A Tale of Two Stories II: Screwing a Father’s Rights Group while Ignoring A Sex Scandal Involving Your Own Newspaper.

A Tale of Two Stories II: Screwing a Father’s Rights Group while Ignoring A Sex Scandal Involving Your Own Newspaper.

If the Berkshire Eagle has a reputation for one thing, it is getting a story wrong, intentionally getting a story wrong, or wantonly refusing to correct stories when they know they are wrong. A few years ago (2005)—conveniently just before an election when I was running for city council, a few of our officers decided to “fire” me though they did not have the votes. The obvious questions were not asked. Why did I just “resign” so as to save face? Why were these officers going public? Why would anybody, who supposedly cared about a movement, start attacking its leaders? Why were so many officers telling the Eagle they had the story wrong?

The action was pathetic, and the other officers just went about our affairs. Nobody wanted to meet for such a negative purpose. As everybody was ignoring them, waiting for our next meeting, they decided to get some attention.

And they didn’t just decide to fire me. Then, thanks to the lackluster and biased “reporting” at the Eagle, chaos broke out. One of the jerks went down to our local newspaper to make the big announcement, and the Eagle started taking it down word for word. So much of putting personal egos to the side for the good of the cause. Soon, the opinion of someone that would ordinarily be choked off as a certifiable nobody became a front page story.

Certainly this is fodder enough about some of the people that we bring into this fathers’ rights movement, but the story was—well, garbage. We told the reporter at the time, Jack Dew, to ask these officers who the officers were, what the bylaws were, the true purpose of the executive committee, etc. . . He didn’t bother to ask. It was a sort of “un-investigative” journalism—the kind where you don’t ask the type of questions that would unravel your story because you found out your sources weren’t true. One of these “sources” went on to also claim that he saw a couple having sexual intercourse in a tiny park completely visible to public in the middle of the day, that he clearly saw a police officer observing the same, and that the police officer simply turned away—an event that almost no probability of being true. And while I didn’t know it at the time, his own children and own brother had very low opinions of him caused by some of his antics.

So the Berkshire Eagle did a front-page story, and when they found out through e-mails that they had been lied to, they did what any unethical organization news agency does—they refused to tell the public that they had been lied to. We were able to show that one of the three officers that supposedly threw me out sent an e-mail which contained the bylaws, which clearly stated that in order to throw an officer out, there had to be a majority vote of all other officers. (They had lied and said that a sub-group of officers known as an executive committee had the power to remove an officer.) Apart from the obvious fact that the initial piece of journalism was shoddy and raised numerous questions, then Managing Editor Clarence Fanto decided that an e-mail indicating that they had been completely lied to from one of the “sources” itself provided no need to do a follow-up story. To their credit, the three officers that left have since formed another group and no longer use the name “Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition,” and have since returned property to our group, which they justly recognized as belong to our group.
So there you had it. A tiff in an assetless corporation, three upset officers, resulted in a front-page story alleging my ouster. Jonathan Levine, the editor of the Pittsfield Gazette (a weekly Pittsfield, Massachusetts based newspaper) stated that such a non-event was definitely not newsworthy. Levine, managing editor of the Dailey Hampshire Gazette Larry Parnass (Pioneer Valley), and journalist of from Metro-West daily all indicated that trashing an individual one day, and refusing to run a follow-up story when you found out the story was not true was journalism at its worst. (Both would not specifically comment on the particular story, but of the general subject of not correcting a scandalous article when all objective evidence indicated it was not true.)

The piece de resistance was that when I ran for city council on a number of platforms—PEDA reform (The Pittsfield Economic Development Authority), focusing on high tech and industry and less on tourism—I was completely ignored. These were issues critical to the city’s development. Any reasonably intelligent person can see the paper is extremely biased and only wants to run one negative story after another on our group, and ignore press release after press release regarding subjects of interest to fathers. The recent refusals to call our group regarding teen pregnancy in Pittsfield or the high dropout rate come to mind. In non-fatherhood related items, the Eagle completely ignored my legal efforts that stopped woods from being plowed down to make timeshares.

So why is this story of interest as of late? In a recent a story of the Eagle, they did an update by a female columnist who went by the name of “Jacuzzi.” Here is what happened a year prior to my front page splash on the Berkshire Eagle:

1. August 13, 2004, The World According to Jacuzzi, creation of local writer Juliane Glantz, runs its last column. The column started October 19, 2003.

2. On September 1, 2004, a very short story runs abruptly announcing that David Scriber, age 62, was resigning as Editor of the Eagle.

3. November 21, 2004—Eagle does a story that Tim Farcas will replace David Scribner (then 62), as editor of the Berkshire Eagle. David Scriber had been editor for nine years. The story said of David Scribner, “Following his [Scribner’s] resignation, the news department was headed on an interim basis by Managing Editor Clarence Fanto, a 17-year veteran of the newspaper.

4. July 2005. Despite the non-news story regarding the Scribner/Jacuzzi sex scandal, in 2005 the Berkshire Eagle has no problem writing about a sex scandal concerning Susan Sperber, executive director of the Colonial Theater, and Mr. Palmer, a member of its board and President of Berkshire Life.

5. July 19, 2005. Reporter Jack Dew digs for internal reports and memos regarding the alleged Colonial Theater sex scandal, and quotes many sources anonymously. He showed no interest in the alleged Scribner/Jacuzzi sex scandal a year prior. Sperber’s status has been the subject of widespread speculation since it was revealed that she and former board president Howell Palmer were involved in a romantic relationship and had moved in together. No detail is spared. Writes Dew, “Palmer, who is married, resigned from the board on June 9 and, a week later, stepped down as president of Berkshire Life Insurance Co. of America. Sperber is divorced.”
5. After covering up the alleged Scribner/Jacuzzi sex scandal where they “grew closer,” as the Eagle recently put it, on July 21, 2005, Eagle editorial writer William Everhart lambasts the then Colonial Theater director for her desires to keep a sex scandal she was involved in kept secret. Mr. Everhart stated in his editorial, “Ms. Sperber’s warning in her letter to the board that it should not make public statements about her private life may not sit well with members unhappy that Ms. Sperber’s relationship with Mr. Palmer, who resigned when the relationship went public, could compromise the Colonial’s fund-raising. Ms. Sperber is in no position to either demand or lecture.” Evidently, however, after a mums-the-word polilicy on the alleged Scribner/Jacuzzi sex scandal in 2004, in 2005 the Eagle feels they have a right to lecture others who would like to enjoy similar anonymity.

What the stories didn’t tell you is why Scribner resigned. While I have no personal knowledge, I have been told from several reliable sources (many journalist themselves) that he was having an affair with a newly hired female journalist, “Jacuzzi.” (It is supposed to be a “porn” name.) Whether Scribner made advances at her at work, or whether Jacuzzi came on to him to get the job as a columnist is not known. What is known is that they were both shown the door at about the same period in time. Assuming these highly credible sources are correct, it was this sex scandal regarding the editor of the area’s daily newspaper and a female columnist that inspired the Eagle to show Scribner the door.

Today, Jacuzzi is 32 years old—in 2004 she was 29. You have to give David credit, not many 62 year olds can say they run around with a woman literally less than half his age. In Jacuzzi’s first article, she said of “tank tops, belly rings, slinky skirts . . . Face it, they’re weapons.” One wonders if they landed her a job as a columnist.

And before you start feeling too sorry for lecherous, old Dave because of this piece that concerns him, trust me, his antics as an editor were less than above-board. Jack Dew, a journalist of the Eagle, did a sleaze piece where he called up people in our music festival to see if they supported us. There were several problems. He did not contact the contact person, who would have received an e-mail. If the e-mail had any fault at all was its prolixity about the event.

Moreover, Jack Dew lied. He called people and asked them about what he thought were are positions on such issues as domestic violence. The conversation I had with Dew was borderline insane. When I called him on his tactic, he said, the music festival was also about our positions on domestic violence and child support. When I told him that the music festival was only about shared parenting, he said that just wasn’t true. I ended in the Kafkaesque position of telling Jack Dew that the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition was in charge of the music festival, not the Berkshire Eagle, we picked the theme, and the theme was a celebration of shared parenting, his assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. Bands usually have several members, one who books the gigs. Jack Dew stated I was wrong, and that he knew what it “really” was about. While we clearly have positions regarding such issues, our literature never mentioned restraining orders or child support in connection with the event–Dew was completely out of line making contrary representation to people that wanted to perform. Jack randomly called people that were not the contact people, misrepresented what the music festival was about (domestic violence, child support, etc.), obtained shocked reactions based upon his own misrepresentations regarding the purpose of the event, and wrote an article highly suggesting that people were tricked into participating. It was classic small-town sleaze journalism.

The other switcheroo tactic was that when Dew asked me about people that claimed they did not what the music festival was about, he did not reveal who those people were. Did I ask so I could adequately respond? You bet I did. He wouldn’t tell me who these people were. Had he, I would have easily showed him a copy of the e-mail I sent their group. Instead, when he wrote the article, our crafty boy Jack cleverly wrote it so that when I made a general denial that I informed everybody what the music festival was about, he made it appear to the reader that he identified to me who the person whom he contacted was.

Could you imagine some artist volunteering for a battered women’s shelter being asked what they think of arrest policies based only on the allegation of the accuser? They have had such stories in the Eagle, and trust me, they never ask that question. Nor would I expect a musical performer—as opposed to the event organizer—to be put on the spot like that.

But it gets better. After writing the article about how certain band members were “confused” about the event and “tricked” into performing, knowing what bands he was talking about after the article was published, I was able to produce the e-mails sent to the contact person fully explaining our event. So you think Scribner would be a little shocked and disturbed by Dew’s tactics? Old man Scribner who had a thing for the young girls wasn’t too bothered by tricky Jacks tactics. It was sleaze journalism at its best. This is beside the point that almost in no other charitable action would a journalist actually call a volunteer performer and question their motives.

Which takes us to the March 22, 2007 story of the Berkshire Eagle of this year. The article just non-chalantly mentions that “Jacuzzi” has had children with David Scribner, all with the casualty one would expect one to say they liked a particular movie or had a particular hobby. The article states, “Now comes the controversy: Julianne feels she was a victim of circumstance. She and Scribner grew close during the time they worked together — they married last October and have two children together — and it wasn’t long after Scribner was asked to resign from The Eagle in August 2004 when she was notified that her column ‘would no longer be needed.’” I wish euphemisms like “growing close,” when a sex scandal was being described, could have been used when the paper was describing me. Face it. The editor of the newspaper was allegedly having sex with one of the paper’s female columnist that was less than half his age, not just “growing close,” and that will get you the door in many places. It raises obvious questions as to whether the columnist earned her job on her merits. If the hire or the retention was based upon sex, how much other bias and self-interest infused Scribner’s newspaper?
The irony in ignoring the Scribner/Jacuzzi sex scandal regarding the alleged forced resignation of the papers editor and the alleged termination of a columnist based upon an alleged sex scandal while putting myself on the front page of an obviously un-newsworthy story did not go beyond our notice. (In fact, I was returning telephone calls because I thought they were going to be doing a story about taking fathers off of birth certificates—that never became a story.) When we called the Eagle to get information on the Scribner alleged forced resignation from Clarence Fanto for our own newsletter—predictably—our telephone calls were never returned. The Gods do the questioning, and do not answer questions. The Berkshire Eagle refused to answer inquiries about Jack Dew’s questions. Oh to be famous as famous as former Yankee Pitcher Jim Boulton to get the attention of the national media when you are getting the sleaze treatment by your local paper.
To learn some of the antics the Eagle pulled off on Scribner’s watch, go here:
http://www.leagueoffans.org/gsbs031204.html
Some comments about the Berkshire Eagle while David Scribner was on watch:
“BILL MOYERS, PBS NOW: So the newspaper wanted to build a stadium, with public funds, on a piece of property the newspaper owned.”
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_bouton.html
Wild Pitch, American Journalism Review: “[The stadium situation raises] complex ethical questions about the role newspapers should play in setting–and pushing–an agenda for their communities. And it illustrates how corporate civic activism can entangle a newsroom and raise doubts about a newspaper’s credibility, particularly when the news organization is financially involved in a project and does not disclose every detail to its readers.” “As famous figures feud over the Eagle’s actions, its reporters go about their jobs, covering a city where their role as objective observers has been compromised.”
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3550
Humorously, Jacuzzi is quoted in the recent Eagle story, “’L.A. was a bit overwhelming for me,’ Julianne said. ‘It was all too much. There was this whole layer of schmoozing that I didn’t like, and you had to do it if you wanted to get somewhere in the business. I had the talent but not the personality, the toughness, the nothing-else-matters-but-success attitude.’” One wonders how much of that attitude stopped in LA and did not land her a job at the Eagle.
She appears, according to the Eagle article, to have two children from previous relationships, and two since she started dating David Scribner. According to the Eagle article, Scribner had a child with Jacuzzi, Isaac, 18 months ago as of this month, was married 6 months ago in October of 2006, and then had David, who is now 7 months old. David late life potency is a sign that Viagra works. (Perhaps the only thing worse then being the child of a 65 year old man is being the illegitimate child of a 65-year old man)
You have an alleged sex scandal that forced the resignation of the paper’s editor and lead to the dismissal of a columnist and it is buried in a small story, with no mention of the sex scandal. You have the head of father’s rights group, of an unincorporated assetless group, and I am splashed all over the front of the Berkshire Eagle. Do you think the paper has an agenda?
And surprise! Four years later we have a story about how the columnist and David Scribner are together and making babies together. Bata-bing, bata-boom. Something we forgot to tell you when David Scribner was “resigning” . . . The story made no mention of Scribner’s age.
Fathers’ rights activist and Berkshire residents should be asking themselves a very basic question: How in the heck did a story about three disgruntled officers of the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition turn into a front page story on the Berkshire Eagle when story after story after story regarding fathers were ignored? And, if that was newsworthy, how was the alleged firing of the paper’s own editor over an alleged sex scandal between the editor and the columnist not even worthy of mention? Just a coincidence? Fat chance.
This is not the only incident. Recently, a city official’s son was convicted of rape. Thought it had nothing to do with the story, the paper went out of its way to mention the father’s name. They also went into some gory details regarding sex scandals and the forming of the Colonial Theater. Gotcha! Rumor has it, from other journalistic sources, that a brother of an Eagle journalist was fired from his position at the District Attorneys Office for getting into some fights with police regarding incidents at bars. According to this source, the fact that he was related to an Eagle journalist was never revealed. How good it must be to be one of the Gods.

On Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 6:51 PM, I decided to call Mr. Scribner and ask him about whether his resignation was a forced resignation, or whether or not he was fired because of the relationship with the columnist Jacuzzi. At first he said “its none of my business.” He then began to say, “It had nothing to do with that,” and then he began to say that I “don’t know what I am talking about.” He really did not know where to go with any of it. Of course, there is no guesswork to this. I have had several people indicate to me that he was fired for his affair with the columnist, several of those sources within the journalism profession itself. I was calling Mr. Scribner whether he wanted to confirm or deny this, and his official position was “no comment, it’s none of your business.”

Having gone nowhere with the inquiry regarding his sudden departure, I then explained to Mr. Scribner the double standard. On the one hand, we have three people that could not possibly have the power to remove me as an officer having the power to go down to the Berkshire Eagle and have one of the most scandalous pieces ever written about my “removal” from an assetless, unincorporated group taking the Iraq War off the front pages. On the other, the editor in chief of the daily newspaper gets allegedly canned for a sex scandal with a columnist less than half his age with just a tiny story not in any way reflecting why he resigned. “I fail to see where you are going with this,” Mr. Scribner replied to charge of a double standard, “you don’t know what you are talking about.”

Apparently, Mr. Scribner probably did not do that well with the analogy portion of the SATs. The parallels are obvious. When I offered to e-mail him the story about our group, he told me not to bother. According to Scribner, “that was a long time ago.” And that’s what journalist does not get. In their effort to reporting shocking news or score against political enemies, they often do great damages to lives long after their works have been used to catch droppings in parakeet cages.

As Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar, in the soliloquy of Mark Anthony at Caesar’s funeral, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with the bones.” (Act III, Scene 2.) Words on printed pages can hurt years if not decades long after the ink dries. The bad that the likes of David Scribner will leave behind will long exceed anything positive he left behind.

When the Berkshire Eagle attacked myself, it was not just a personal attack—it was an attack on the entire fathers rights movement. Those who went to Eagle had about as much fidelity to the movement as Judas Iscariot had for Jesus. It was the grand exaltation of ego above the self. Mr. Scribner himself once cackled at the notion that the fathers’ rights movement was a civil rights movement. His telephone demeanor was arrogant, authoritative and dismissive.

Though old enough to be a great grandfather, David Scribner is the father of two young children in which it is statistically unlikely that he will see them graduate from high school—certainly not college. If there is anything with over a decade of experience with fathers teaches, it is that knowing when to keep it in your pants is the greater part of discretion. Having children at such an outrageously old age was a selfish act, and selfishness and children are two things that go together poorly. Children are not goldfish that can be let go in a pond when you are too old to care for them anymore. In a deep dark corner of your soul, though you know it is wrong, you sort of wish the hand of God would visit the type of hell that other fathers faced when confronted with the loss of a child through divorce on Mr. Scribner. And in a more charitable moment animated by the holy spirit, you wonder what possessed such an old man to have children that he cannot possibly hope to see age 25.

It is almost impossible to calculate the power of media monopoly such as the Eagle. Lord Acton was correct, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But that was yesterday. We left our telephone call with an angry old man, one foot in the grave, but with the libido of an eighteen year old, donning cowboy hats in a sort of endless midlife crisis that seems to go on for decades, angrily hanging up. He was befuddled, perturbed, and pretending to not grasp the obvious. What was the connection between the two stories? Dave, we think you will figure it out.

And there we end, a tale of two stories—one told, smack on the front page, and only of value to those that want to engage in tabloid journalism and attack political enemies, and one kept secret in the chambers of the Eagle editorial room though it concerned the alleged firing of the region’s only daily newspaper in a sex scandal with a columnist less than half his age. The piece that was not news was a front page story. The piece that should have been a front page story was not news.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Child Support & Custody, Men and Mating, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 124 views | Trackback | Print this page |

About Rinaldo Del Gallo Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq. is the spokesperson of the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition, whose website is BerkshireFatherhood.com. He has been practicing family law attorney and has been a member of the Massachusetts bar since 1996. Mr. Del Gallo has handled a wide variety of family law cases including issues of child custody, child visitation, child support, restraining orders, grandparent visitation, contempt of family court, access to academic records, guardianship, allegations of abuse, criminal allegations related to domestic violence, disputes over the care of a child, and care and protection proceedings before the Department of Social Services. For years, he has hosted bi-monthly free legal seminars for people of any gender having problems in family court. On behalf of non-custodial parents, he has had made numerous media appearances in printed news, radio, and television. He has authored numerous family law related articles and columns. He has performed extensive bro bono work for fathers. Attorney Del Gallo also has extensive experience as a civil rights attorney, working in the areas of free speech rights and ballot access. Mr. Del Gallo is also an intellectual property attorney and a patent lawyer, and has written what is regarded as one of the most famous law reviews in the area of patent law, “Are Methods of Doing Business Finally Out of Business As A Statutory Exception?,” that helped end the so-called “business method exception,” which paved the way for an entire field of software and Internet related patents. Attorney Del Gallo graduated from Northeastern University (Boston) with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, and graduated from George Washington University (Washington) in the top of his three-year class. | More from Rinaldo Del Gallo, III