Last week, Beat the Press host Emily Rooney argued that Boston 2024 isn’t getting a fair shake from the press—and that a disturbing amount of abuse is being directed at John Fish, the construction magnate who chairs the group.
“There’s nothing,” she said, “like the combination of being wealthy, extremely handsome, and extremely successful to make you the target, especially of the Boston media.”
With all due respect to Emily, I think something else is going on here. Over the past few months, Olympic backers have made a bunch of big mistakes that hurt their credibility. The public is getting jittery. And the media is covering it all—because that’s our job.
Remember: In its pitch to the U.S. Olympic Committee, Boston 2024 offered some crucial assurances that didn’t hold up. For example, the group claimed it had already told local property owners they’d have to move for the games. But it hadn’t. The group also said its transportation wish list was fully funded, when it’s actually a couple billion dollars short. Those are legitimate stories, not examples of an overly negative press.
Boston 2024's hard sell to the public deserves scrutiny, too—and no one’s been selling harder than Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Yet some of Walsh’s moves may have hurt the Olympic cause. His decision to send key adviser Joe Rull from City Hall to Boston 2024 raised questions about where one entity ends and the other begins. Walsh’s decision to use his political machine to push the games had the same effect. And when the mayor signed a document banning city workers from criticizing the bid, it undermined his vows of Olympic transparency. (Walsh subsequently backed off.)
Also problematic, for anyone sizing up Boston 2024's pitch: the group’s deep ambivalence about “community involvement.” Back in January, when I interviewed Boston 2024 president Dan O’Connell on Greater Boston, he told me the bid would move forward, no matter what local residents had to say. Now, of course, Boston 2024 has switched gears and endorsed a statewide vote.
Yet there’s still a troubling tendency to speak about Olympic opponents as if they don’t really mean it, or their concerns don’t matter. As Walsh put it to me this week: “I’m not sure exactly how much sincere opposition is out there.”
John Fish, it’s worth noting, struck a more diplomatic note recently, calling concerns about Boston 2024 “thoughtful and legitimate” and acknowledging that his group had “made some mistakes.” “I think what happened here, honestly,” Fish said, “is that a narrative that wasn’t correct got ahead of us a little bit.”
But let’s be clear. The media didn’t write that narrative. Boston 2024 wrote it for itself.
