Credit to Seattle Times reporter David Postman for outing his paper’s $1,000 in-kind contribution to I-920, the estate tax repeal campaign.

Currently the estate tax only hits estates worth over $2 million. And it exempts farms if they make up at least half of the estate—meaning, working farm families. Repealing the tax would sock earmarked state education funding to the tune of $100 million a year.

Given Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen’s excitable commitment to the estate tax repeal (the tax break will help about 250 of the richest estates statewide), his paper’s support hardly comes as a surprise. But Postman also reports that the Wenatchee World made a $25,000 contribution to the repeal campaign and The Columbian, a paper in Vancouver, WA., aslo donated.

All of this earned the eloquent ire of former Stranger superstar reporter Sandeep Kaushik, who is now the spokesperson for the anti-920 campaign.

Says Kaushik over on Postman’s blog:

The publishers of these newspapers contributing are showing a cavalier willingness to sacrifice their own papers’ journalistic credibility so they can attain a self-serving political agenda.

Well put Kaushik. The Stranger is proud of our in-kind contribution to the no repeal campaign: Kaushik.

For more of Kaushik’s eloquent ire click on the jump.

Kaushik says:

In response to David's post: there are several very disturbing things about this situation. I think readers have very good reason to question the ethics and credibility of the Times, and of these other newspapers, on this issue given their direct political and financial involvement in the pro-920 effort. Let me try to be a little clearer here than when I was ranting -- with good reason -- at David on the phone.
First, when Jill Mackie says that the Times has "helped connect family businesses who oppose this tax with the campaign," what exactly does that mean? It sounds to me like that is a euphemistic way of saying that she is either explicitly or implicitly fundraising for the campaign. And when she says "family businesses" is she including other newspapers in Washington state, like the ones who are contributing directly to the pro-920 effort? Did the World decide to donate $25,000 because the publisher got a call from either Mackie or Blethen?
If either is true, this calls into question your publisher's previous claim that he is only "peripherally" involved in the yes on 920 effort. Jill Mackie's time may only be worth $1000 to the Times, but potentially it could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contributions (or the equivalent in free media) for the repeal effort from an array of businesses and other newspapers. In other words, it sounds an awful lot like the Times, in spite of not contributing directly, is deeply and directly involved in this political campaign - far more deeply than they have acknowledged to this point.
On a second front, it is probably true that it is unrealistic to expect that prominent newspaper publishers will stay completely free of politics. I have no doubt that individually, powerful publishers get involved in local politics all the time, and that the integrity of the fourth estate can by and large withstand such occasional and ad hoc activities. What is different here with I-920, though, and what makes this situation so ethically pernicious, I think, is the seemingly unprecedented level of direct political engagement, on one side of a divisive political issue, by the publishers of multiple newspapers serving a substantial percentage of the state's population -- and the growing sense that this is not coincidental, but rather coordinated.
In other words, a small group of powerful publishers in Washington state is apparently working together -- along with some other very wealthy funders -- to use their wealth and media power to try to ram through a self-serving and (arguably) extreme political agenda. And they are doing it, unfortunately, by spewing a tremendous amount of misinformation.
I too have read Bill Gates Sr.'s book. In his section on Blethen and the Times, what struck me was the scope of Blethen's reach, particularly his success in tilting the press in his favor by convincing dozens of other papers to join his crusade. Let me quote from Wealth and Our Commonwealth:
"Blethen deployed the Seattle Times and his other newspapers to advance the repeal agenda. He hired Jill Mackie as director of external affairs at the Times, whose top mandate was to lobby for repeal. Blethen newspapers have editorialized against the tax numerous times since 1997 and in favor of candidates who share their pro-repeal position. The Seattle Times staffed an imaginative web site (www.deathtax.com) that served as a hub of information and campaign activity.
One of the most important things that the Seattle Times did was to organize other independent newspapers. It sent out frequent newsletters and lobbying updates to the thirty members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association and organized at least one hundred other newspapers to join the repeal cause...
Starting in 1997, the Seattle Times convened annual "Death Tax Summits" in Washington, D.C., with cosponsorship from the Newspaper Association of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, and various other groups supporting repeal of the estate tax. At these events, business owners could hear from 'congressional champions' and lobby representatives, and later they could join a reception with 'those who work for repeal daily in Washington.' We wonder if they served free pizza..."
Whether they served pizza or not, we know they served a huge helping of falsehood. Here is a second problem with what Blethen is doing: Mackie says she has "helped the campaign on shaping its messages..." Reading Gates Sr.'s book, we learn that the Times' lobbying operation has indeed developed some powerful anti-estate tax messages that have found their way into pro-repeal newspaper advertisements, fact sheets, and talking points. That might be acceptable if it were not for the fact that these messages are "full of distortions and misinformation." For instance, the claim, disseminated widely by the Times, that "the IRS spends 65 cents for every dollar it collects from the [federal estate] tax."
Sounds damning, until you learn (if you ever do) that it is a completely false claim. As Gates points out, the federal estate tax generated $28 billion in revenue in 1999, at a time when the entire IRS budget - for all tax collection - was $8 billion. Yet just last Friday I debated a representative of the Yes campaign on a Spokane radio show, and she claimed -- thank you, Jill Mackie -- that two-thirds of estate tax revenues are frittered away in administrative and collection costs. Let me repeat, that is not true. There is no large estate tax collection bureaucracy in Washington state (or for that matter at the federal level). Is this the sort of messaging help that Mackie is providing the pro-920 side? Is she arming them with an array of convincing, poll-tested falsehoods? Should your readers not think that the Times is pushing its agenda by urging its political allies to, in essence, lie? And Except who is going to tell them? Does David Postman have the cojones to call out his boss for playing fast and loose with the truth? Maybe yes, but even if he does, do his editors? I strongly suspect you don't rise too far up the ladder at the Times without making sure you don't do things that really piss off your famously mercurial boss. ANd by the way, how is that aggressive JOA coverage coming along?
Finally, there is the issue of transparency. Whatever one thinks of the propriety of these newspapers directly funding highly controversial political efforts, I think at an absolute minimum they have to bend over backwards to inform their readers of their involvement. That's not happening. Sure, David Postman is blogging about the Times' involvement, but does the typical reader of your editorial page know what David Postman blogged about a few weeks back? Probably not - yet the Times, and the Yakima Herald, and the Columbian have all run op-eds or editorials advocating I-920 without mentioning that the papers are funding the campaign. I'm sorry, but that is simply, flatly unethical.
Posted by Sandeep Kaushik at 06:14 PM, Oct 10, 2006