When I saw Tweety started dragging him out to do his show, I was startled. It seemed people in his circles must see things a whole lot differently, as I associated Mike Barnicle with dishonor, disgrace, etc., etc. from his earlier embarrassing problems.
Grabbed the first thing at Google which addressed what happened earlier:
(snip) I've seen a lot of posts recently asking what Mike Barnicle did wrong, and whether the Boston Globe overreacted in asking for his resignation. So, I did some digging on the Internet and in the Globe archives.
Here is the story, as far as I've been able to tell.
FACT: 1973: Mike Barnicle started work for the Boston Globe.
FACT: 1979: Barnicle "was invited on a congressional trip to Southeast Asia and offered to write about it for the paper. According to Barnicle, the Globe declined.
"Barnicle took vacation time and went on the trip anyway, writing articles for James Bellows, then the editor of The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. One of those articles ended up on the front page of The Boston Herald American, the Globe's arch-rival, according to both men. "Writing for the competition is forbidden by most newspapers." (1)
ALLEGED: 1990:
"Attorney Alan Dershowitz had accused Barnicle of falsely attributing a racist quote to him. Neither Barnicle nor the Globe retracted the column, but in a confidential legal settlement reached after his complaint, the Globe agreed to pay Dershowitz $75,000, according to a lawyer who has been briefed on the matter." (2)
FACT: 1990:
During the Charles Stuart murder case, "Barnicle wrote one article no other reporter could confirm. Under a banner headline, he reported that the Prudential Insurance Co. had issued a check for $480,000 to Stuart, in payment of a life insurance policy for his wife, Carol DeMaiti Stuart. The day the article ran, the company denied it. No similar check has been found. The Globe, which has occasionally corrected other facts in Barnicle's columns over the years, ran no correction. "Greg Moore, the Globe's managing editor, said last week, 'Our reporting on the Carol Stuart case after Charles Stuart committed suicide still stands, except for the $480,000 check. I don't think anyone involved in that case thinks we shouldn't have corrected it.'" (3)
ALLEGED: 1991:
"Boston Magazine examined one of Barnicle's articles and could find no evidence that two characters in it ever existed. In the article, Barnicle was quoted as telling the reporter that he had given one of the people he had written about the magazine's telephone number. 'If he wants to talk to you, he'll call you,' he was quoted as saying." (4)
ALLEGED: 1992: Chicago columnist Mike Royko accused Barnicle of plagiarizing several columns.
That's all history. Although the above incidents bear no relevance to the current case, it demonstrates that Barnicle's reputation was already shaky. Those who have said that first time offenders deserve leniency can see that the Globe has been very lenient towards Barnicle's first offenses. (snip/...)
http://www.boston-online.com/barnicle/timeline.html(This article was written in 1998, when he was caught swiping material again.)