The Boston Globe needs a better city editor. How else does one explain sending a reporter all the way to Guatemala to report on the illegal aliens who once worked for a company that maintained Gov. Mitt Romney’s lawn?
It’s stories like these that put the lie to the mainstream media’s denials that they have grudges to pick and axes to grind. This is a story that should have been spiked at the initial idea stage by a fair editor. That would have saved The Globe some embarrassment as well as some money.
Even a layman, meaning someone who is not a northeastern liberal journalist, would look at the facts and dismiss this story out of hand. You don’t need a journalism degree for that. But you have to understand, Romney is a legitimate Republican presidential contender for 2008. Therefore, The Globe, must try anything to tar Romney with some kind of scandal. And so it begins.
Just look at the headline on the story: “Illegal immigrants toiled for governor.” I can almost see the smirking copy editor who wrote it. “Well, it’s technically correct,” he probably told his copy desk chief.
“Damn good work,” the copy desk chief probably responded. “Now everyone will think Romney hired these guys himself rather than just hiring the firm that hired them. But just to give us some cover, put a subhead on it that gives us some weasel room.”
So a subhead was added: “Guatemalans say firm hired them.” See how clever that is. The headline says the illegals “toiled” for Romney, but the small print says someone else “hired them.”
All of this poor journalism could have been accomplished cheaply and locally, but The Globe pulled out the stops on this one. It sent a reporter to Guatemala to interview people who used to work on Romney’s lawn. I say they sent someone there because the dateline on the story is Suchitepequez, Guatemala, not Boston. A dateline is supposed to mean that’s where the story was reported from, so I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume The Globe is being truthful about that.
I checked Expedia.com and roundtrip flights (I’m assuming they wanted the reporter to return) from Boston’s Logan Airport to Guatemala City run from $870 to $1,035. Add a hotel stay, meals, a rental car, and maybe bribes since this is a Third World country, and you have a pretty expensive irresponsible story.
Here’s what that $2,000 or so got them: an interview with Rene Alvarez Rosales, one of the men who used to work for the Community Lawn Service with a Heart:
For about eight years, Rosales said, he worked on and off landscaping the grounds at Romney’s home, occasionally getting a “buenos dias” from Romney or a drink of water from his wife, Ann.
Well, there you have it. Romney must have known, right? Why else would he say “buenos dias”? And that water story is useful since it shows just how patronizing the Romneys were to the peones working on their grounds.
But there needed to be more, so The Globe went to great pains to point out Romney’s opposition to illegal immigration. See, that makes him a hypocrite, which all Republicans are anyway:
As Governor Mitt Romney explores a presidential bid, he has grown outspoken in his criticism of illegal immigration. But, for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the grounds surrounding his pink Colonial house on Marsh Street in Belmont.
What was Romney to do, assume that any Hispanic worker is illegal? Why, that’s racial profiling, and that’s a bad thing, isn’t it? The mainstream media tell us so almost daily.
Romney’s probably also against organized crime, but should he assume that any person of Italian heritage working for any company he might hire is a Mafioso type? Should he assume that any Middle Eastern cabbie who gives him a ride is a terrorist?
I think what you have here is The Boston Globe, a left-wing MSM member in good standing, demanding that the governor of Massachusetts engage in racial profiling. I can’t see it any other way.
Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.