The Boston Globe profiles Matt Walsh, the former Patriots assistant who may or may not have damaging videotape implicating the Pats in further spying on other teams.

Walsh seems to have made some mistakes in life, such as a stupid and risky prank he played in college.

But this Globe article is a nasty piece of work, one-sided and filled with anonymous smears. For example, the piece reports that he “has exaggerated or misrepresented elements of his online biography.”

We learn considerably further down in the article that the source for this is anonymous Patriots officials.

And the piece opens with a pretty damning quote:

“He sounded like a loose cannon,” said the coworker, who asked not to be identified to avoid entangling his new employer in the controversy. “He was very bitter about how things ended with the Patriots and he seemed like he was keen on using whatever he had to get back at them by going public and really trying to damage the team.”

Hmmmm. Pretty tough quote to open with given that it’s coming from an anonymous source who may still be in the NFL.

In fact, I could pretty easily re-mix the piece and, with the exact same information, come up with an article whose theme is that the Patriots are trying to isolate, smear and intimidate a former employee turned whistleblower.

I’m not saying this because I believe that the Pats did anything wrong; I have no idea.

It’s just that this is a man’s reputation at stake, and this is a textbook example of bad journalism.