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This Just In: Media

A tragic suicide, and an ugly fallout

By Dan Kennedy

The death of a 20-year-old Harvard junior has sparked a heated dispute involving the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, and the Suffolk County district attorney's office, with the Globe and a spokesman for the DA accusing the Herald of violating a confidentiality agreement regarding how the student died.

Both the Globe and the Herald reported on Monday that the body of David Okrent had been found on Revere Beach on Sunday at 6:30 a.m. A crucial difference: the Herald reported that Okrent's death was a likely suicide, whereas the Globe called it "a possible homicide."

Sources say that Jim Borghesani, spokesman for Suffolk DA Ralph Martin, told reporters from both papers, as well as from other news organizations -- on a strictly off-the-record basis -- that Okrent appeared to have killed himself. Borghesani reportedly tipped off the media to quell rumors that a killer was on the loose, but demanded confidentiality because Okrent's parents had not yet been told how their son had died. The idea, sources say, was to persuade the media to play down the death, an effort that was largely successful.

When the first edition of the Herald arrived at 135 Morrissey Boulevard, shortly after midnight, sources say that Globe reporter Francie Latour angrily rousted Borghesani at home and demanded to know what had happened. That, in turn, led to a call from Borghesani to Herald city editor Mike Bello, who, sources say, was unable to reach Herald staffer Maggie Mulvihill, the reporter who had talked with Borghesani. Bello reportedly removed any reference to Borghesani from later editions, but left in the fact that Okrent's death was a probable suicide.

The Globe did beat the Herald on a particularly gut-wrenching aspect of the case: the call Okrent's parents received from an organ bank before they'd even been notified of their son's death.

Herald political editor Joe Sciacca, who is Mulvihill's boss, says that, after speaking with Mulvihill, he's convinced she did the right thing. "If there's an agreement that something is off the record, then we honor those agreements," Sciacca says. "And there was no such agreement here. Maggie Mulvihill is an excellent reporter. She knows what 'off the record' means."

But that's not how Borghesani remembers it. "I know from my conversation with Maggie Mulvihill what we agreed to, and I know that she did not adhere to our agreement," he says. "Maggie knows she broke our agreement. I don't care what her editors say. They weren't on the phone when Maggie and I were talking."

Adds Globe editor Matt Storin, who had his own angry conversation with Borghesani the next day: "Ground rules are difficult to explain sometimes, but they're made all the time, every day, with both papers, and often for very good reasons. And if we are not going to be able to trust those ground rules, then it's certainly going to change journalism."