GLOBEWATCH: Inaccurate Rewrite of City Press Release Too Funny!!

Posted by John B. Kelly

I've been a reader of the Boston Globe for about 25 years now, and I've watched what was once a smart, liberal paper become a rag. I've been so offended so often by the inaccuracies and built-in biases of the reporting, that I've thought about doing some commentary on selected Globe articles. As disability rights is my thing, I'm going to concentrate on that, but I'm also a left winger, so maybe I'll look at other things eventually.

Leading off is an example of the kind of story that not only has no legs, but because it involves "the disabled," must be almost completely wrong.

As far as I know, staff City Hall writer Donovan Slack's story appeared only on Boston.com, presumably because it wasn't deemed "newsworthy" enough. The headline, written by who knows, emphasizes the appointment of a disabilities commission, over the far more significant commitment to spending $5 million on sidewalk work and "curb cuts" (those little ramps that transition you from street to sidewalk):

Mayor to announce committee on disabled issues

The future tense in the headline is a tip that Donovan is working from a press release released by the mayor's office. It doesn't seem she went to the ceremony later in the day, otherwise she would have filed an actual news story later. The Globe search function shows that Mayor Menino's name wasn't even mentioned in the Saturday, July 26 Globe.

Then comes the cascade of errors.

The announcement comes on the 18th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The true anniversary is July 26, 2008, the day after the story was filed. Perhaps Donovan changed the word "marked" or "observed" to "comes on," because that's the kind of change that turns a press release into a news story.

Press releases often contain "quotes" that may or may not have ever been actually vocalized in hearing range of another human. So when we learn that

A majority of the five- to nine-member committee will be disabled people, and one will be an immediate family member of someone who is disabled, officials said.

it is unlikely that Donovan Slack is paraphrasing what she literally "heard" those officials vocalize. For one thing, it's hard for people in the plural to say much of anything. This is definitely looking like a reworked press release.

Now comes my favorite paragraph (except for the extra $45 million discussed below), in which reporter Slack draws on her memory to put in "the other side" of the issue, drawing the lines of opposition that dramatize so many articles.

The city has been criticized in recent years for not being responsive enough to the needs of the disabled, with one neighborhood group staging repeated protests about the city's bumpy brick sidewalks and a certain stretch of Huntington Avenue that presents problems for people in wheelchairs to navigate.

Too funny! Let's go through it.Okay, we learn that the city has been criticized, but we don't read by whom? Has anyone actually said that the city has not been "responses enough to the needs of the disabled?" No, because no disability rights advocate would be caught dead uttering such a needs assessment, rather than in the language of civil rights or physical injury. These words are Donovan's own.

And then who is "one neighborhood group?" Why, that's Neighborhood Access Group, which has indeed protested Huntington Avenue on Huntington Avenue over and over over the years. Many NAG press releases have been sent to Donovan Slack, although neither she nor any other staff reporter has ever attended any of our events. Maybe she didn't remember our name, or maybe our name wasn't as important as what we were doing: "staging repeated protests." Of course these were staged events, almost all events are these days. The word "repeated" speaks to the boredom such protests elicited from the powerful and influential. The Globe was so bored that it only covered our very first protest, in September 2003.

We learn that the protests were about "a certain stretch of Huntington Avenue," which reminds me of 1930s movies where the butler announces "a certain Mr. so-and-so is here to see you, sir." The actual location of the sidewalk was probably not remembered by Donovan, so a "certain stretch" will do just fine.

As part of today's announcement, scheduled for 2 p.m. at City Hall, the mayor will unveil plans to fix that stretch of Huntington Avenue and dedicate $50 million to fix curb cuts and pedestrian ramps throughout the city that currently do not comply with the ADA, city officials said.

$50 million! We wish. No, we're talking $5 million here. The editors at the Globe are so clueless about disability, that $5 million or $50 million, what's the difference when it comes to "the needs of the disabled?" At the rate of expenditure actually announced by the city, the infinitely long list of curb cuts that are noncompliant would take 30 years or more to repair.

And no, no plan to repair Huntington Avenue was announced on Friday. The city doesn't seem to have a plan yet, except to begin going once again through the public process and let the various advocates tear each other to shreds.

The last sentence points out helpfully that the commission members will work for free.