003.htm

Here's today's blurb:

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

The former campaign manager of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein was arrested with one other man early yesterday morning after a 12-hour war protest at U.S. Sen. John Kerry's Boston offices. Patrick Keaney, 33, of Brighton and Matthew Osborn, 24, of Brookline, were charged with trespassing and later released on personal recognizance following their arraignments in Boston Municipal Court. Keaney, who ran Stein's ill-fated campaign, said ``tempers were getting short'' by the time he, Osborn and a third protester who was not arrested began stretching out on the floor about 2:45 a.m. The men want Kerry to demand President Bush return to Congress for a second vote on whether to attack Iraq.

http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/prot02052003.htm

The best part about the Herald story is where the editors chose to place it in the print version. Believe me, where a story appears in the paper is a big decision. That's where the saying "front page news" comes from - if something's important, you expect to read about it there. There are other things you can reliably predict about how the editors feel about a certain story by seeing where it's placed in the paper. A good example from today's Globe is the tiny little blurb they give to nationwide demonstrations yesterday led by Ralph Nader's "Citizen Works." You can read about it on page A2 in the Globe. But don't go dashing off to your newspaper - it's so dinky I can give it to you right now:

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader led a group of peace activists yesterday in accusing the Bush administration of letting its ties to the oil industry influence the government's war strategy against Iraq. Nader noted that Bush received nearly $2 million in contributions from the oil and gas industry during the 2000 election and that Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton, an energy company, before taking office. (AP)

Here's the link, but again, you'll have to scroll down to find it:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/036/nation/The_nation_today+.shtml

And compare those two sentences to the full 7-paragraph standalone story that comes under this headline in today's Globe: "Slain actress known for B-movie roles." Still think you're getting all the news that's fit to print? It appears on page A7, which is pretty lavish treatment for a story about Phil Spector's final date, don't you think? I mean, in light of everything else going on...

So we have a retrospective on Lana Clarkson's role in movies like "Barbarian Queen," more oceans of ink for the Challenger disaster, a full four days after the mishap, and two sentences about an outspoken defender of the public's rights linking U.S. oil interests to the Bush administration's foreign policy. At least the Globe had the guts to put it in the paper - you can scour today's New York Times and not find a single mention of it. Here's a little more information about yesterday's event, which was accompanied by demonstrations at gas stations across the country:

http://www.citizenworks.org/admin/press/feb4-pc.php

Also, check http://www.targetoil.com/.

I'll bet you didn't catch any of that on the evening news.

So, placement and editing are important considerations for newspaper editors. I bring it up because the little blurb about my getting arrested that appears in today's Herald appears in a box smack dab in the middle of a larger story entitled "Saddam denies concealing weapons in TV interview." The story about my arrest is directly under a picture of Saddam Hussein, in the "National/International" section. Go pick up the print version and see for yourself. Not too subtle, is it?

This, naturally, raises the question of what kind of story this is - is it a local story, because it's Kerry's Boston office, or is it an international story, because Kerry wants to be president and this is the biggest foreign policy issue facing the field of contenders right now? We see the Globe deciding to play it as a local story by sticking it in the "briefs," whereas the Herald puts it in with their International coverage (and tries to directly associate the Green Party with the Iraqi regime). Nobody's going to confuse the Globe with the Herald, ever, and this small example gives some indication why. The Herald will endorse Bush (or Cheney!) next year, and the Globe will endorse Kerry, should he emerge victorious from the primaries, where he will also be carrying their endorsement. Although, on second thought, with the way they've been treating him lately, the Herald might just endorse Romney for President in '04. You heard it here first.

Now, as for what really happened inside... When we first arrived, we met with a nice young man named Mark Sternman, who is a policy analyst for Senator Kerry. We told him that our "demand," as they say in the civil disobedience world, was that Kerry sign on to the Kennedy resolution demanding further congressional approval before a strike on Iraq. Sternman told us that wasn't likely, and soon we were sitting down with Drew O'Brien, Kerry's "State Director." He's the senior staffer in the office.

He told us he appreciated and respected what we were doing, but he clearly did not want any bad publicity coming the candidate's way. This all was happening at about 3:30 p.m. We had a good long talk with him about a lot of things, including the hypocrisy of official U.S. rhetoric about the need for upholding UN resolutions and eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction (our ally Israel is currently in violation of dozens of UN resolutions, most regarding its occupation of Palestine - they also have nukes).

He told us we could continue our protest in the chairs in the lobby, where we were originally sitting when he came out to meet us. We were sitting there at 5:30 p.m., when he came to explain what was going to happen next. He said that they didn't want to arrest us, and that they were going to stay the night with us. The only thing was - we couldn't use the bathrooms. The facilities were out in the hall, outside the office, and if we left we wouldn't be let back in. So, basically they were going to smoke us out, wait 'til our bladders couldn't take it anymore, and let us leave in defeat. It made us wonder about the staffer who so graciously offered us each a 12-oz. cup of water about an hour before...

Mr. O'Brien guessed right - I didn't have a Plan B. Plan A, which had been working quite well up to that point, was to get inside, make our demand, have them refuse, and get ourselves pinched - with all the attendant publicity. But the pinching was not to be, because that would generate headlines, and so Kerry's staff, who didn't get these jobs because they're dopes, figured out a plan to wait us out.

What they didn't count on was the fact that I, having been a campaign manager for a gubernatorial candidate, had a mental Rolodex full of local reporters' phone numbers. And access to a cell phone. The fun began almost as soon as Mr. O'Brien walked away. I was quickly on the horn to every Boston reporter I knew, telling them I was having a slumber party in Senator Kerry's Boston office. They bit. The Globe had a reporter there within the hour. When Mr. O'Brien came back to check on us, I was on the phone to the Herald. He freaked out. The Kerry staff's plan to keep the sit-in hushed up had failed.

We stayed for a few more hours before they finally brought in the cops to get rid of us. Once it was clear that the press was going to be reporting on the story, relations between the protesters and Kerry's staff broke down a little bit. His office manager, a guy named Roy Martin, completely lost it when the other two guys decided, after sitting for 12 hours in wooden chairs, to stretch out on the carpeted lobby floor. He called the cops. Things got worse for Kerry's Damage Control Department when the TV cameras, alerted not by me but by the ever-buzzing scanners that sit in their newsrooms, met me and Boston's finest at the exit on the way to the cruiser. At last count, the story had run on Channels 4, 7, and 25 (FOX News).

The part of the police report that was excerpted in today's Globe almost makes it sound like a post-concert party in Keith Moon's hotel room - "moving furniture and yelling at employees." It was hardly that dramatic. One of the guys moved a potted plant a couple of feet so he could lie down comfortably. And when Mr. Martin, who initiated the shouting, continued to demand that my friends get back in their chairs, I yelled at him. "Lighten up, Roy," I said. "They're just trying to get some sleep." I rose my voice, but it wasn't "yelling." Of course, the Globe didn't ask me about what really happened. But I'm telling you, it's not quite the way it appeared in the papers. It usually isn't...

Until tomorrow -