As long time readers of BO Blogs know, I am no fan of the Boston Globe. I’ve written about their misdeeds, their bias and even the time they wrote about dog crap. So nobody will be shocked that I picked up on this one.
If you haven’t heard, Boston Globe Patriots beat writer Ben Volin got himself into a little bit of trouble this morning. Volin, in an interview on WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show, had some things to say about the Patriots quarterback situation. He said while referring to Mac Jones, that “his attitude problem is obvious in the building and everyone knows it.” Volin got this information from “someone in his DMs.” This is quite the accusation to make, but not unheard of in football. Egos can be fragile especially among QBs and with Bailey Zappe showing good stuff, it could happen.
Anyway, Volin said this on WEEI so no more than 27 people heard it live. After the sound got out, it started to go viral. It even started to penetrate into the Barstool Sports world. In a thread on a Barstool personality Feitelberg’s Twitter, a fan whose name on Twitter is @nolanc79, posted that he fabricated the information that Volin reported on WEEI. Nolan said in a Tweet, “Yeah I did. I made it up to see if he was really this stupid and I cannot believe he ran with it.” This tweet was accompanied by this screenshot of a DM between he and Volin:
Needless to say, this blew up.
By my lunch break around noon, it was on Barstool’s website, and people were tweeting left and right. I even saw some claiming that Ben Volin should be fired for this indiscretion. Meanwhile, Volin, the Globe’s media columnist Chad Finn or anyone else from the Globe has weighed in. I personally reached out to Volin and got no response. As his report claims, I know he reads DMs from random people so he chose not to respond. Which I don’t blame him for, it has got him in trouble just this morning.
Now that you have the gym teacher Reader’s Digest version of the story, let’s get to why this is a bigger problem than a dumb throw away comment on a radio show that nobody is listening to.
The Boston Globe has had a nasty history of taking flawed sources and running with what they say as fact. I mean they currently employ at least one known liar on their writing staff. A Globe columnist named Kevin Cullen was caught lying about his involvement in the Boston Marathon Bombing. Cullen implied that he was at the scene of the bombing while he was not even close to the site. He made references to victims and fictitious first responders that he spoke to about the bombing. None of this happened. The Globe even punished him for this journalistic dishonesty. Oh and he’s still writing there.
With Cullen still working at the Globe, nothing reported there is to be trusted. If Cullen is allowed to write even after getting caught, who else is still lying in the Globe newsroom?
Well, we have our answer, Ben Volin.
How can a company with that kind of history of journalistic dishonesty allow this kind of stuff to happen? If I were Linda Pizzuti, the CEO of the Globe, I would dismiss Volin with no questions asked. If Pizzuti were an intelligent CEO of a “newspaper” this kind of stuff wouldn’t be tolerated. Especially after the Cullen situation. But here we sit and Volin is still employed at the Globe. And still no word from any higher ups.
The response on WEEI, the place where Volin decided to spout his bogus “report”, has been baffling. I’ll start by giving credit to Greg Hill who called what Volin said “nonsense” upon hearing it. He called it out quickly. But other than Greg, WEEI has been atrocious on this. Afternoon host Meghan Ottolini said that the Globe’s journalistic standards are “...very, very, very high.”
Come on. Your station just broke some big news for the first time in what seems like centuries and you won’t even lean into it. No wonder the ratings say that WEEI is in the toilet. Now I see why Volin chose to bring his BS on EEI, I figured nobody would hear it.
All of this is a long way of saying that people really need to take a look at the sources they get their info from. Not all “news” sources are created equal. Some are trustworthy. Other’s are questionable and need some confirmation. And then there’s the Globe, which shouldn’t be trusted at all. They now have (at least) two flawed journalists working there and they’ll do nothing about it. Until they do, I suggest anyone reading this avoid the Globe at all costs.