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  • Seattle Times
  • CENSORSHIP? The highlighted section, which continues on to another column, was removed from the Times' website shortly after it ran in the printed version of the paper.

On September 4, the Seattle Times ran a front page article, written by reporters Joseph O'Sullivan and John Higgins, about a Washington State Supreme Court hearing on the big-fucking-deal education-funding McCleary case. The court decided one week later to hold the legislature in contempt.

The Times article (PDF) quoted Jess Spear, the Socialist Alternative candidate challenging Democratic House Speaker Frank Chopp to represent Seattle's 43rd District—in part because she was there at the hearing, in the room. In her comments, she drew attention to the legislature's propensity for granting tax breaks to companies while at the same time saying it cannot fund basic education. She did not attack her opponent in the race:

Jess Spear, a socialist can­didate running against House Speaker Frank Chopp in November’s election, said it was interesting that judges questioned the state on why it gave out tax exemptions to businesses rather than work on education funding.

“It was noteworthy that the state Legislature argued that it was easier to pass a tax handout rather than fund education,” she said.

But standing in the back of the hearing room, Spear said she also could see some hesi­tation on the judges’ faces.

Curiously, this block of text vanished from the online version of the article shortly after it was published, without explanation. There were no other major changes to the piece.

I asked the Times about that, and Metro editor Richard Wagoner sent me this response:

We took the graphs out because the story as originally published didn’t contain the context as to why Spear’s opinions were relevant to the discussion, and because she is engaged in an election contest with House Speaker Frank Chopp, who we did not quote in the piece. We are sensitive to giving a candidate a platform not offered to his or her competitor during election season.

For all the lawmakers quoted in the story, we explained why they were being interviewed, such as identifying them as members or chairs of education committees. We would have preferred to preserved the Spear material and add the context for her comments, which I later learned was that she was at the court hearing as part of a group advocating that the Legislature fully fund public schools. But the reporter who wrote the story was out of the office the day after the hearing and not available to accurately make those additions. So we removed the graphs instead.

"The Times' decision is atrocious," says Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin. "Perhaps a novelty in the history of self-censorship: censorship after publication! The ultimate in he-said-she-said nonsense, to rule out the she-said because there's no he-said. After all, the paper could always run a subsequent piece quoting the competitor."

I take Wagoner, the Times Metro editor, at his word that this was a hasty editorial call—but, as Gitlin says, it's a terrible one.

Spear agrees. "I think that's an excuse for why they wanted to take it out," she says. "This really shows the importance of independent media sources—media outlets that are controlled by working people in the service of working people, rather than relying on media that's owned and controlled by big business and can shut out voices that are important to the discussion."