Mike Barnicle - Boston Globe Controversy

Boston Globe Controversy

In 1998, Barnicle resigned from the Boston Globe amid a controversy over two columns, written three years apart. The first column of more than 80 lines of humorous observations, had a few lines that bore similarity to jokes in the 1997 book Brain Droppings by George Carlin. In a subsequent Globe review of all of Barnicle's many years of work, a second column was called into question. The October 8, 1995 column recounted the story of two sets of parents with cancer-stricken children. When one of the children died, the parents of the other child, who had begun to recover, sent the dead child's parents a check for $10,000. When the Globe could not locate the people who had not been publicly identified, Barnicle insisted nonetheless that the story was true. He said he did not obtain the story from the parents but from a nurse, whom he declined to identify. Mrs. Patricia Shairs later contacted the Globe to indicate that the story Barnicle wrote was about her family, although she said some of the facts were incorrect.