Over the holiday weekend, Boston College threw a party to celebrate their official entrance into the Atlantic Coast Conference. Considering the rough road leading up to the event, it was no surprise that the administration would want to celebrate a little. After all, the last two years have been tough on all of them.

This was a big event for the school, but it was also a formality of sorts. The decision to leave the Big East was made long ago. For a year, everyone knew that BC would start the 2005 season as a member of the ACC. So, July 1st was simply a formality to mark the beginning of a new chapter for the school.

For its part, the school made every attempt to gain some media coverage for the big day. Holding a party at Fenway Park was just one part of it. The website for the athletic department had a count down running and Gene DeFilippo made himself available to the media.

A reasonable person would have expected a story or two in the local papers along with the obligatory quotes from Gene DeFilippo and John Swofford. Perhaps a rehash of the events of the last two years would be required just to round things out for the casual fan.

Alas, that is not what the Boston Globe had in store for us. Instead of a responsible and accurate report on the event, they gave us a well-orchestrated hatchet job on the school, the administration and the basketball program. In a four day period they produced over 6,000 words of criticism from two writers.

Mark Blaudschun took the first shot in a 2,000-word article reliving the whole conference realignment saga. While there was nothing surprising about this type of report, the writer went to great lengths to portray BC in a negative light. Blaudschun even went so far as to imply Father Leahy was dishonest in his dealings with the Big East.

Consider this paragraph from his story.

Unless he was in that meeting, there is no way he could have made this observation. Since the minutes of that meeting have been all over the Internet, we know he was not in this meeting. This sort of deceptive reporting is exactly the sort of thing that got former Globe columnists fired. Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle say "hello."

Now, considering Mark Blaudschun's perceived bias in favor of the Big East and Mike Tranghese, it is not surprising that he would take a few liberties in order to criticize Boston College. He is a commentator as well as a reporter and he is entitled to his opinion. It is not too much to ask, however, that he play it straight and not deliberately deceive the reader in this way.

Amazingly, the Globe was not finished taking shots at BC. In fact, Blaudschun was just a warm up act in preparation for the real hatchet man, Bob Hohler. In the Sunday edition, they ran his 3,700-word kneecap job on the basketball program and the off-the-court problems involving five players.

The article went into excruciating detail of every incident over the last four years involving a basketball player. It was accompanied by a fancy graphic depicting the incidents on a time line. For good measure he wrote two companion pieces. One was on the former punter Jeff Gomulinski, the other on Ryan Sydney.

In fairness to Bob Hohler, what has gone on with the BC basketball program deserves coverage. When athletes get in trouble, it is newsworthy and should be covered. These kids are high profile representatives of the school and their bad behavior is news.

The trouble is all of these stories are old news. In some cases, really old news. In every case, the Globe covered the incidents thoroughly when they happened and wrote follow up stories long after they were resolved. Nothing in this long article can be considered new or important. Running this to coincide with the school's entry into the ACC is just plain bad faith.

Sadly, this orchestrated smear campaign of the last week is just another sad chapter for a once great newspaper. There was a time when this paper was considered one of the best in the country, particularly the sports section. A decade of questionable behavior on the part of the writers and editors has eroded the trust between the paper and its readers.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Boston Globe has had two of the most infamous fabulists in the profession grace the pages of their newspaper. Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle resigned from the paper for outlandish violations of basic truth telling. In the case of Patricia Smith, she "attributed quotes to people who did not exist." That is a nice way of saying she wrote fake news stories.

Mike Barnicle was forced to resign around the same time for falling in love with the copy and paste feature of his word processor. It appears he had grown so lazy that he was forced to copy from a joke book in order to complete a column. Perhaps making up fake quotes from fake people is too troublesome.

Maybe there is another explanation. You see, Mr. Barnicle was reportedly forced to pay $40,000 to a local merchant for falsely attributing a racial slur to him back in the 1980's. In 1990 Alan Dershowitz accused Barnicle of falsely attributing a racial slur to him regarding Asian women. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder Barnicle decided plagiarism was the safer course.

Just last year, the Globe published photographs of US soldiers allegedly raping Iraqi women. In reality they were from a pornographic website. Even though other news organizations immediately saw they were fakes and knew an activist with a questionable past distributed them, the Globe published them.

Just this year, there was another embarrassing incident. In this case, a writer was hired by the paper to cover a seal hunt in Nova Scotia. The reporter delivered a gripping tale about the massacre of baby seals during the hunt. The trouble is the story was written before the hunt took place. In other words, it was a fake news story.

This stunning lack of oversight should not be a surprise as the parent of the Boston Globe has had similar problems. The Jason Blair case is the most famous and outrageous example of journalistic misconduct in the modern era. If it were a college athletic department, the New York Times Company would be on probation for a "lack of institutional control."

In light of this troubled past, it should come as no surprise that the Globe would choose to run a series of hit pieces about BC when the school is celebrating a momentous occasion. Poor judgment by the editors of this paper is not new. Last week's performance is, in its own way, a continuation of a downward spiral that has taken place over the last decade.

The sad truth is there is very little Boston College can do about the shabby treatment at the hands of the Globe. The old axiom about not picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel is still true, even in the Internet age. Picking a fight with them would only invite more nasty stories.

That does not mean the school is helpless. Gene DeFilippo has been a great leader of the athletic department and spokesman for the school. Unfortunately, he has often been too generous with those who wish him ill. Access is the lifeblood of any news organization. Boston College controls the access and they should not be afraid to wield this power to their advantage.

More importantly, the school must understand that their enemies in the press will jump on any indiscretion. Therefore it is critical that they avoid situations like the one that exists with the basketball program. This sort of stuff happens everywhere, but BC has to do a much better job of getting in front of the story and making it clear they are not letting this stuff slide. In other words, it is hard to criticize an organization that vigorously polices itself. That is a lesson the Globe should learn, as well.

As far as the fans go, there is little that can or should be done. Calling the paper or sending complaints to the editors only encourages them. If you want to do something to send a message, stop buying the paper. Newspapers are already struggling; they can ill afford losing customers because of irresponsible reporting. If the Globe loses enough readers, perhaps they will be forced to reconsider their conduct.