Common Ground (103 page)

An ad hoc committee went to work with indisputable vigor, consulting other “opinion leaders,” distributing 50,000 bumper stickers which read: “Take it easy, for the kids’ sake,” cooperating with Boston’s Advertising Club in the production of radio-TV spots on which sports heroes like Bobby Orr and Carl Yastrzemski drawled, “It’s not going to be easy, but that never stopped Boston.”

Meanwhile, black demands were reinforced by pressure from Mayor White, who had both institutional and political reasons to play down any violence that might develop in the autumn. In two meetings with media representatives and two more with “on-air talent”—none of which was publicly reported—White and his aides urged the press to handle racial incidents judiciously, avoid any language or pictures which might exacerbate tensions, and put the best possible face on desegregation.

These proposals found their readiest acceptance among radio and television executives, who viewed the committee as a convenient means of satisfying FCC requirements that they respond to community needs. Not burdened by such considerations, newspapermen were more wary of “pack journalism,”
more alive to the dangers of “news management.” By midsummer, several
Globe
representatives had raised warnings about the process. But the Ad Hoc Committee—with John Taylor’s participation—plunged ahead with its most controversial project, a “Boston Media Statement” proclaiming the press’s own commitment to the court order. Early that summer, it drafted a declaration which said, in part, “We shall spare no effort, nor overlook any resource at our disposal, to ensure that everything possible is done to make integration work … because the law tells us it is right and necessary.” Eventually cooler heads prevailed, settling on more modest language: “We need all Bostonians to help make school opening this September safe and quiet. We have a mandate from the federal court to desegregate our schools. Some of us agree With that decision; some of us don’t. But there is one thing we can all agree with; we love our children and we want no harm to come to them. We all must come together to that end, because it is our kids that count.” Signed by twenty newspaper, television, and radio executives—John Taylor for the
Globe
—it was released on August 25, just two weeks before the first buses rolled.

Later, press critics would submit that statement as evidence that Boston’s media had compromised their credibility by engaging in cooperative efforts verging on self-censorship. There could be little doubt that some institutions temporarily abandoned objectivity. The
Herald American
’s lead story on the morning school opened read like a sermon: “The safety of 94,000 children and the salvation of Boston’s historic standing as a community of reasonable and law-abiding families are at stake today as the city reopens its public schools.” Lovell Dyett, operations manager of the NBC outlet, put it most explicitly when he said, “We are going to use television to create an atmosphere of compliance with Judge Garrity’s order.”

The
Globe
’s position was more complicated. Bob Phelps, with his
Times
ian sense of propriety, had no use for either the Media Committee’s or the Mayor’s exhortations, assiduously keeping his distance from both. When
Time
magazine later suggested that the
Globe
had been part of a civic conspiracy to “play it cool” and “downplay any incidents of violence,” Phelps and Winship were furious.

But the
Globe
needed no conspiracy for it to treat the busing story with special care. For generations the Taylors had never doubted they were citizens of Boston first and newspapermen second. In Tom Winship that tradition was reinforced by Phil Graham’s brand of liberal activism. Since the early sixties, when it lobbied for Ed Logue’s appointment as Redevelopment director, then got him the resources he needed, the
Globe
had rarely hesitated to put its muscle behind objectives it regarded as salutary. Uninhibited by traditional journalistic objectivity, which he once described as “a code word for playing it safe,” Tom Winship periodically mobilized his news pages for crusades to control handguns or prohibit the sale of beverages in non-returnable bottles. Behind the scenes, Winship and Healy cooperated with Kevin White, Frank Sargent, and other officeholders on projects to advance the public weal. Prospective
candidates, zealous legislators, advocates of every stripe danced attendance on the
Globe
, seeking its patronage. If power-conscious Bostonians had once asked, “What does Lake Street think?”, now they wondered, “What does Morrissey Boulevard say?”

To Davis Taylor and Tom Winship alike, the
Globe
’s responsibility in that fall of 1974 was clear: to guide Boston through its travail with the least possible injury to all parties. In mid-August, Phelps drafted and Winship issued an extraordinary document, a “Memo to All Hands” containing thirteen “guidelines” for busing coverage. Taken one by one, most were journalistic platitudes: “We talk to all sources dispassionately, keeping our views to ourselves,” “We check out rumors and tips, not print[ing] them unless substantiated.” But some reflected unusual anxiety: “In such a delicate situation, it is imperative that headlines be scrupulously accurate, that headline words be chosen with delicacy …” “The editing of stories regarding the integration situation also should be done with utmost care.” And some seemed significant precisely because Phelps and Winship felt it necessary to say them out loud: “We print an accurate record of what our reporting finds. If there is violence, we say so…. We do not suppress news because it doesn’t fit our views of what we hope happens…. Above all, we must remember that the Boston
Globe
’s credibility is at stake. Our news columns must be believed—not just by those who agree with our editorial policy, but by those who disagree. Our aim is to convince all that the
Globe
is committed to the goal of seeking out the truth.”

A few days later, when assignments for the opening day of school were handed out, veteran
Globe
staffers were flabbergasted at the battle plan Phelps had devised: a small army of reporters—sixty in all—was to be deployed across the city, manning every site of potential trouble. “You almost got the feeling that by covering every base, we were covering our own asses,” one reporter recalled. “We were suffering one of the most massive cases of corporate angst in history.”

Despite this meticulous preparation—or perhaps precisely because of it—the
Globe
’s opening-day coverage set off acrimonious debate both within and outside the newspaper. Although angry crowds had stoned black children in South Boston, injuring nine and leading the Mayor to prohibit gatherings of three or more persons, the
Globe
appeared the next morning with a reassuring headline: “Boston Schools Desegregated, Opening Day Generally Peaceful.” The lead story emphasized “a minimum of confusion and disruption throughout the city,” saving South Boston’s troubles for the third paragraph. Page one was dominated by a large picture of black and white elementary students bathed in ethereal light as they got acquainted in a school yard, while the
Globe
’s lead editorial, headlined “A Fine Beginning,” suggested that the day’s events “had to be regarded as a plus.” The
Herald American
took a similar tack, as did most local television and radio stations.

This contrasted sharply with the national media, most of which focused relentlessly on the disruptions. “Violence Mars Busing in Boston,” headlined
the New York
Times
over a story by its Boston correspondent, John Kifner, who opened with “Rock throwing, jeering crowds in South Boston,” waiting for the second paragraph to report that “other parts of the city were calm.”

Soon recriminations were flying back and forth, the national press accusing the locals of cover-up, Bostonians charging out-of-towners with yellow journalism. One confrontation took place at Harvard, where
Globe
editors and national reporters gathered to discuss busing coverage. Late in the evening, after several drinks had been consumed, Bob Phelps got into a heated altercation with the
Times
’s Kifner.

“You covered that first day like a police reporter,” Phelps chided. “The real story was that seventy-nine out of eighty schools were completely peaceful, but you focused on the one that had trouble.”

“Sure,” Kifner shot back. “If 3,000 jets take off on a given day and all but one land safely, you don’t write, ‘2,999 Airliners Arrive at Destinations,’ you write ‘Jet Crash Kills 200.’ ”

“But airliners land safely every day,” Phelps retorted. “This wasn’t a routine event, it was an important test. If you test 100 missiles and 99 of them perform adequately, you don’t write, ‘One Missile Crashes,’ you write, ‘99 Percent Hit Targets.’ ”

There was something to be said for each position. But nothing could exonerate the
Globe
in the eyes of Boston’s embattled Celts. A decade of liberal causes—civil rights, Vietnam, the youth culture, women’s liberation—had irrevocably eroded the Irish neighborhoods’ faith in the newspaper they had once called their own. The paper’s positions on birth control, abortion, gay rights, pornography, and the like eventually led the Massachusetts Council of the Knights of Columbus to condemn its “irreligious attitude toward all things Catholic.” And now
Globe
editorials were hammering relentlessly at the resisting white parents, warning them that their anti-busing position was not only illegal but immoral. Tom Winship had the final word on editorial policy, but most of these dissertations were the work of a determined Yankee named Anne C. Wyman. The
Globe
’s one true Brahmin (her
C
stood for Cabot), she lived on a Cambridge hillside from which she viewed the busing issue in starkly moral terms. Hers was the “Cotton Mather position,” by which she meant, “If it’s right, it’s right. Once you embark on the course, there’s no turning back.”

But it was less the paper’s editorials that nettled South Boston and Charlestown than the abstraction with which the
Globe
covered such communities, rarely capturing their gritty intensity, their sense of turf, their smoldering resentment. Traditionally, the
Globe
approached its fragmented city through a corps of emissaries. Eager that every racial and ethnic community feel represented in its pages, it used society writer Alison Arnold to address the Yankees, Leo Shapiro the Jews, Dexter Eure the blacks, Bob Healy the Irish. For years Healy took this responsibility seriously, arguing that the
Globe
’s essential constituency was “Joe Six-pack,” the Irish Catholic father of six who lived in a Dorchester three-decker, attended his parish church, drank at the neighborhood tavern. But once Healy got a Nieman Fellowship, began lecturing at
the Institute of Politics and playing squash at the Harvard Club, he eagerly shouldered all the liberal banners. Nobody could be as tough on his co-religionists: “If they don’t like integration,” he’d say, “we’ll shove it down their throats.” Joe Six-pack might find solace in the
Globe
’s more conventional micks—Dave Farrell, a shrewd practitioner of clubhouse politics, and Jeremiah Murphy, a sentimental raconteur of Gaelic legend—but most of the street-wise Irishmen left on the paper were aging veterans shunted aside by Winship’s youth movement. The young Ivy Leaguers who now filled the newsroom were ill at ease in the Irish neighborhoods, unable to belly up to the bar with longshoremen and truck drivers. The handful of reporters who still lived in the city had long since removed their children from the public schools and could feel little connection to families still trapped by those dismal institutions. Desperate for someone to cover the thankless “anti-busing” beat, Phelps had turned that summer of 1974 to a New York Jew named Bob Sales, widely regarded as one of the paper’s savviest reporters. But Phelps and Sales were temperamentally incompatible. By September the
Globe
had nobody assigned full-time to cover ROAR and its allies.

One of the few staffers at home in Southie’s taverns was columnist Mike Barnicle, an engaging young Irishman hired directly off the political circuit, where he had written speeches for John Tunney and Ed Muskie. On the first day of busing, Barnicle stationed himself across the street from South Boston High, blending easily with a crowd of angry whites, some of them brandishing sticks and bottles. That afternoon he wrote a vivid column filled with quotes like “Goddamned niggers! Why don’t you go to school in Africa!” Fearing that such unvarnished realism would only inflame the situation, Winship killed the column. Later he dropped three more commentaries and two Szep cartoons in an effort to stem the angry tide lapping at the
Globe
’s doorstep.

But it was too late. Anti-busing leaders kept the movement’s wrath focused on the
Globe
, State Senator Billy Bulger denouncing its “paternalism” and “contempt for the Boston resident,” School Committeeman John Kerrigan labeling it “a corrupt and immoral newspaper,” its reporters “maggots of the media.” After several reporters covering South Boston were threatened by angry crowds, the
Globe
removed the paper’s name from the side of staff cars and developed a special SOS—“Bulldog!”—which could be shouted across its walkie-talkie network. Though editors did not sanction subterfuge, some reporters when challenged said they worked for the
Christian Science Monitor
. But no stratagem could deflect Southie’s rage. For weeks the
Globe
received bomb threats almost nightly, causing lengthy searches and evacuations. Other callers threatened to kidnap several Taylor children, to break one reporter’s kneecaps, to kill both Phelps and Winship.

ROAR sought to harness this anger to a city wide boycott of the
Globe
. In mid-October, three men made the rounds of South Boston newsdealers warning that if they continued to carry the paper, their stores would be firebombed. A police investigation produced no arrests, but several dealers refused to stock the
Globe
and newsstand sales in the neighborhood fell off sharply. Meanwhile,
anti-
Globe
graffiti sprouted on walls and roadways: “Print the Truth,” “Mash the Maggots.” Over the next few months the paper’s circulation in the city declined by 15,000, about 12 percent of its Boston readership, though barely 3 percent of total sales. Although some of this decline stemmed from a simultaneous rise in subscription prices, the boycott probably cost the
Globe
7,000 readers. A modest loss, scarcely threatening the paper’s preeminence, it might have been larger were it not for the immense popularity of the
Globe
sports pages in the very neighborhoods most angered by its busing coverage.