Is anyone else starting to wonder how Frank Phillips of the Boston Globe knows what’s going on in the Patrick administration even before its members do? Sure, he’s been a political reporter for years, and he must have important and knowledgeable contacts.
But how does he find out about phone calls from the Governor’s office AND emails from the Transportation Secretary’s office?
Ever since publication of the story about the phone call from the Governor to CitiBank regarding Ameriquest, I’ve been bothered about the means by which this reporter learned about the call. One would think that only the caller, recipient, and perhaps two secretaries would have known that it happened, and why would any of them “leak” the facts of a call to a reporter who is known to be unfriendly to the Governor?
And today (“Transport chief seeks advice from inside trade,” Boston Globe) we have Frank Phillips getting access to emails sent to individuals who were invited to a meeting–even before the meeting. The story claims that the emails were made available by one of the ten individuals who’d be in attendance. Why would any of them leak the details of the meeting to this reporter?
In short, I cannot understand what the benefit would be to the participants in these events to provide such information voluntarily. So I’m left to wonder how he’s getting it involuntarily. Can anyone help me out?
In politics you have leaks. PERIOD
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Enough said. : )
Patrick and his people initially reacted to the Ameriquest story by saying they didn’t think it was a big deal, didn’t they? So why wouldn’t someone have casually have mentioned it during the course of a longer conversation about who knows what? There might be zero benefit to mentioning it, but if they didn’t think there was any downside they wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
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And why wouldn’t a prominent transportation businessperson mention that he was invited to help develop policy options? He could’ve mentioned it out of ego. There could be a thousand motivations for sharing that, too.
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Also, these kinds of things can casually come out during longer, routine conversations about other things. Good political reporters learn about a lot of stuff because they know politicos like to talk and they allow them to do so. I’m sure Phillips knows a lot of things he hasn’t reported.
sometime in the future. In other words, the “leaker” was making nice with the press. Or maybe the “leaker” was making nice with the legislature by trying to make the Administration look bad.