Herald severs ties with op-ed columnist
Failure to disclose consulting job cited
The Boston Herald yesterday ended its relationship with an op-ed columnist who is also working as a promotional writer for Governor Mitt Romney's administration after learning that the writer had failed to disclose a separate contract with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority.
Charles D. Chieppo began a contract worth up to $32,000 with the convention center in February to organize a conference to promote the state's tourism industry. The Globe reported yesterday that Chieppo also began a $10,000 contract with the Romney administration this week to pen op-ed pieces and material touting the governor's environmental policies.
Gwen Gage, a spokeswoman for the Herald, said Thursday that the paper's editorial page editor, Rachelle Cohen, had approved Chieppo's environmental consulting work with the administration because he had disclosed it and because he agreed not to write about any topics related to his contract. However, Chieppo did not disclose the convention center contract; Cohen learned about it when a Globe reporter called yesterday seeking comment.
''Rachelle did not know about that [contract], and the deal that she had with Charlie was that he disclose any consulting work that he was doing," Gage said.
Herald publisher Patrick Purcell issued a brief statement saying, ''Upon further review, the Boston Herald has decided to sever our relationship with Charles Chieppo."
Though he lost the Herald op-ed column, Chieppo apparently will continue working under the two state contracts.
Chieppo, who began writing on the Herald's op-ed page in January, said in an interview yesterday that it did not occur to him that he should have informed Herald editors about his convention center authority work, which pays $100 an hour. A former member of the authority's board of directors, Chieppo said he is forbidden by state ethics rules from accepting money for writing about the authority and thus never considered it an issue.
''It just didn't occur to me to be an issue because it was in an area that I was precluded from writing about anyway due to ethics rules, and clearly, that was an error in judgment on my part," Chieppo said.
Journalism ethicists applauded the Herald's decision to end the op-ed relationship with Chieppo. But they questioned why the paper was willing to tolerate any paid relationship that the columnist maintained with state government. A frequent focus of his weekly column was state government.
''As a regular op-ed columnist for one of two major papers in Boston, Chieppo couldn't go near two big subject areas without creating a conflict," said Stephen D. Burgard, director of Northeastern University's School of Journalism and former editorial page editor of the Orange County edition of the Los Angeles Times. ''Both the environment and tourism are significant arenas of public interest for editorial pages. It got to the point where he couldn't write credibly for the paper that hired him or, ironically, be of much use as a hired pen for either client."
Democrats yesterday focused their criticism not on the Herald but on the Romney administration, saying that the Chieppo contract smacked of an attempt by the Republican governor to ''purchase positive press."
''It's an outrageous breach of ethics on the part of the Romney administration, a violation of ethical standards," said Jane Lane, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party. ''It's perplexing that the Herald took this action, and the Romney administration, as usual, is silent."
Romney communications director Eric Fehrnstrom said such criticism was ''ridiculous" because he said neither he nor Romney knew of Chieppo's contract until the Globe brought to their attention. Fehrnstrom also drew a comparison between Chieppo's columns for the Herald and the columns written by Dan Payne, a former campaign aide to Senator John F. Kerry, that were published on the Globe's op-ed page during last year's presidential campaign.
''There really is no difference between Charlie Chieppo and Dan Payne except that Dan Payne disclosed his affiliations right up front," Fehrnstrom said. ''The key is to make disclosure. That's an issue for the Herald to work out with Charlie."
Payne's weekly columns appeared on the Globe's op-ed page with a disclosure at the top of the column that said Payne is ''a Boston-based Democratic media consultant who worked in John Kerry's Senate campaigns in the past but was not affiliated with his presidential campaign." Chieppo's op-ed column, by contrast, offered no description of his current or past affiliations.
Chieppo rejected assertions that his contract with the administration influenced his stance on issues he was writing about. ''I don't think that my op-eds are any different today than they were in the past," he said.
Prior to becoming a Herald columnist, Chieppo earned a six-figure salary as a top fiscal aide in the Romney administration. Before that, he worked at the Pioneer Institute, a conservative policy institute.
James Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, said that Chieppo signed his pact with the authority in February, and to date has billed $1,300, which represents 13 hours of work. Chieppo is attempting to put together a conference of policy makers, legislators, and industry leaders to devise ways of boosting the Massachusetts tourism and convention economy.
Rooney said he and Chieppo discussed his writing duties with the Herald at the outset, and that Chieppo ''would be staying away from the industry anyway."
''He did vet it with the [state] Ethics Commission and our attorney," Rooney said. ''He took all the steps one would be asked to take to see if these were issues, and they were done to my satisfaction."
He added, ''Anyone that knows Charlie would come to the conclusion that he's a person of supreme character. He would not engage in something that was deliberately in any way an ethical conflict." 