Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Fellow journalists: why do we embarrass ourselves like this? Why is it so difficult to pat each other on the back and say, "Great job"? Here's what I'm talking about. On Tuesday, the Herald revealed that Peter Berdovsky had videotaped police response to that wacky Mooninite stunt. But today--if you read the Globe or a zillion other publications, and missed the original Herald story--you'd never know who got there first. Here's the Associated Press write-up as reproduced in the Globe's "New England in Brief" section: Man charged in sign scare taped police
February 7, 2007
One of two men charged after placing cartoon advertisements around the city had videotaped a police bomb squad removing one of the devices, but did not tell officers the object was harmless. Surveillance cameras filmed Peter Berdovsky, 27, videotaping officers removing what they thought was a possible bomb. His lawyer, Walter Prince, said yesterday that Berdovsky "didn't do anything inappropriate." Prince said Berdovsky was unaware the bomb threat he went to shoot at the Sullivan Square T station involved one of the devices that he and Sean Stevens, 28, had hung. "When he got there, he realized what was going on, and he went back to his apartment and called his employer. And they told him they would take care of it," Prince said. Stevens was with Berdovsky , according to the Boston Herald. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Martha Coakley, who is prosecuting Berdovsky and Stevens on charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct, declined to comment. (AP)
What isn't mentioned, obviously, is that the Herald broke the story. Which is utterly predictable, since news outlets everywhere are generally loathe to acknowledge their competitors' successes. Just because this practice is commonplace doesn't make it any less asinine, however. If editors at AP and the Globe want to scream at their reporters for getting beat on this story, fine. But pretending the Herald scoop never happened is intellectually dishonest.
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