Statement by Jeff Jacoby
on his recent suspension from The Boston Globe
Jeff Jacoby
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 10, 2000
Dear friends,
As you may know, I am undergoing some difficulty.
At 4:15 last Friday, I was suspended without pay for
four months from my job at The Boston Globe, and effectively
invited to resign. I was put on notice that if I do choose to
return in four months, there would have to be a "serious rethink"
of the kind of column I write.
The Globe is accusing me of "serious journalistic
misconduct" in connection with my July 3 column on the signers of
the Declaration of Independence. That theme -- the lives of the
signers, and what happened to them after July 4, 1776 -- has been
explored many times. One bibliography lists works on the subject
dating back to 1820. When I sat down to write the column, I had
before me a version written by Paul Harvey, another published by
Rush Limbaugh, and a third sent to me a year ago by a reader.
Using those versions -- which all told much the same story, in
much the same words -- as a starting point, I did my best to
verify the information. I checked encyclopedias of American
history, consulted books I own on the Revolutionary War, and
visited web sites that provide biographical material on the
founders. I made a special point of checking sites that debunk
"urban legends" and other Internet myths, since I knew that at
least some of what is said about the signers is not historically
accurate.
I knew, too, that an anonymous e-mail on the signers
of the Declaration had been making the rounds. In fact, when I
e-mailed my column to a group of friends, fans, and family
members on the evening of July 2, I noted that what I was sending
was NOT a rewrite of that e-mail, which I knew to contain errors.
Of course, it too told approximately the same story, using
approximately the same language, as all the other versions.
Since I was relating lore that has been related over
and over, and since all of the sources I relied on had relied in
turn on even earlier recitations, I assumed that all the material
in my column was in the public domain. It never occurred to me to
include a line pointing out that I was fa r from the first to
write about the fates of the Declaration's signers. Had I added
such a line, Globe officials tell me, none of this would be
happening.
On Monday, July 3, I asked if I could repair the
oversight by adding a correction to my next column. Permission to
do so was denied. Instead, an Editor's Note pointing out that
"the structure and concept for [my] column were not entirely
original" appeared on the op-ed page on Thursday, July 6. The
next morning, I was given an opportunity to explain how the
column had been written. A few hours later, I was suspended.
I joined The Globe as an op-ed columnist in February
1994. (The first line of my first column was: "So what's a nice
conservative like me doing in a newspaper like this?") In the six
and a half years since, I have produced close to 600 columns. I
invite anyone to judge my integrity and my journalistic ethics on
the basis of the work that I have done for The Globe. To my
knowledge, the paper has never had any reason to question my
work, or to doubt that I hold myself to the highest standards
when writing for publication. Six years' worth of superlative
evaluations of me are on file in The Globe's personnel records. I
think it is fair to say that I have been a credit to The Boston
Globe and have improved the paper's reputation.
What is happening now is a nightmare.
In accusing me of "serious journalistic misconduct,"
The Globe is poisoning the good name I have spent years building
up. This suspension is a brutal overreaction to something that
even The Globe will not call plagiarism and doesn't characterize
as a willful violation.
No one deserves to lose his income for a third of a
year because a column lacked a sentence that might have
underscored how common the column's theme was. I am deeply
concerned about my family's future, of course. And I am deeply
concerned about my reputation.
It is a great privilege to write a column for a
prominent daily newspaper. Over the past six years I often
expressed my gratitude to The Boston Globe -- both publicly and
privately -- for giving me such a wonderful pulpit. And I
endeavored, twice each week, to make good on that gratitude by
writing a column of which The Globe could be proud.
I thought my future at the paper was limitless. It
has been shocking and traumatic to discover how wrong I was.
Sincerely,
Jeff Jacoby
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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