"Who Will Ride the Train?" That was the gloomy question headlined on the featured front-page story on last Sunday's Seattle Times. Under the equally skeptical subhead "Agency Hopes It Won't Mostly Siphon Riders from Buses," the story explored whether people will really use the new Sound Transit light-rail route when it opens. The upshot? Light rail has worked in countless other cities, but Seattle's not like other cities. And reporter Mike Lindblom even found some bus riders to underscore his point.
In reading the article, it might be helpful to know that Sound Transit's optimistic projected ridership numbers have been a continuous target for light-rail critics - and that The Seattle Times has editorially opposed both building and expanding light rail each time it's come up on the ballot in recent years. (It keeps passing anyway.) There's nothing wrong with the Times taking an unpopular editorial position. There is something disturbing when the Times uses its highest-profile reporting slot to advance its editorial viewpoint, while labeling it as an "objective" story.
This would be merely annoying, except that it keeps happening - a lot. Especially since the demise two months ago of the print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the Times' only daily competition), the firewall at the state's largest newspaper (and Seattle's only remaining daily) between the editorial pages and reported news stories seems to have crumbled.
That firewall is considered sacrosanct by most publishers, editors and reporters at traditional daily newspapers. Unlike, say, The Stranger, where you pretty much know the writer's viewpoint in a news story, stories at papers like the Times and P-I are supposedly objective. "Supposedly," of course, because there's truly no such thing as objectivity; every selection of a story, which facets to lead with, what quotes to use, which adjectives to employ and so forth are colored by the life experiences of a story's reporters and editors.
But it's an ideal most such journalists take seriously. It means they report the truth wherever it leads them, regardless of a newspaper's editorial views, and that ethos is central to such journalists' credibility. Such objectivity is also something readers of American newspapers (unlike much of the rest of the world) have learned to expect.
The Times has been trending increasingly conservative in its editorials in recent years, counterbalanced until March by the liberal-leaning P-I. But as the P-I folded, leaving behind an understaffed Web site that mostly aggregates other content, the Times' conservatism is at times starting to resemble the "fair and balanced" reporting of Fox News.
Last week, Seattle Public Schools unilaterally abrogated its teachers' union contract (technically firing and rehiring all its teachers) to save a bit of money. When the union, not surprisingly, objected to the process, the Times flogged the union for days, usually on the front page, for obstructing the budget cuts. Did I mention that ever since the 2001 newspaper strike (which the Times has arguably never financially recovered from), publisher Frank Blethen has held a special contempt for organized labor?
The list goes on. When Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray became two of only a handful of Democrats last month to vote against the estate tax in Senate legislation (the others were almost all from red states), giving the margin of victory to estate-tax opponents, it was a special moment for Blethen, for whom the "death tax" has been a constant obsession. Blethen's incessant campaigning on the issue in his newspaper was probably instrumental in the votes of Cantwell and Murray.
Similarly, a last-minute front-page hit piece on Darcy Burner last fall, alleging that she had exaggerated her college degree at Harvard University, was jumped on by right-wing talk radio and the campaign of her opponent, Rep. Dave Reichert (who the Times had already strongly endorsed). Burner's anemic reaction to a Times-manufactured "scandal" she initially dismissed as absurd probably cost her a seat in Congress.
Then there's the Times' ongoing series (reprised on the front page just last week) of outraged stories about somebody with bad intent using a CraigsList ad. These stories never mention that another source of the Times' financial woes is that it's lost most of its lucrative classified-ad business in recent years to Craigslist.
Of course, the Internet (epitomized by CraigsList) has cannibalized much of the business and readership of daily newspapers in recent years. Even with its new monopoly, the Times has been talking about potential bankruptcy, particularly since it can't find a buyer for a Maine newspaper venture Blethen overpaid for a decade ago. Subscriptions are plummeting and advertisers are fleeing - to the Internet, where opinions tend to be right up front.
In that context, there's nothing wrong with The Seattle Times repeatedly publishing opinion pieces on the front page. It would just be really nice and helpful to readers - and far more honest - to label them as such.
Oh, and in case you're wondering whether Blethen and his compatriots actually believe the no-handouts-from-government conservatism they espouse: A couple weeks ago, during the worst state fiscal crisis in recent history, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed into law legislation (heavily lobbied for by the state's daily newspapers) that gives them a 40-percent tax cut in the state's main business tax.
Darn socialists.
Eat the State! co-founder Geov Parrish can be reached at qamagnews@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
