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MBTA knew the Globe was about to publish bogus info about some of its execs, yet did nothing to try to correct the info
By adamg on Mon, 11/13/2023 - 12:53pm
CommonWealth Beacon digs up new info on the saga of the nine MBTA officials the Globe wrote lived well out of the T district when, in fact, only six of them did: The Globe had to print corrections and fired the reporter, whom state and MBTA flacks knew was working on the story and knew the names of the officials yet refused to answer the reporter's calls for comment:
"Hi Michele," Pesaturo responded. "MassDOT has directed us to ignore the Globe’s questions."
CommonWealth reports that MassDOT declined to answer its questions on why it declined to answer Globe reporter Andrea Estes's questions.
Dan Kennedy says the CommonWealth story raises more questions of its own, such as why the Globe decided to terminate Estes, a longtime investigative reporter who recently got hired as a reporter at a Plymouth news startup - by an editor who was a longtime Globe editor.
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Comments
To be clear ...
The CommonWealth Beacon story is terrific, and it's the first time anyone has advanced this story since Estes got fired. But yes, there are still facts to be unearthed. (Note: I'm on the CommonWealth editorial advisory board.)
Magoo sez
By jiminy Magoo smells a foul smell such as Magoo’s old gym socks, or smellhaps (“smellhaps” is Magoo’s fun way of saying “perhaps” when talking about smelly stuff) it is a sickly rodent with a festering sore on it hind quarters (poor mousey). Magoo.
I don't know about her being fired
Maybe it's a bit harsh for a a mistake, I don't know how many she's had in the past but I do know you don't publish something about a person unless you have confirmation. If the MBTA was being non responsive ..for whatever reason, the Globe should have killed the story or parts of it they couldn't confirm.
Why kill the story?
Este had unearthed information. She contacted the parties to get their side of the story. She requested information from the T. Yes, there were errors, but the T could have corrected them. Let's just say all the information was true- if the T went all silent, would killing the story have advanced the public good? Silence often speaks louder than words.
Interesting to see that MassDOT opaqueness continues into the Healey administration.
Disagree
If all it took to kill a story was saying, "No Comment", there would be little point to investigative journalism. The Globe and the reporter no doubt thought they had a solid information about these employees and that was only reinforced by the MBTA's refusal to talk.
If the T denied the crux of the article and offered some form of proof and yet the Globe still published, that would be a different story.
My theory is that this is more incompetence by the T, not intended to be malicious or crafty. I'm willing to bet the MBTA honestly didn't know who among their staff was working in person and they didn't trust their own people to tell the truth. Rather than look even more foolish and defend a lie, they decided to just not comment. In the end it was the Globe who looked bad but it was only luck on the T's part that the Globe got the story wrong.
Some of the story wasn't true
That's what should have been removed.
Ockam says this was the excuse
"Meanwhile, friends of Estes at the Globe think there’s more to her firing than the corrections to her story. Other reporters at the Globe have had embarrassing corrections and retained their jobs. The friends of Estes speculate, without much evidence, that the corrections presented an opportunity to fire Estes because she wasn’t liked by some in top management."
Or, as was done with Beverly Scott, a scapegoat was wanted and a scapegoat was found.
Perhaps someone at the T pressured someone at the Globe to lop off a head. This is the MBTA where form follows function. Or this was a personal vendetta.
Whatever the reason this sounds like typical scapegoating. The easy way out of a sticky situation. Sad. Massachusetts is superior to many states. But when dealing with people in government making messy mistakes it is no better than any other state.
Worse is when one of the institutions that is needed to keep political and corporate leaders (of all corporate entities, profit and non-profit, business and academic - Boston is such a corporate city) leaders in check winds up acting with the same dysfunction and cowardice then the question of "Who watches the watcher?" becomes important.
Everett Leader
Andrea Estes's connection to Joshua Resnick and the dirt-worst people in local journalism, the Everett Leader Herald, certainly didn't help her standing with anyone.
I'm pretty surprised nobody brought this up already, tbh.
https://advocatenews.net/everett/news/birds-of-a-feather-how-the-corrupt...
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2023/01/31/everett-newspaper-mayor-l...