Jeff Jacoby formally challenged his widely publicized, four-month, unpaid suspension with a grievance filed on his behalf by union officials last month, he tells Massachusetts News. Newspaper Guild Local 245 President Robert Jordan filed the complaint, seeking to rescind the suspension, obtain back pay and gain "other related relief." 

The grievance process is covered under the Globe's contract with Local 245. The next step is a meeting between union and management officials to determine if the complaint has validity. Jacoby said he hopes the action will allow him to return to work "sooner rather than later." Globe officials declined to comment to Editor and Publisher magazine.
 

Jeff Jacoby Will Survive, But Will the Globe's Reputation?

By Nat Hentoff, 
Editor & Publisher Magazine 

The internal gag order on Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby has been the most widely reported journalism story across the country, including the pages of ESP, since columnists Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith were forced to leave the same paper for alchemizing fiction into fact.

But in suspending Jacoby for four months without pay - and indicating to him that he'd be wise to look elsewhere - the Globe accused the columnist neither of plagiarism nor of making up stories. The charge is "serious journalistic misconduct." 

Worth examining is the "journalistic misconduct" of Globe Publisher Richard Gilman, Editorial Page Editor Renee Loth, and Ombudsman Jack Thomas. 

Jacoby's offense was embodied in a column on the harsh fates that befell a number of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. It ran July 3. Similar essays have been circulating in print and on the Internet for a long time. Some bear the bylines of Paul Harvey or Rush Limbaugh. Others are anonymous. Jacoby did his own research and repaired the inaccuracies. 
As soon as Jacoby knew that management was exercised that he had not acknowledged the previously published historical roundups, he eagerly offered to put, as he told me, "a shirttail" on his next column making such an acknowledgment. That correction was turned down. 
Editorial Page Editor Loth told Dan Kennedy, the alternative Boston Phoenix's exemplary press critic: "It is the first and only time we've looked at Jacoby in terms of disciplinary action." Nonetheless, Jacoby was taken off his page and his reputation seriously damaged. At worst, his offense in the words of David Reinhard, associate editor of The Oregonian in Portland was "an error in judgment." Recently, when a San Antonio ExpressNews staffer committed actual plagiarism, his punishment was a reprimand, accompanied by an apology to readers. 

Jacoby was the only conservative columnist on the Globe's Op-Ed pages. Steve Bailey, another Globe columnist, told Howard Kurtz, media writer for The Washington Post: "The guy's opinions were never welcomed in this building. ... One mistake, and he's gone. It's hard to imagine there wasn't some connection with his conservative views." 

Or, as The Oregonian's Reinhard said, referring to the Globe, "Ideological diversity ... is not what they talk about at those media diversity seminars." 

Loth denies that Jacoby's politics had anything to do with his sentence, handed down by the Globe's equivalent of England's 17th-century Star Chamber. There, defendants were disposed of - sometimes with the loss of their heads - without a jury and without a trace of due process. 

Loth has not explained why the suspension is for four months - thereby shielding the Globe's readers from Jacoby's views about the presidential campaigns. 

Furthermore, Jacoby said Loth told him that if he returns, he will "have to change the focus of his column." Like maybe describing the changing seasons on Boston Common? On this point, Kennedy added, "Two acquaintances of Loth told the Phoenix, on condition of anonymity, that Loth has made no secret of her distaste for Jacoby's work." Moreover, a longtime friend of hers, and mine, told me that she is considerably to the left of Jacoby. 

Then there is the Globe's judicious ombudsman, Jack Thomas. At every paper where I've worked, I've tried, unsuccessfully, to get an ombudsman appointed. But to be a representative of all the readers, an ombudsman has to rein in his or her own ideological views. Thomas had attacked an earlier Jacoby column supporting the free-speech rights of Christian students at Harvard University who believe that gays can be "cured." Thomas wrote that Jacoby's column was "a high price to pay for freedom of the press." 

As for Jacoby's suspension, Thomas proclaimed July 17 that the punishment was not excessive, and sardonically referred to "the single voice of uncompromising support" for Jacoby among conservatives. This vast right-wing conspiracy appears to include the Post's Kurtz, the Phoenix's Kennedy, TV newsman Bernard Kalb, attorney and syndicated columnist Harvey Silverglate, nonconservative staff members at the Globe, and me, among many other free-press zealots. 

A petition by diverse Globe staffers protesting the harshness of the penalty was summarily dismissed by Publisher Gilman. 

On July 7, there appeared on the Internet a breaking-news story by Myron Pauli: "Boston Globe Suspends Thomas Jefferson." According to the report, the four month suspension of "noted anti-tax, anti-gun-control columnist Thomas Jefferson ... for `serious journalistic misconduct'" was meted out in response to his controversial July column, "Declaration of Independence." The Globe's editorial page editor was cited as pointing out that "similar ideas had been expressed by numerous natural-law philosophers, such as John Locke, David Hume, and Jean Jacques Rousseau." And, it was added, "the phrase - 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' - is taken, almost verbatim, from a previous work of John Locke."

Nat Hentoff, well known liberal columnist, was a fixture for years at the Village Voice.
 

Boston Globe Suspends Thomas Jefferson
By Myron Robert Pauli,
July 7, 1776

The Boston Globe today announced the suspension of noted anti-tax, anti-gun-control columnist Thomas Jefferson for four months after the columnist published a controversial column entitled "Declaration of Independence" on July 4. The Globe specifically cited Jefferson for "serious journalistic misconduct." According to Editorial Page Editor Thomas Hutchinson, "Jefferson's work clearly was not entirely original. In fact, similar ideas had been expressed by numerous natural law philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, and Jean Jacques Rousseau." Hutchinson pointed out that the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is almost taken verbatim from a previous work of John Locke. "Our readers expect originality and not just recycled old matrerial," stated Hutchinson. 

Adding to the accusations was that, while Jefferson's column started off with "All men are created equal," Jefferson had circulated an earlier version to 56 of his friends (including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams) in which Jefferson himself admitted that the ideas in his column were "self-evident." Jefferson apologized for not stating that explicitly in the introduction to the column which he cut down for space. He offered to issue an admission that the ideas he had were not uniquely his but were self-evident and had been previously circulated by many other "natural law" philosophers. Hutchinson, however, said that the Globe cannot be put in the position where columnists can recycle self-evident ideas over and over again. The fact that Jefferson had circulated the column to Adams, Franklin, and his other friends only seemed to anger Hutchinson more. The Editors felt that the Globe owed it to its readers to take a firm stand on the lapse, which some characterized as trivial. Others claimed that Jefferson, the only anti-monarchist on the newspaper, was being punished for his political views. 

Globe publisher George "King" Hanover III, however, said that "our paper would never single out a columnist for his political views, however bizzare they are." Hanover continued to back the decision of Hutchinson to suspend Jefferson, citing the need to maintain high standards. He mentioned that Jefferson's anti-government views had been tolerated for years, in spite of the fact that most people employed at the paper dislike his ideas and that many in the newsroom have referred to the controversial columnist as a "self-righteous, disloyal, treasonous, anarchistic, atheistic, rebellious, tobacco-growing, slave-driving hypocrite." Hanover mentioned that Jefferson would be allowed to try to keep writing at the paper after the four-month suspension was over. "At that time, we will all be able to reassess how to continue the relationship."

The news of Jefferson's dismissal started a wave of protest. The Globe's ombudsman, Charles Lord Cornwallis, responded to these protests with further attacks on Jefferson and his supporters. "Our readers are entitled to information that is fair and balanced", said Cornwallis. "Jefferson goes on and on and on with repeated and scurrilous attacks on the King. Nowhere in this 'Declaration' of his does he offer equal time for the King to respond to this slander." Cornwallis added that the people

protesting Jefferson's dismissal carried no weight with him or the other editors. Specifically, Cornwallis pointed out that he received letters from people such as the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben, Casamir Pulaski, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko. "These are not our regular readers but just a bunch of 'freedom fighters' and ideological extremists. Why, Poland is not even within our home delivery area!" 

The controversy is likely to last a long time. Little did Thomas Jefferson realize that, when imitating the style of Patrick Henry, he wrote about pledging "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor," it would apply to himself as well.