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Jewish World Review July 9 , 2000 / 6 Tamuz, 5760
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
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 far 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
An Open Letter From
Jeff Jacoby To His Friends
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