On all-Tom TV, is that ducking?
By Michael Jonas , Boston Globe
October 9, 2005
He may be ducking further televised debates with
Maura Hennigan, but Mayor Tom Menino has managed to make way for
Jack, Mack, Quack, and their whole web-footed family.
Menino, who has resisted calls to venture back under
the klieg lights for another televised encounter with his mayoral
challenger following a Sept. 28 session on WGBH-TV's ''Greater
Boston," shows no aversion to the camera under the right
conditions.
There he was last week on the small screen proudly
accepting a $192,000 check from the Environmental Protection Agency
to deal with the problem of falling groundwater levels in the
Back Bay. In previous weeks Boston TV viewers were treated to
scenes of Hizzoner cutting the ribbon at a new schoolyard and
at the reopening of a refurbished North End community center.
Viewers could even take in the mayor pausing from his busy schedule
to read the Hub-based classic ''Make Way for Ducklings" to
a group of Boston youngsters.
It's the kind of consistent feel-good footage a
politician could probably only get if he or she had a personal
TV channel, which is, essentially, where all these programs appeared.
The city-run municipal channel on cable TV often looks like a
nonstop Menino infomercial. Instead of steak knives, it sells
the mayor as a can-do man on the move, with one scene after another
projecting the image of a city where business is booming, the
school system is humming, and an appreciative citizenry is grateful
for a leader of his caliber.
''You mean the Menino channel," harrumphed
Hennigan when asked about the taxpayer-funded station.
Conspiracy theorists were crying foul last week
when WGBH representatives suggested that Comcast had backed out
of an agreement to make the Sept. 28 mayoral ''town meeting"
available through the company's ''on demand" service until
early November.
Menino campaign manager Beth Leonard said it was
absurd to suggest that the mayor's campaign had done anything
to limit viewing of the forum. ''We would like as many people
as possible to watch the debate," Leonard told the Boston
Herald.
Hennigan says a perfect solution would be for the
city's own municipal channel to schedule multiple rebroadcasts
of the debate. Asked whether the mayor's campaign would call for
such airings, Leonard punted, saying the channel's operations
are a city function.
Mike Lynch , who directs the city's office of cable
communications, said the channel draws a bright line between its
mission to illuminate the functions of city government and political
programming. ''It's a public service channel," said Lynch.
''A debate is not a government function; it's a political function."
But still available for downloading from the municipal
channel's website is Menino's speech last summer at the Democratic
National Convention, a highly political pitch to return a Democrat
to the White House. For that matter, doesn't Menino's ''Ducklings"
reading serve more of a political function, giving a warm and
fuzzy feel to the mayor, than it does any public policy one by
somehow promoting reading?
''I don't see too much policy," Hennigan said
of the channel's offerings. ''I see a lot of promotion of Tom
Menino." As for the Menino campaign claim to want last month's
debate seen as widely as possible, Hennigan said, ''Here is their
chance to prove that. This is something under their control."
WGBH spokeswoman Lucy Sholley said the station would
''be delighted" to make a tape of the forum available to
any outlet interested in showing it. ''We would like as many people
as possible to see it, especially since there is not another scheduled
televised forum between the two candidates," she said.
Of course, the best way to end all the debate about
rebroadcasting a debate in which Menino was clearly off his game
would be for the mayor to step forward and agree that voters deserve
a further televised session or two in which the two candidates
dig substantively into the many serious issues facing the city.