Last Friday, the PI ran a story based on state treasurer’s Mike Murphy’s analysis (suspiciously released just a few days before the election) trashing the monorail.

Understandably, monorail supporters protested that Murphy was illegally using his public office to campaign against a ballot proposition. Murphy responded that publicizing his analysis was fair because he was answering a request from the media.

Isn’t that Karl Rove’s line?

However (read below), it turns out the request was actually made by anti-monorail campaigners.

Unfortunately, if the media did a request for Murphy’s analysis (even if it was originally done at the behest of the anti-monorail campaign), Murphy can still correctly claim that he’s simply honoring the media’s anti-monorail agenda innocent request.

Um….fair enough. But how about the article itself?

Seems like there were some problems. Check out this e-mail exchange between the agency and the PI after the article ran.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Buchter [mailto:JBuchter@Elevated.org]
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 5:39 AM
To: Lange, Larry
Subject: Today's story
Larry....

The story in today's paper is misleading as we tried to discuss with you yesterday.

Mr. Murphy used different growth rates than SMP did so of course he would find that in many years there were not sufficient funds to pay debt service. That is not an accurate criticism of our plan. We have said all along - and Mr. Murphy ignored - that our 6.1% growth rate is an average of growth rates projected for us by ECONorthwest.  ECONorthwest forecast a growth rate for each year. Some of those rates are lower than 6.1% and some are higher, but they average 6.1%. By using a flat 6.1% Mr. Murphy "discovered" that we "didn't have enough MVET" in every year in which ECONorthwest's projected growth rate was higher than 6.1%.  That's not analysis, it's bad and misleading math. That's not a credible discussion of the SMP finance plan, it's a setup by someone who chooses to ignore the facts, pick some bogus growth rate that is not the rate used by SMP and then declare our plan doesn't work. That is his criticism of the plan, yet the PI chooses to give an attack based on clear mistakes credibility by publishing it.  Wouldn't a more relevant story be that our State Treasurer cannot understand basic debt analysis?

In addition, both Mr. Murphy and his Communications Office have said he did the analysis at the request - and probably under the guidance of - two people who are staffing a campaign organization.  They met with Mr. Murphy last week and requested he look at the plan.  So, he had plenty of time to call and ask for information or to check whether he understood how the plan was constructed.  He chose not to inform himself of the facts and then injected his unverified views into an election campaign, an act which may be in violation of State law. Isn't that a story?

I do not ask that you refrain from getting the views of others on the finance plan. In fact, we welcome it. However, we do ask that when the emperor has no clothes you decide whether publishing a picture of him in royal robes is responsible journalism.

Jonathan Buchter
Director of Finance
Seattle Monorail Project
206.587.1721

-----Original Message-----
From: Lange, Larry [mailto:LarryLange@seattlepi.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 4:24 PM
To: Jonathan Buchter
Subject: FW: Today's story


Jonathan: Thank you for the e-mail critique of our story on Friday. I was out of the office until today so I didn't see it right away.

I take your comments seriously. I thought we had addressed the point about the 6.1 percent numbers year to year in paragraphs 11, 12 and 13 of the story, where we described the calculation differences.

As to the point about Murphy's analytical acumen, in paragraph 9 we quote John Haley noting what he called "many errors and misunderstandings" in Murphy's analysis. In paragraph 14 is the quote from Mr. Haley saying Murphy's conclusions "aren't objective or credible."

In paragraph 15 we quote Murphy saying he didn't consult with SMP before discussing his conclusions with others.

In paragraph 18 we cover the issue of Murphy's conduct during an election campaign. We quote Mr. Haley saying Murphy's discussion of his work "clearly falls outside the bounds of 'normal and regular conduct' for an elected official and appears to be intended to influence Seattle voters." We quoted Mr. Murphy's statement that he did his analysis in response to media inquiries which occurred before ours.

Larry Lange
Seattle P-I

Larry......

Thanks for the note. I agree that when one puts all the words on a scale, there is some balance in the story, but I think the balance was out of proportion to the facts and still have a hard time with why this was a story at all.

Let's start with the headline (which I know you didn't write). It said "Monorail numbers faulted. State treasurer says new plan won't bring in enough funds.” So, anyone who only read the headline got no sense that the rest of the story existed. Several other media outlets (Channel 13 in Seattle and KGW-TV in Portland) picked up your story and choose to provide even less balance in their versions.

Then, as you note, it took nine paragraphs before the SMP side of the issue was discussed. I'm sure you and I hope that all readers are conscientious enough to read to the end and then consider every side to a story, but those who don't certainly got an eyeful of Mr. Murphy's misrepresentations before any countervailing information was presented. In addition, Murphy's criticism of the June plan was repeated before SMP's thoughts were presented.

With regard to some of the other material in the article:

You and I may know that John Haley's statement that Murphy's comments "clearly fall outside the bounds of 'normal and regular conduct' for an elected official” is the statutory language by which a violation of law is determined, but I doubt your readers know that. Why not say that Murphy's actions raise questions as to whether he has violated State law?
Murphy's statement that he looked at the SMP Finance Plan after questions were raised by the media is clearly untrue and you know it. He told you (and you reflected it in your notes) that he did it at the request of campaign staffers from Stop SMP and Murphy's Communications Officer confirmed that on Wednesday afternoon when I talked to him. In addition, the notes on the spreadsheet he forwarded to you show that spreadsheet was created soon after he met with Krista and Henry. I can only surmise that you talked to him after you talked to us because this new version of the truth was not reflected in anything we saw prior to your story.

However, as I said above, the real question for me is why this is a story. To be clear, Murphy's specific criticism as you reported it is that under the new Finance Plan SMP will not be able to make "annual debt-payment costs in 14 of the 23 years the payments are planned”. When he uses annual MVET growth rates which are not the same as SMP has used, he creates the problem of which he is complaining. It is not enough for someone to ask "doesn't this all balance out over 31 years” because the specific criticism is that we are going to sell bonds which we cannot pay in a majority of the years payments are planned. 

So, Mr. Murphy is not criticizing the MVET growth rates we used and he's not criticizing the structure of the Finance Plan (as others have done), he's saying our math doesn't work. I think that should have been an easy one for the P-I to check. If SMP's math doesn't work, then you should run a story about how SMP and its financial advisors need remedial course in arithmetic. If Mr. Murphy's math does not work, then the story should be that the State Treasurer is either a math illiterate or disingenuously injecting himself into a local campaign which does not affect him or the State and asking why he would do such a thing. 

Or maybe it's just not a story.

Reporting that Mr. Murphy thinks SMP's Finance Plan won't work in the manner the P-I did is like reporting that Murphy thinks 2+2=5 and waiting until the ninth paragraph to suggest there might be other views. I recognize that Mr. Murphy has some credibility as an elected official, but some of this stuff is so transparently wrong or blatantly misleading that I think it is the P-I's duty is not to publish it.

Jonathan