In publishing, and then deleting, an opinion piece this week encouraging restaurant staff to contaminate food prepared for current and former White House officials, the Boston Globe did exactly everything wrong.
For starters, the op-ed, titled “Keep Kirstjen Nielsen unemployed and eating Grubhub over her kitchen sink,” should not have made it to publication. Any article that begins with the opening lines, “One of the biggest regrets of my life is not pissing in Bill Kristol’s salmon” is not an article worthy of an ostensibly serious newsroom. The Boston Globe knows better. At least, it should.
That the following lines made it past the Globe’s editors is embarrassing for everyone involved, most especially the author, Luke O’Neil, who contributes frequently to the paper’s opinion section:
As for the waiters out there, I’m not saying you should tamper with anyone’s food, as that could get you into trouble. You might lose your serving job. But you’d be serving America. And you won’t have any regrets years later.
The first problem is the obvious lack of oversight by the Globe. The article, which serves as a response to the firing of the former homeland security secretary, whom the author says is guilty of enforcing “inhumane policies of ethnic cleansing,” falls far below the standard we should expect (and demand) from a serious national newsroom.
But then the Globe did the next worst thing: It amended the article no fewer than three times and then retracted it entirely.
“The Globe Opinion page has removed from its website an April 10 column by Luke O’Neil on former homeland security chief Kirstjen Nielsen because it did not receive sufficient editorial oversight and did not meet Globe standards. The Globe regrets its lack of vigilance on the matter. O’Neil is not on staff,” reads a weaselly note that appears at the top of the paper’s opinion page. The “he’s not with us” excuse is an especially nice touch from the paper.
Wrong, wrong, cowardly, and wrong.
If you publish an objectively inflammatory op-ed, you should also defend or at least explain that decision. You certainly ought to defend the author whose work you deemed good enough to distribute in the first place. At the very least, maybe publish an op-ed countering the inflammatory one.
Deleting unpopular articles and pretending like it never happened is spineless. It seeks to absolve editors of their bad decisions while also laying blame squarely on the author, whose work the editors originally approved.
I actually agree with O’Neil, who has accused the Boston Globe of cowardice.
“Absolute brain genius move by the Globe to edit my story three times then take it down altogether and put up a note saying I’m not on staff instead of perhaps standing by a long time contributor and siding with labor instead of bad faith critics who would hate them no matter what,” he tweeted.
O’Neill added: “I will never write for them again.”
I do not blame him. No one likes being thrown under the bus, especially when it is done by the people who are charged with looking out for you.
