A few days ago, Boston 2024 rolled outs its new 30-member board of directors, a mix of (mostly) corporate executives, athletes, and USOC officials.
The Globe printed a handy list of all 30 members and a line or two of background information. However, in at least two cases, the Globe gave rather deceptive descriptions.
The first is Mo Cowan, who has already been a government relations adviser for Boston 2024 for some time. The Globe describes him as “the former chief of staff for Governor Patrick, who also served briefly as US senator.” This is all true. But he hasn’t been in the US Senate for almost two years now.
After leaving the Senate, Cowan went back to Mintz Levin, where he now serves as the Senior VP and Chief Operating Officer of the firm’s lobbying practice ML Strategies.
Here’s how ML Strategies describes its work:
From Beacon Hill to Capitol Hill, ML Strategies delivers superior government relations and consulting services. With deep knowledge in a range of issues including energy, transportation, health care, financial services, real estate, education, and telecommunications, our senior-level professionals in Boston and Washington, DC use their extensive experience in federal, state, and city government, as well as in the private sector, to build creative, informed, and strategic solutions that meet the goals of our clients.
In other words, he’s not a public servant as the Globe implies: he’s a corporate lobbyist.
We can also see the Globe’s deceptiveness at work when they describe former Boston 2024 President Dan O’Connell as a “former state housing secretary.” Again, that is not untrue. He was Secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development under Deval Patrick from January 2007 to February 2009.
However, that was over five years ago. What is Dan O’Connell up to now?
Well, he’s the President and CEO of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a self-described “public policy group comprised of chief executive officers of some of the Commonwealth’s largest businesses.” They’re open about who they are: a bunch of rich people trying to shape government to further enrich themselves.
The MCP consists of the CEOs of Raytheon, Mass Mutual, Suffolk Construction, Partners HealthCare, State Street Corporation, Fidelity Investments, The Kraft Group, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Liberty Mutual, Everousrce Energy, Bank of America, Putnam Investments, Staples, BJ’s Wholesale Club, and EMC—and then Jack Connors, the co-founder and former chairman of Hill Holliday.
Boston 2024 board members John Fish (Suffolk Construction), Roger Crandall (Mass Mutual), and Robert Reynolds (Putnam Investments) are all members of MCP. Joseph Hooley (State Street Corporation) and Jeffrey Leiden (Vertex Pharmaceuticals), who both serve on Boston 2024 advisory committees, are also members of MCP.
An organization that needs the co-operation of public officials to carry out its mission recruited a couple of (gasp!) connected lobbyists! O tempore, or mores – what a scandal! What’s next – will they try to conduct voter outreach in an effort to make a ballot question go their way? We couldn’t possibly have that now can we? (snark off)
There remains the question as to why the Globe choose not to report this information. For that matter, why does it always front page positive Olympic news and relegate negative stories to back sections? Why does it always put a positive spin on Olympic poll results?
To me it does make sense to identify a public figure to the public using his public title.
A good reporter will point out important connections when reporting a story and not just lazily pick some title to describe a person and leave it up to the reader to research what is really going on, especially for stories run on the front page. Whether this is the reporter’s fault or the editor or publisher’s fault is impossible to determine from where we are sitting.
I agree with Christopher that you identify public officials by their most recent titles, I would add though that some explanation that also states where they are working now is clearly in order. I also don’t see how getting more heavy hitters promotes the idea that this is a grassroots inspired community oriented event, if anything, it’s plays right into the hands of the narrative that these are corporate games for corporate overlords, not the regular people of Boston. Boston 2024 isn’t even ready for 2015.
the owner of the Red Sox needs Marty Walsh and many of the people on the MCP. The Globe will have a hard time being objective given John Henry’s wealth is in the baseball team and not the Globe.
I am not sure whether Henry has made any statement on where he stands with the Olympics, but given the public report of Lucchino’s interest in joining the effort it seems likely that he is for the Olympics.
I am sure the local sports team owners are wondering whether they can use the Olympics to get the City or Boston 2024 to pay for stadium upgrades. Don’t be surprised if the proposed Paw Sox stadium in Providence shows up on the venue list.