Some joke

If journalism learned anything about itself during the last six months of falsifications and assorted other embarrassments, the Boston Globe has yet to catch up. Its silly and confused suspension of well-known columnist Mike Barnicle is a disappointing example of lost perspective.

Mr. Barnicle is in the soup because he included in a recent column eight slightly modified quips from a book by comedian George Carlin and included them in a column that contained another dozen or so similar jokes. How he came by them is a matter of dispute. He says the quips were collected from friends, readers and anyone else who thought to send one along. A darker frame of mind would suggest that he plagiarized them. Not that it excuses the incident, but the supposedly funny observations weren’t Mr. Barnicle’s (or, for that matter, Mr. Carlin’s) best stuff — more like the sort of thing that seems funny only if a close friend says it.

Not much would have been made of a forgettable column containing potentially purloined jokes had it appeared a year ago. But over the last several months a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter was charged with tapping into Chiquita phone lines, CNN/Time retracted a story about the use of nerve gas in Laos, The New Republic discovered that for years one of its reporters was making up stories and presenting them as fact and, most importantly, Globe columnist Patricia Smith was caught inventing some of the characters in her columns. Ms. Smith, properly, was fired by the Globe, which caused some people to recall that her higher-profile white, male colleague, Mr. Barnicle, had escaped unharmed from similar — though lesser — charges years earlier. Ms. Smith is African-American.

When the copying was first reported, Mr. Barnicle said he had never read the Carlin book and Globe editors concluded that a month’s suspension was just punishment. However, after a television clip later surfaced showing the columnist promoting the book, Globe editors were irritated enough to ask for Mr. Barnicle’s resignation. He refused. Their second decision meant the columnist was being asked to resign because he hyped a book he hadn’t read. Tuesday, the editors reduced the sentence to a suspension of two months without pay, which looks like nothing more than a way for them to save face.

George Carlin, for his part, wrote in support of Mr. Barnicle. But it was a Globe letter to the editor that said it best:

“Save your righteous indignation,” a writer from Chicago said. “No one seriously thinks that telling a joke without attribution reduces the credibility of your newspaper. Your Draconian reaction, however, does make your judgment suspect.”