Copyright © 1997 by the Boston Phoenix, Inc. All rights reserved.
By Dan Kennedy
A Virginia-based conservative environmental group known as the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) has accused local author and retired Boston Globe staffer Ross Gelbspan of inflating his résumé in his most recent book.
Gelbspan's The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle over Earth's Threatened Climate (Addison-Wesley) looks at how the fossil-fuel industry and its allies (including SEPP) have attempted to discredit scientific warnings about ozone depletion and global warming.
Now SEPP is trying to discredit Gelbspan, whose bio describes him as "a Pulizer Prize-winning journalist." It issued a press release pointing out that the Globe's 1984 Pulitzer citation, for a series on race relations in the city that Gelbspan supervised as special-projects editor, does not specifically mention Gelbspan's name.
"Only individuals specifically named in an award citation by the Pulitzer Prize Board are recognized by this office as Pulitzer Prize winners," Pulitzer administrator Seymour Topping wrote recently in response to a letter from SEPP. The group, in turn, issued a press release referring to Topping's letter as "a definitive ruling in the controversy surrounding ... Gelbspan."
Yet Topping, in an interview with the Phoenix, criticized SEPP's statement as "a distortion of my letter. My letter made no reference in any way to this individual."
The Globe has always recognized the three editors who oversaw the 1984 series, although the Pulitzer board cited only the seven reporters whose bylines appeared. Gelbspan was prominently mentioned in the stories that appeared in the Globe the day after the Pulitzer was announced. He also received a citation from the Globe and a letter of congratulations from then-mayor Ray Flynn.
SEPP was founded in 1990 by S. Fred Singer, an industry consultant and former government scientist who's on the faculty of George Mason University and the University of Virginia; $5000 of its $100,000 budget comes from Exxon. Singer often writes op-ed pieces for the conservative press, including the Wall Street Journal editorial page and three publications owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon: the Washington Times and the magazines Insight and the World & I.
"[SEPP is] playing Dungeons and Dragons with my résumé," says Gelbspan, who adds that he'll revise his bio for the next edition of The Heat Is On. "I'm happy to identify myself as a person who conceived and edited a series that won the Pulitzer Prize."