Hiawatha Bray

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Hiawatha Bray is a technology reporter for the Boston Globe.

"Hiawatha Bray was born in Chicago. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Knox College, Galesburg, IL in 1976 and a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL in 1985. He became a journalist that year, toward the end of a seven-year stint with the U.S. Postal Service. That was also the year he bought his first personal computer -- a Kaypro 2 running the CP/M operating system. Mr. Bray began as a reporter and managing editor for Computerpeople Monthly, a Chicago computer magazine. He then became a reporter and columnist for the Wheaton, IL Daily Journal, where he won numerous awards from the Associated Press, the Inland Daily Press Association, and the Suburban Newspapers of America. From 1989 to 1991, Mr. Bray worked at the Lexington, Ky. Herald-Leader as a business reporter. During this period, he received a Davenport Fellowship in business journalism at the University of Missouri. He then went to the Detroit Free Press, where he covered banking and technology. His work with a team of journalists on the NBC Dateline pickup-truck scandal won the John Hancock Award for Business Journalism. In addition, he was honored by the National Association of Black Journalists for his work on a series of stories about supermarkets in Detroit. In addition, Mr. Bray received a Jefferson Fellowship for the study of Asian business and politics at the East-West Center in Honolulu. Mr. Bray joined the staff of the Boston Globe in 1995. He was recently named as one of the 10 most influential newspaper journalists covering technology by the editors of Marketing Computers magazine."[1]

Ethical Violation

  • Mouthy of Mouthy.com posted "Cheer up, guys" November 8, 2004: An interesting post I came across from a Bush supporter who works at the Boston Globe:
From: Hiawatha Bray
Date: November 4, 2004 3:57:30 PM EST
To: dave farber's listserv
Subject: Cheer up, guys
As a Bush supporter, I'm feeling pretty good right now, so maybe I can't quite appreciate some of the bitter commentary I'm reading here. ... But I say this sincerely as a fellow American--cut it out. ... So suck it up, you guys. You lost, and that means that you and your friends did something wrong. You didn't get your message across or you need to change your position on some issues. Whatever. In any case, it's about YOU. Not the 59 million who didn't agree with you. You've got to do something different. Focus on that and you've got a chance. ..."
It is apparent that Hiawatha Bray, a technology reporter for the Boston Globe which is owned by The Times Company, "wrote posts for several weblogs in which he declared his support for President Bush, attacked Sen. John Kerry, and bolstered discredited allegations by the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now Swift Vets and POWs for Truth)."
Bray is guilty, at the very least, of violating his company's "specific guidelines for the political behavior of its journalists, ...
"Journalists have no place on the playing fields of politics. Staff members are entitled to vote, but they must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of The Times. In particular, they may not campaign for, demonstrate for, or endorse candidates, ballot causes or efforts to enact legislation." [emphasis added].
Bray's posts went beyond expressing his personal opinion on the blogs and slipped well into the realm of false "reporting":
"In fact, only one Swift Boat Vet member actually served on a boat that Kerry commanded; none were present for the incidents in which Kerry's earned any of his medals or his three Purple Hearts; Kerry did release his medical records; and Kerry did not accuse soldiers of committing atrocities. In his 1971 Senate testimony as a representative of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Kerry related the stories of other Vietnam veterans who came home and participated in the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation, in which they described incidents they had said they personally witnessed."
Whatever actions, if any, have or will be taken against Bray in this matter is not divulged. No allegations have been made as to Bray's motives or affiliations in Media Matter's article. Perhaps those will be forthcoming.

Related Articles


Other Questionable Bray Postings

"First, the claim that 'the (Fox) news channel and the administration violated a reporter-source agreement' is false. The agreement was between the White House and the assembled reporters. Clarke had nothing to say about it. It was up to the White House to insist upon the restriction, or to rescind it. Fox contacted the White House, and got their eager permission to let it rip. No ethical violation here.
"But then we turn to the claim that Clarke easily handled the attack. Well, I didn't see the hearings, but I've read newspaper accounts. I've also read the Fox background briefing. Have you? Because it is utterly impossible to reconcile what Clarke said in 2002 with what he's saying now. In 2002, he makes some specific claims about specific acts undertaken by the Bushies. For example, he said that in the spring of 2001, the administration authorized a fivefold increase in anti-al Qaeda funding. That's impossible to square with his 60 Minutes assertion that the administration did 'nothing' about al Qaeda--a claim he backed away from yesterday, by the way.
"I've interviewed Clarke on a couple of occasions and have always considered him a serious, intelligent and trustworthy guy. But after reading the Fox transcript, we're stuck with two options. He was lying then, or he's lying now."
  • "More Scare Tactics from Bush/Cheney," Silicon Valley, September 7, 2004: "AP: Cheney Warns Against Vote for Kerry. Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack."
Bray: "Er...what's wrong with what Cheney said? The argument between the two candidates is precisely about which of them can best protect us from terrorism. Obviously implicit in each candidate's argument is the belief that a vote for the other imperils the nation's security. So Cheney just said so. What's the big deal?"
Bray (February 1): "I guess I don't get it. Some right-wing guy sets himself up as a journalist. My reply: A hearty So What? If the era of the Internet has taught us anything, it is that anybody who wants to be a journalist is a journalist. There are no 'bona fides.' Does the guy have links to right-wing organizations. Maybe. Again, so what? Either what he reports is true or it's false. That's the only meaningful criterion left. And that's as it should be."

Contact details

  • Weblog Monitortan.com: "The mental meanderings of Hiawatha Bray, technology reporter for the Boston Globe."

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Hiawatha Bray

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