So Joan Vennochi goes after Ernie Boch III in her Sunday Globe op-ed because he posts anonymously. Several thoughts:
1. Howie Carr expresses his “opinion” for large amounts of money. He has chosen a trade off accepting fame or notoriety in exchange for this money. Ernie does not have such an option.
2. The Globe constantly quotes sources anonymously (“One senior executive, speaking on condition on anonymity” etc. etc.).
3. Expressing political opinions anonymously has a long and even positive history. I need only cite the authors of the Federalist Papers-some of our most distinguished and famous “founding fathers” who published under the name “Publius.” Shame on them. Right, Joan?
4. Finally, Vennochi is representative of the reality-challenged Globe writers who can’t deal with the Internet as an alternative source of news and opinion. As John Carroll recently wrote of the Globies, “They thought the Internet was the caboose. Turns out, of course, it’s the engine.”
…I am jealous of Ernie, my new hero.
Less articulately than Joan, of course:
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p>The anonymous part seems to really bother him…
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Vennochi enjoys a number of workplace, financial, contractual, even union protections that EBIII doesn’t. She comes across as angry that EBIII dares take anonymity for himself, rather than begging for it from the media.
…why Ernie wants to boycott Howie Carr. It’s been lost in all the drama about anonymity. Also, if EB3 simply put a disclaimer in his signature saying, “Ernie Boch III is a pseudonym and is no relation to car dealer Ernie Boch, Jr.” that should prevent any further grief and drama.
in both his signature and his profile.
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p>Re why the boycott, Ernie himself has been working hard to keep his focus on that subject.
… is here. In a word, homophobia:
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I’m troubled that the Ernie that is leading this crusade against Carr’s homophobic rants is also the Ernie that thinks nothing of using anti-gay slurs and virulence to attack people at BMG and groups that he dislikes.
Thanks for articulating it so well.
I know it sucks to actually look up the details… but it would help me (and others) to actually read it.
But they were there. Yes, it’s ironic.
…it’s that a.) I just don’t care that much and b.) his most egregious uses of anti-gay slurs have been deleted. Anyone interested is free to browse Ernie’s written record here at BMG.
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p>But, here you go:
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/d…
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p>Also, in this thread a bunch of comments which were deleted as Ernie called me a “militant homosexual” and a slew of other fairly nasty names. I don’t know if the comments still exist on the server, but I guess you’ll have to take my word for it unless the editors can magically resurrect the comments from the dead.
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p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
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p>Howie Carr can rot in hell. But don’t believe for a minute that Ernie’s crusade is about ridding the airwaives of homophobia and nastiness. This boycott is an EBIII vanity project (which, for the record, I have no objection too. Let’s just call it what it is.)
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Also – and this I am too lazy to look up – I remember Ernie getting nasty on the Boston Gay Games threads from back in August. Those are still on record, I believe.
That’s here.
Ernie is a puzzling character to me, and I think he enjoys that identity. For stupid people like myself, it’s often hard to tell whether he’s sincere or facetious half the time. He can be very funny (funny ha-ha, not funny strange) sometimes, and his occassionally bad grammar can conceal subtle satirical stuff which suggests that he’s basically making fun of everybody. You and me included.
Yup. And to enjoy watching the fur fly, which I hope and trust has been entertaining for all.
I sympathize, tblade, but the history of First Amendment cases shows pretty consistently that it’s non-mainstream, offensive stuff that gets attacked. On principle, we have to defend Ernie’s right to be a jerk at times, because in so doing we defend our own rights.
I’m not disputing Ernie’s rights – I’m not sure anyone is – I’m just pointing out that he uses virulent anti-gay language to attack his enemies.
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p>And, on principal, I don’t need to defend Ernie’s hurtful speech; he’s a big boy, he’s capable of standing up for himself.
and can take care of herself one on one against a big golumpah of a used car salesman.
To be fair to the car salesman, I’ve never seen him call anyone a “crazy fag” or “big homo” like our own EB3 has done several times here.
We haven’t heard Ernie Jr say those things. And our Ernie III seems to love making all kinds of offensive toilet jokes and penis jokes that some of us (me) find distasteful and offensive, and some of us find “hysterical” even if they are all too often insulting to one category of humans or another.
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p>So come to think of it, maybe Ernie II is a 7th grade boy after all.
no one has to defend anyone’s right to be offensive, but we do have to defend the right for them to not be fined or imprisoned for being offensive, so long as it fits within the context of constitutional or other legal protections. For example, I don’t have to defend Howie Carr’s “right” to be a prick, which is why I’m joining in the boycott. I would, however, not want to see him go to prison for being a jerk — fired from his show and other gigs, though? Sure.
Should I defend your right to vote for who you want, or your right not to be imprisoned for voting for who you want?
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p>The point being, rights are absolute. I’m not bringing Howie into the equation, for me it’s all about Ernie (any by extension, you, me, and everyone else here). No bounty hunting to squelch free expression. I still think it might be a joke, but it’s a twisted, dangerous joke.
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As tasteless as you may find Boch Jr and Carr’s bounty hunting, they are perfectly within their rights to do so, as far as I can tell.
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p>Ernie got himself into this mess – if you can’t stand the heat, as they say. Part of the entertainment of this whole thing will be to see if and how he escapes this bounty.
I hope the person who sells ErnieBochIII out, has the business sense to negotiate a reward two orders of magnitude greater than 2000. 2000 is an embarrassment for Ernie 3, Howie 1 and Ernie 2.
But it violates the spirit of the First Amendment. Think about the types of activities one would have to conduct to discover a covert identity.
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p>I can imagine e-mail snooping, for one thing.
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And let me go a step further and say that I sincerely hope that EB3 isn’t outed by someone because I think that there’s a good chance of wingnut death threats and perhaps acts vandalism and/or violence.
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p>I do have a hunch it is killing EB3 that his “real identity” isn’t public knowledge and I would bet that EB3 his highly tempted to out himself and take the glory/infamy with the consequences.
If he took money from Ernie Boch Jr, because he created controversy and confusion, it could look like a plan to extort it.
Either it’s against the law, or isn’t.
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p>Otherwise, people can make up their own minds about it. That’s the beauty of free speech. It’s not really free — it just doesn’t get ya in the slammer, or as they did in Argentina not too long ago, thrown off a flying airplane drugged and alive. But if it pisses other people off? Yeah, they have the rights to do something about it, within the confines of the law. Free speech has always been a misnomer — there are consequences to what we say and do, some of them warranted, others not.
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p>As for me, should the real Ernie Boch be successful with his “bounty,” all I can say is I’ll never buy a car at Boch dealerships. There are plenty else to choose from, after all. Now that’s something the real Boch should consider — just how many BMG readers is he pissing off? If even one chooses not to buy a car there when they otherwise would, he loses more than $2,000.
The difference between the letter of the law — I am not a lawyer — and the spirit of the law is a well established concept.
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p>That’s what I was trying to get at in my comment above. You introduced the notion of prison — but that’s not the dividing line. All speech is acceptable; the ACLU defended Nazis in Skokie, Illinois a while back.
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p>Suppose someone slashed my tires, and I put out a reward for finding out who did it. Though this would be legal, wouldn’t it be recognized within my town as an antisocial act? Excessive, at best?
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p>So again, like I said, Ernie Boch Jr. is within his rights. But his stated goal (according to Ernie Boch III) was that EBIII could then be terrorized every afternoon.
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p>It’s illegal to sponsor terrorism, I think.
But that’s where the constitution stops. Such speech does not suddenly have to become “acceptable.” You can still get fired for what you say, or earn the scorn of others, as it should be. There’s nothing in the constitution that says I should “accept” the speech of bigots, for example.
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p>I support their right to say it, but do not accept it or support their actual speech. Asking me to do so is not at all in “the spirit of the law.” The ACLU defended the rights of neo-nazis to have freedom of speech, not what they actually say. That’s an important distinction there.
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p>If people say something that offends me, I will be offended and defend myself as I see fit — even if that means going after someone’s livelihood, as EB3 is in the case of Howie Carr. EB3 is well within his right to be spearheading his narcisstic boycott of Howie Carr’s sponsors, tilting at the wind mill that is going after Howie Carr’s job security, though all Howie Carr has ever done is use speech, even if it has been in offensive fashion. Howie Carr’s use of speech surely convinces the bulk of us that he deserves to be fired — if enough people use their speech, calling to complain & boycott Carr’s sponsors, that just may happen.
The fact is that Ernie Boch, Jr. doesn’t have a child named Ernie Boch, III. That EBJr doesn’t have a child named EBIII makes it pretty dang clear that EBIII isn’t EBJr’s son, doesn’t it?
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p>Sincerely,
Tom Cruise, Jr.
I was not aware of that when I first encountered EB3 on this blog.
The guy who sells cars doesn’t exactly have a particularly rare first nor last name. One could easily imagine an EB,Jr. who doesn’t sell cars and has a son with the same name.
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p>Sincerely,
Tom Cruise, Jr.
I thought he didn’t have a son with that name, but I read on another blog that he does.
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p>Either way, EBIII (the name) is clearly a joke.
Like I said earlier, I think Joan deserves some credit for weighing in. But she’s clearly conflicted, because, well — damn those anonymous bloggers killing my newspaper!
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p>It’s like her column earlier this week about Martha Coakley. She said Terry Murray “looks for sexism under every rock,” an implied criticism, and then cited an example she agreed with.
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She ends her column with the claim that Ernie’s agenda “is much more of a mystery” than Carr’s. Ernie’s agenda is only a mystery if you are too lazy to go and read a representative sample his extensive collection of postings on this site. Her description of him as a “liberal foil” clearly indicates that she hasn’t wasted much time with actual research.
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p>Yet another example of why op-ed writers should not be considered true journalists.
My comment on that sour-grapes column
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p>On the Globe I am AmberPaw2 and if you click, you get a photo and a name. Interestingly, their comment section will not pair names with the psuedonym used. I made clear [I hope!] that I will not spend any money on Carr’s sponsers, or the Hyatt corporation and that “our own” E3 may have good reasons for his anonymity. At the same time, one of the luxuries that goes with my status as a self-employed professional is that I don’t have to worry about a vindictive higher-up firing me for stating my views. While I have not had W2 income, a paid sick day or a paid vacation day since 1981 – and bought my computer, my software, and pay for my own internet – I do not wear a muzzle. One limitation on my “coming in from the cold” to be anyone’s employee is that after more than 25 years of free speech, I do not think I can adapt to a muzzle.
As a member of the Democratic State Committee and a member of the DSC Executive Committee, when I write, it reflects on the party . Although I do not always agree with the party, I recognize how I am viewed and keep that in mind when I post.
It may be appropriate in some contexts to explicitly state the opinion is yours and not the party’s, but we should be a big enough tent that even the DSC and its leadership can disagree publicly with the platforms and decisions of party organs.
But being fairly ‘out there’ myself on BMG has made it very, very difficult in a number of circles I travel frequently. If I could go back 5, 6 years, I would have made myself much more anonymous than I am. Unfortunately, party politics can be much more like high school than “big tent” serious leadership. Wading those waters is very tricky business, it’s quite honestly amazing Kate is so good at doing it.
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p>It’s not the opinions so much that get you in trouble, it’s the fact that you have those opinions (publicly) to begin with.
You and I have passionately disagreed at times (though probably not as much as we agree when you run down all the issues), but I would not have it any other way. I’ve noticed your signature line going back a while has made it very clear you speak only for yourself. I don’t know if adding that were prompted by anything specific, though I generally assume one’s opinions here are their own unless given reason to believe otherwise. We do all have to trust each other to disclose their own conflicts and spokesmanship capacities, which for the most part I think people do.
Anyone who wishes to actually engage in politics at a personal level beyond the blogosphere, or who thinks they may want to do so in the future, should think long and hard before they decide to be open and honest about who they are at BMG or elsewhere.
I revealed my full identity pretty much when I posted a diary last year asking for support for my DSC candidacy. There’s always something to be said for tact in public discourse regardless of the forum, but I’m pretty sure I can defend anything I’ve said here if someone were to challenge it later on.
…all of which describes me. I think, though, where what I do for a living requires a thick skin, a strong ego, and the ability to fight like a pit bull is what causes people to hire me in the first place – well, I have more freedom than money. I figure, too, my district will find my hard work, accessibility and honesty appealing or it will not but since my sole elected offices [public, and to nonprofit boards] are all totally un paid, my livelihood does not seem to be at risk. No relative of mine works for the Commonwealth, or for any government entity, either.
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p>So, as I don’t need to please all of the people all of the time, I can settle comfortably for pleasing the woman I see in the mirror every morning and evening. Also, every official who speaks to me or with me knows I am honest, and not tailoring what I say to be pleasing. I have found that some find that appealing and refreshing – and some do not.
I bet this explains the sagging sales of your last album. Better go back to focusing on the music for a while.
I make most of my money in concerts anyway. The albums are just to get people into those concerts.
I’m not the shopping center, either.
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p>1) What about a newspaper’s ability to give cover to critics who don’t have to do what Carr does, either? How many stories are founded on the basis of anonymous sources who have their own, personal agendas. Let us not forget it was anonymous sources lying that got this country into a war that’s killed thousands of Americans and who knows how many tens of thousands of Iraqis — the chief media cheerleader being the Globe’s parent company. Joan, your house is glass.
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p>2) Are you really going to bring up media shield protections? Why on Earth should print media and TV get shield law protection and not the blogosphere? It’s really interesting given Joan’s phrasing of this paragraph, given how important an issue shield laws are right now — especially with the fact that an amendment was offered to limit the current federal bill going around re: shield law to print and tv journalism, not bloggers.
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p>Joan, we know you’re reading this. These are two subjects you need to answer if you want to remain a credible opinion journalist.
Ryan, EBIII is taking anonymity himself, not waiting for a Vennochi or someone else in the mainstream media to give it to him. Rather than beg to be included as “an anonymous source” by a media staffer, he’s making himself one, and continuing on.
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p>It’s really galling to the media that all you need is a brain and a keyboard to have an impact on the debate now…it horrifies them that you don’t even need to use your real name.
…and I think this might be important. When an established media outlet with named reporters grants anonymity to a source the reporter/medium is essentially substituting reserve credibility for the source’s. In other words if Wolf Blitzer says, “A White House source speaking on condition of anonymity said…”, what he’s saying is basically, “There is a reason this source does not want to be identified and I both accept that reason and believe he nevertheless has information valuable for my story. Since I can’t let you know who it is to judge his credibility for yourself I am asking you instead to use MY (and CNN’s) credibility as a proxy for the source’s. Assuming you trust me and CNN to do a good job reporting you can trust that this source is legitimate.” However, when we take our own initiative to make ourselves anonymous there is no credibility proxy in place. Our three fearless editors do not go through all of our diaries and comments and double-check for accuracy the a way a news outlet would (or at least should, Jayson Blair cases notwithstanding) and in many cases do not know the real names behind the pseudonyms.
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p>I’m just pointing out the pitfalls of this system, but am not arguing against anonymity. Like much of life it is a balancing act and there are pros and cons to both sides. I understand if some people are in situations where they feel they can’t be public about their identities and I appreciate the concept that pseudonyms allow and force us to focus on the merits of the argument rather than the personalities. There is, also something to be said for “owning” what you say and I think in some cases keeps the discussion more civil.
with their use of anonymous sources. Why do you think the media’s pushing so hard for shield laws? If they used them appropriately, they wouldn’t be so desperate. You described the way the system should work, but it hasn’t worked like that in a long time — because the media routinely grants anonymity, including on unimportant stories, to the extent that granting anonymity isn’t reluctantly agreed to, but actually rewarded.
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p>Seriously, the media got this country into a war by allowing administration sources to speak on condition of anonymity, then spouting those very “sources” (themselves) as a reason to go to war. The Governor proposes some good idea that pisses people off at Beacon Hill and gathers steam in the public, so instead of fighting on fair ground, “anonymous sources,” leak some embarrassing story that the governor may or may not have control over and real culpability, thereby capping him off at the knees. This is what anonymous sources are used for nowadays, not whistle-blowers, as it should be.
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p>The reason why the Blogosphere has been powerful and effective is because it’s basically a meritocracy. People gain credibility through earned merit, not behind the mask of an important brand name. (As an aside, the “meritocracy” is exactly why I and many others take EB3’s reporting with a relative grain of salt, much of his “inside knowledge” has been proven wrong over and over again.)
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p>Marcy Wheeler of Fire Dog Lake, for example, has enormous credibility not because she works for Fire Dog Lake, but because she’s uncovered some of the most important stories that have happened in the past few years. When she uses anonymous sources (rarely), we believe her not because she works for a big media company and we should always believe big media companies, but because she has a strong record for being right. People listen to what Atrios and Digby have to say because they gained long-standing credibility long before they ever decided to ‘out’ themselves.
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p>At this point, the Globe doesn’t have that credibility. Few in the MSM do. In fact, one of the key reasons why most MSM papers have lost credibility is because of their widespread ill usage of anonymous sources! When the MSM as we know it dies out, it’ll be because of their own doing. But, as we see quite clearly in Joanie’s piece today, they still don’t get it. They still think that they should have added shield protections because they have jobs with “important” papers, while bloggers should not, because they rely solely on earned merit by longtime readers. The ironic thing here is Joan complains about BMG when David and Charley have far more credibility on this subject than she will ever have.
That was a typo!
Not to worry 🙂
If I were a journalist I’m not sure I’d want to make the trade-off that you imply. It’s also worth pointing out that many of us when providing commentary do link a mainstream source for the background information. Besides is Vennochi really the one to compare here? That is, isn’t she a columnist rather than a reporter? I think that difference might be important too, at least in some cases. I agree that the MSM has fallen short sometimes, but all else being equal I’m still more comfortable with a major newspaper, network, or wire service for the straight reporting, though blogs are often good for connecting the dots.
What’s to be gained by working for the industry?
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> a reliable paycheck (notable ones still get paid a lot)
> decent benefits
> a byline in a big paper. If you like seeing your name in print, you’re much, much more likely to try to work in print than you are in the blogs. Vanity is not just limited to EB3, after all.
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p>What’s gained from reading blogs?
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p>> reading about things not covered in the MSM
> “Connecting” those dots.
> Getting the real story the media won’t print.
> A community to belong to.
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p>You’re going to have to be more specific.
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p>As for personal preferences, that’s your right. But please consider the fact that you only “trust” them more because of their longstanding brand, not because they’re actually better. Your “trust” in the Globe is akin to having “trust” in McDonalds — it’s all from PR, little of it earned (in this century, anyway). That doesn’t mean I think the MSM should go bye-bye, it DOES mean that I think individual reporters should be weighed and measured as we do bloggers, as well as individual papers, etc. I keep track of who writes what in the Globe because I want to remember the ones who have written atrocious (or great) articles in the past, just like I keep track of bloggers.
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p>At the same time, I remember the limitations that reporters working for MSM have that bloggers don’t — they truly can’t write some of the things they should because of the way they’ve been trained and the ways their editors have been trained, as well as the fact that they don’t want to upset advertisers (and thus avoid “controversy”). It’s unfortunate for readers, but the MSM picked up bad habits that hurt the public — resorting to he-said, she-said, always looking for opposition when some things are just plain facts, and frequently limiting stories to two sides when there can be one or dozens (this EB3 thing is a perfect example — branding EB3 as a BMG liberal is just getting the story wrong).
…what’s to be gained by being so generous with granting anonymity. I guess it could mean access, but after a while it seems the credibility side of the equation suffers and the value of the reporting gets diluted. What I was trying to say is I’m not sure I’d want to make that trade. I’m also not sure why the media are not wising up more quickly. The knock on them seems to be that they don’t do the job they should be thus losing credibility and circulation/ratings. Doesn’t that mean that if they want to stay in business they should go back to doing the job they are supposed to be doing, good well-researched reporting and analysis? There seems to be a disconnect that leads to the media actually acting contrary to their own self-interest, assuming that interest is selling papers/getting ratings.
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p>That’s the way the MSM is bred, so to speak. In that world, few want to challenge the status quo. Few want to pass on a juicy, scandalous story because the sources, complete with agendas, will only speak on the condition of anonymity.
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p>If you’re used to doing things a certain way, it’s not easy to change. The media is used to this system. It’s a lot easier to take the phone call of a “source on Beacon Hill” and print some scandal than it is to dig deep down and actually find it, as well as any agendas involved with that ‘story.’ These stories work individually for the papers, even if over time they’ve done a lot of damage to the industry. But what reporter or editor thinks about things like that over the long haul? It’s an industry that’s about the next story, not the 100 previous and next 100 yet to be.
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p>One would think, but the industry is money-poor right now and real news, complete with top-notch research, takes a lot of time and money. Individually, the gossipy, anonymously-sourced articles are much cheaper and catch enough readers as to be worth it in the short term. But what keeps people reading over the long haul is the researched, informed news that costs money to produce and isn’t just he-said, she-said. The bleed was too slow for the industry to realize their mistakes.
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p>Dinosauritus. They had a system that worked for generations. Owning a newspaper was like owning gold, it was gauranteed profits, year in and year out, no matter recession or boom years or something in between.
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p>They were the only game in town and, after newspapers eating each other year after year, there was very little competition. Therefore, they could not only have those gauranteed profits, but cut, cut, cut the newsroom to get even bigger profits — there was little competition in town for people to turn to when the quality dropped.
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p>This new-fangled thing came along called the internet and not only challenged their volume of readers, but worse yet, hit them on their bottom line through operations like Craigslist, instantly wiping away 20% of their bottom line.
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p>The thing is, they could have been the Craigslist, they could have been the blogosphere, but the dinosaurs at top liked their business model and didn’t think anything could challenge it until it was very quickly gone. With 20% of their profits wiped out, they were subject to the whims of the economy at precisely the time the economy went caplut — and after years and years of cutting content to increase profits, losing readers.
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p>Did I mention the gigantic debt most papers took on as they gobbled each other up? The NYT bought the Globe for a billion dollars in the 90s — and is having trouble giving it away at $20 million now. That debt adds up — and a lot of newspapers just don’t have the money to pay it. They bought newspapers at overvalued prices and the profit margins of the paper just couldn’t afford the debt — that’s precisely what happened with the Chicago Tribune and others. The NYT denies that’s what’s happening with them, but the fact remains they took on (foolish) debt they couldn’t afford to pay off.
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p>I value the media — even the MSM — but they have absolutely no one to blame when they die off, but themselves. And dying off they are. They refused to change with the times and they took on giant debt in an effort to buy each other off. Do I enjoy that fact? No. While there are a lot of commonly bad practices in the MSM, they also produce a lot of great news, too. The good news is there’s always a market for good news — the models of business may change, as well as the big brands, but it won’t go away. With a little luck, what comes out of this information revolution of sorts may be something better — a more responsible media that cares more about news than profits.
Some folks around here have credibility, others just have reputation. In any case, when you post things that are provable, you gain credibility.
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p>If the guy at the end of the bar correctly predicts if Da Bears will cover the spread 10 weeks in a row, it doesn’t much matter if he’s a math geek, former NFL coach, well connected bookie, mafia hit man, or just damn lucky. You pay attention to his Bears prediction on week 11.
You get your name spelled correctly for that one.
Thanks, I think.
like in the Wizard of Oz
In a week where far right vitriol went from “I want Obama to fail” to actually cheering his failure to bring the Olympics to the US and talk of possible military intervention to correct the last election, Joan has a problem with a blogger calling for a boycott of Howie Carr?
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p>Really???
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p>I send my money into Verizon, Fallon, Star Market, and Commerce and they in turn pay Carr, not to disagree with me, but to deliver personal attacks and to disparage me, my friends, neighbors and associates. Basta!
Is he EBIII?