The Seattle Channel: A Taxpayer-funded Democrat campaign resource

The Seattle Channel is a Seattle city department that describes itself as

created to inform citizens about their government and to offer them a timely opportunity to be involved in government decisions

To that end it operates a web site and a cable television channel. It broadcasts live City Council meetings, public hearings, mayoral press conferences, etc. The website maintains a repository of city government press releases. Fair enough. But the Seattle Channel also provides, with 14 full-time paid staff and a $1.8 million budget, a variety of television programs that are nice, but have little to do with government. (e.g. programs on books, arts, entertainment, nightlife).

The Seattle Channel also broadcasts, at taxpayer expense and seemingly in violation of city law and its own stated policies, a fair amount of political advocacy. Seattle Municipal Code, 2.04.300 prohibits

the use of any of the facilities of a public office or agency, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election of any person to any office or for the promotion of or opposition to any ballot proposition.

The Seattle Channel's policies require "Objectivity and Fairness" and "Balance".

Here are some examples of what seems to me to be inappropriate and unbalanced political programming on the Seattle Channel.

The website has a page about the 2004 elections:

Twenty-two million single women did not vote in the 2000 election. Watch a short video about women and voting at onevotefilm.com.

It's nice to encourage people to vote, but only if you encourage all of your citizens to vote, and you don't just speak to the one demographic group that the Democratic Party has identified as the most promising category of likely but unregistered Democratic voters.

The cable channel broadcasts the lectures of "Foolproof Performing Arts", a local 501(c)(3) that violates IRS regulations by engaging in partisan campaign activity. Every Foolproof lecture, from Joseph Wilson to Gore Vidal to Arianna Huffington, is an anti-Bush campaign rally, whose broadcast is subsidized by Seattle's taxpayers.

Former Clinton aide Eric Liu is the host of "Seattle Voices", featuring "one-on-one conversations with some of the most interesting, provocative and inspiring people in Seattle". Liu is also a board member of the League of Education Voters, which crafted I-884, the proposed ballot initiative to raise the state sales tax by a billion dollars a year. Among Liu's recent guests were Nick Hanauer and Charles Mitchell, who are both involved in the I-884 campaign and in whose interviews Liu guided the discussion toward promoting I-884. Neither Liu nor any other program presented any perspectives arguing against I-884. Similarly, Liu broadcast his interview with former Mayor Norm Rice during the time when Rice placed himself back in the public spotlight to campaign for the Families and Education Levy. Liu steered the interview towards the Levy. The Seattle Channel website also contains materials that promote the Levy, but opponents of the Levy were not given any equal time or space on either the cable channel or the website.

I spoke yesterday with the Seattle Channel's programming manager, Beth Hester. I expressed concerns about the inappropriate advocacy and lack of balance. She was courteous and respectful of my concerns. She said that it's hard to find non-liberal speakers without going outside of Seattle, but that they "make every effort" to find a variety of viewpoints. She pointed out a few examples of conservative events that have been broadcast recently, such as Condoleezza Rice's Seattle speech and Jeff Kemp in conversation with Eric Liu. Still, the preponderance of programming is left-liberal. I find it hard to justify the use of tax dollars for broadcasting anything other than, say, official public meetings. But if they are going to spend our money on non-essential political programming they have a legal obligation to present a more balanced schedule. They should either try harder to present more center-right voices, or cut back on their left-leaning political programming. Period.

Hester offered to videotape and broadcast my upcoming interview of Michael Medved. That would be a good step towards more balanced programming. But the Seattle Channel is already in a pretty big "equal time" deficit and has some catching up to do to provide alternative programming. It would only be fair, for example, to offer equal time to the No on I-884 campaign to balance the time used by Eric Liu. And I don't know yet whether the Seattle Channel is planning to broadcast Michael Moore's upcoming Foolproof speech. I would have a very serious problem with a taxpayer-funded Michael Moore broadcast unless it was balanced by something like Celsius 41.11 or Michael Moore Hates America.

UPDATE: Hester confirms that the Seattle Channel is planning to broadcast Michael Moore's speech. She is willing to present additional programming designed to balance Michael Moore.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 05, 2004 07:00 AM | Email This