At a barbecue this weekend, the hostess mentioned that she regularly saw Mike Barnicle, the disgraced former columnist from The Boston Globe, on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough’s daily morning show on MSNBC. This friend had read my memoir, Brassy Broad: How one journalist helped pave the way to #MeToo, in which I devoted an entire chapter explaining why Barnicle and another columnist were fired from The Globe within months of each other after getting caught making up stories for their Metro columns. My friend wanted to know what I thought of Barnicle’s media comeback. Since I rarely watch TV news shows, I was surprised to hear that he was a regular contributor on MSNBC, and yet not that surprised. Just like a cat, Barnicle had nine lives. Even after he was fired from The Globe in 1998 (for plagiarizing jokes from the comedian George Carlin and fabricating stories in an earlier column), a local TV news show kept him on the air as a commentator and he regularly appeared on Don Imus’ radio show in the early 2000s.
Plagiarism and fabrication are cardinal sins in journalism, and I can’t help but wonder if a woman or minority journalist who was found guilty of similar ethical transgressions would find a new job as a commentator on a national cable network. I think of Jayson Blair, a young African-American reporter (whom I also knew because he interned at the Boston Globe) and was hired while still in his 20s by the New York Times. A talented writer, he was quickly promoted to national correspondent but it wasn’t long before he was found to have fabricated a number of stories on his new beat — in a scandal that made national headlines. Jayson Blair has never worked in journalism again. Similarly, Patricia Smith, the other Globe columnist who was found to have fabricated details in her Metro columns (and whose fall led to a closer examination of Barnicle’s work) has never worked in journalism again either. Since her firing, Smith has gone onto a successful career as a poet and now teaches creative writing at the City University of New York. But she doesn’t teach or practice journalism.
Barnicle is a different story. He is a well-connected white man and despite his checkered past, other well-connected white men in journalism continue to hire him. Just last week, he had a lot to stay on Morning Joe about the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas and the hypocrisy of pro-life Republicans who care more about unborn children than about protecting school children from troubled individuals armed with semi-automatic weapons. I have to admit I agreed with everything Barnicle said, and I found him to be an astute and eloquent commentator. So the question is: does he deserve this kind of second chance? After all, he’s no longer writing his own column, merely offering his opinion on the news of the day. So there’s little chance of him making stuff up or plagiarizing others’ words. Even so, if I was the producer for Morning Joe, I’d keep Mike Barnicle on a tight leash. While it’s one thing to allow him to comment on the political response to mass shootings, I certainly would not want to hear from Barnicle about other people’s ethical transgressions. He simply has too many of his own.
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