Parliament of Whores ... and Tattletales

Matt Welch | April 8, 2005

More tales of journalists behaving badly: Boston Herald columnist Charles Chieppo has been given a $10,000 contract by Taxachussetts Governor Mitt Romney "to promote the governor's environmental policies," according to the Boston Globe.

His job calls for writing op-ed pieces and internal documents "to support the efforts of senior management to promote education, awareness, and acceptance of major policy initiatives" on the environment.

Chieppo will work two days a week until at least June 30. He also plans to continue writing op-ed columns for the Herald, where he is paid for each article.

Meanwhile, if we can believe Lloyd Grove, the Gray Lady is turning into the Gray Sex-Snitch:

The perils of Iraq have nothing on the nasty fracas erupting between former New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief Susan Sachs and her ex-colleagues, Times Baghdad correspondents Dexter Filkins and John Burns.

The Gray Lady's management has just fired Sachs, a widely respected and experienced journalist who has tangled bitterly with Burns and Filkins, over allegations that she sent anonymous letters and an E-mail to their wives alleging bad behavior with women in the war zone.

Comments

|4.8.05 @ 1:30PM|#

Awesome, another Globe vs. Herald catfight.

Warren|4.8.05 @ 1:34PM|#

heh, most amusing :)

Mike|4.8.05 @ 1:59PM|#

nothing worse in life than c blocker.
I mean that in all 'jest' of course.

|4.8.05 @ 4:27PM|#

"alleging bad behavior with women in the war zone."

Bad behaviour means they stole leads from the womyn, right ? Right ?

|4.8.05 @ 5:44PM|#

They fired a whistleblower. Oh, the irony!

|4.8.05 @ 7:41PM|#

But considering that she works for the NYT, how do we know she didn't make the whole incident up or that she was even in Iraq in the first place?

R C Dean|4.11.05 @ 9:39AM|#

Not only would I fire someone who sent anonymous email to a colleague's spouse accusing their colleague of infidelity, I have in fact done so.

I didn't care if the accusation was true or not. Within five minutes after confirming who had sent the email (the idiot had done it from a company computer), they were were fired. This was not a difficult decision. I don't need anyone in my organization who will try to destroy someone else's family life in order to win some petty internal political struggle.

|4.11.05 @ 12:08PM|#

In other words, she should have minded her own business and the business of her employer and not the personal business of her colleagues.

I wonder, at what point does a corporation or the government finally decide that it's pointless and wasteful to spend time, money and resources on witch-hunting people for what they do outside the workplace?

Not to mention the costs of hiring and firing personnel and the time lost while a new hire gets to a point that they are actually as useful to an organization as the person fired...