Frank Phillips first broke the story that killer coke was traveling to Boston to dog Deval Patrick on the campaign trail. We now know that Tom Reilly’s camp was cooperating with killer coke himself. Does Phillips, the Globe’s State House bureau chief, follow up on his original story and killer coke? Does he follow up on the Reilly connection, who is funding killer coke, or potential violations of campaign laws? Of course not. Why? Why not stay ahead of the story as all good journalists attempt to do? Why does Phillips leave the follow up reporting to the Globe’s op ed writers?
A review of all Globe articles written by Phillips since Patrick announced his candidacy is revealing: nearly all of Phillips’ reports are attack and smear stories on Patrick. And many of these Phillips stories were later exposed to be shaky at best.(Consider, for example, the most recent Sunday Globe piece on Patrick’s work history with Coke, Texaco and Ameriquest–Phillips’ articles never provided this sort of objective reporting).
We know the connection to Reilly and killer coke. What is the connection between Reilly and Phillips? How much “coordinating” is going on between Phillips and Reilly’s camp? Phillip’s daughter worked as a prosecutor for many years in AG Reilly’s office. Of course Phillips has never acknowledged to his readers this connection. In the wake of Phillips’ shoddy reporting and lack of objectivity (exposed in part by his own colleagues at the Globe), perhaps the Globe editors should assign Phillips to another beat for the remainder of the race.
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Exactly right. Something is amiss here, and the Globe would do well to pull Phillips off the campaign. The connection between Phillips’ daugher and Reilly is certainly problematic and made worse by the fact that Phillips, who dutifully wrote the hack piece, didn’t follow up when the bigger story, the Reilly campaign’s involvement with Killer Coke, was broken by one of Phillips’ colleagues, an opinion columnist.
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And that is one long-ass sentence.
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That’s the connection that explains Frank Phillips strange behavior.
..not venal! I assumed he favored Reilly because he could see in in the halls at the State House, and not have to stray too far from his comfy 4th floor perch!
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BIG expose!
Several early supporters of Reilly told me that they felt an obligation to support the AG, and that they were hearing similar things from their legislative colleagues, because he had employed them at one point or had given a job to their kid. They didn’t sound enthusiastic, just resigned. [I admit, they may have been pandering to me, because I was open about my support for Deval Patrick at a relatively early stage.]
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Although some of these Reilly supporters did organize fundraisers or host Reilly on jaunts through the district before the “frontrunner” momentum began to wear off around the time of the caucuses, the broad support was just not very deep.
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Strange that this Globe reporter appears to show more initiative or active effort to promote Reilly at this stage of the game. Whether he is grateful for his daughter’s career advancement or if he is just a fan of Tom Reilly, the conflict of interest and pattern of bias seems very fishy (and inappropriate).
Maybe it would be useful if the ombudsman at the Globe received a few complaints about Frank’s “reporting”.
Great idea; the Globe needs to look into Phillips’ daughter’s work history with Reilly. She is now in private practice. Is she now under contract with the state to represent criminal defendants? Did Reilly’s office assist her? What other connections, if any, are there between Reilly and Phillips? If there is any connection, the Globe’s own conflict of interest rules preclude Phillips from covering the race.
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The Globe also should look into Phillip’s prior coverage– he publishes an attack; the story is discredited, but the damage is done.
Do we have documentation? Or is this just “common knowledge?”
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Or perhaps they can just return him to the farm team in Lowell.
We have enough hackery left as is. We don’t need him back.
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I have a hankering to start a campaign to oust the current editor of the Sun and promote Chris Scott in his place. Have you read the Sun’s lameass political blog (written by Capinini himself)? Utter garbage. And I do not say that because the man and myself are on opposite sides of the aisle. He’s not a good writer, and to top that off, can’t analize his way out of a paper bag. Facts and him are complete strangers.
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But please, keep Philips where he is (or better yet, fire him and let him try his hand at another career).
Because of him, I know that the Lowell Sun is the Greatest Newspaper on Earth and is located at 15 Carney Square (that ran through my head every time I looked out my window at the Doubletree at the convention and saw the Sun red logo gleaming at me).
Not Carney… although it sure seems like the latter sometimes.