Times Publisher Starts Ads Opposing I-200

Tuesday, September 01, 1998 - Seattle Times

by David Postman and Tom Brune
Seattle Times staff reporters

The publisher of The Seattle Times has launched his own newspaper-based campaign against Initiative 200.

Sunday's Times included a full-page ad urging people to vote against I-200, the November statewide ballot measure that would ban racial and gender preferences in government hiring and education and end affirmative action as it is now practiced. It was the first of what will likely be weekly attacks on I-200 by the newspaper over at least six weeks, said Carolyn Kelly, senior vice president and general manager of The Seattle Times Co.

The ad follows a separate campaign over the past two weeks, in which Times Publisher Frank Blethen placed ads in the paper trying to persuade Congress to cut inheritance taxes. Blethen said then that he planned to more fully use his family's newspaper to advocate positions on a range of political issues, including possibly I-200.

Those earlier ads were questioned by some journalism ethics experts and by some Times editors, who said they could lead readers to believe the paper's news coverage is influenced by the publisher's agenda.

That criticism resurfaced yesterday, along with a charge by proponents of Initiative 200 that the latest ad is misleading if not inaccurate.

Under the headline, "Where are we heading if I-200 passes?" Sunday's ad says, in part, "Think back a couple of decades. You didn't see girls in soccer uniforms on school playfields. Because there were no girls' sports."

The ad also talks about the recent successes of women and minorities in higher education and professional careers. "Let's keep the vision alive," the ad says. "Vote no on Initiative 200. So we can keep moving forward to the future."

John Carlson, chairman of the Initiative 200 campaign, said the ad leaves the mistaken impression that girls' sports would be jeopardized by passage of the initiative. He said the ads are "confusing opportunity on the one hand with preferences that require discrimination on the other. Frank Blethen may not have figured this out. Most other people, however, have.

"Initiative 200 has zero impact on girls' sports," Carlson said. "Initiative 200 doesn't supersede federal law - and Title IX is federal law."

Kelly, The Times vice president, said the ad was meant to raise the possibility that if affirmative action was "rolled back" the loss of support for other programs based on race and gender could follow. She said that could include the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination at any educational institution receiving federal aid.

"The whole subtext of this being, we've made progress, we're not where we need to be, why would we stop now," Kelly said.

Unlike the earlier ads, which in fine print listed The Seattle Times as sponsor, Sunday's I-200 ad said it was "brought to you as a public service of the Blethen Corporation and its family members," with no mention of the newspaper itself. The Blethen Corp. is the family-controlled entity that owns 51 percent of The Seattle Times Co.; 49 percent is owned by the national Knight Ridder newspaper chain.

Blethen was traveling yesterday and could not be reached for comment.

The ad was produced as a so-called "independent expenditure," which means it was not made in coordination with the No! 200 campaign and must be reported as a political expenditure to the state Public Disclosure Commission within five days. Kelly said she did not know how much the ads cost to produce and publish.

"They're not working with us on this," said Michelle Ackermann, communications director for the No! 200 campaign. But she was happy to see the ads Sunday and thrilled to learn Blethen planned to publish more ads as election day nears.

Michael Fancher, The Times' senior vice president and executive editor, said the ads have senior editors concerned.

"It's that kind of stuff that makes it harder for us to be perceived as neutral," said Fancher. But, he said, "in the final analysis . . . Frank trusts us to run the newsroom and I guess we have to trust him to run the corporate side." He added that he and Blethen thought that perception would be helped by taking The Times name out of the publisher's political activities. "It helps in the sense that at least you aren't using the name of the newspaper in this cause," Fancher said. "It certainly doesn't do away with the perception of a conflict of interest. It does demonstrate a level of sensitivity."

Last week, Blethen said he thought it was important to credit the ads to The Seattle Times. "If The Times is going to be involved in these issues then we want people to understand that it is The Times that is behind the ads," he said.

Blethen has scheduled a meeting with reporters and editors next week to discuss the ads.

Patricia Herbold, co-chairwoman of the I-200 campaign and member of The Times editorial page's Eastside Advisory Council, said readers don't understand the separation between the paper's editorial, news and advertising departments.

"I don't think the average person, when reading the paper, puts up a fire wall between those three areas," Herbold said. "The reading public may question the credibility of the news writer. They may feel that whenever the news writer is in agreement with the publisher, that the news writer's credibility is open to question."

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Carl Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu