You have the chance to hear the complaint, review the evidence, then cast your vote as a member of the jury. Washington News Council is an independent group, headed by John Hamer, that provides a forum for complaints about actions of the Washington news media - print, radio, television. WNC has no special standing; it's not a court, but a private venue for discussions.
When a complaint is filed WNC works to get the parties talking to resolve it. They have a process for a formal hearing for when progress stalls, but only one case out of six gets that far.
How can they judge a journalist on how he does his job? Journalism has standards, of course! The primary set WNC uses is Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
WNC is asking for public participation in their most recent complaint. We are invited to read the evidence and judge for ourselves over eight questions and enter our votes.
Go to the WNC web site to participate; it's on the home page. There are links to the complaint, Sec. State Sam Reed's defense in a letter and both video and text of the KIRO news stories of Oct. 15 and Nov. 3, 2008.
The link for voting - CLICK HERE TO VOTE AND COMMENT - is about two screens down. The deadline for voting on this is April 30.
Below is the wording on the WNC home page.
We had a formal complaint from Washington's Secretary of State, Sam Reed, against KIRO7 Eyewitness News (CBS affiliate in Seattle).
We invited KIRO to comment, but they did not respond to repeated letters, phone calls or emails.
In his written complaint, Reed contended that the stories were "factually incorrect, incomplete, misleading, sensationalized, inflammatory and unfair."
However, Reed and his office staff decided NOT to ask for a full News Council hearing on this complaint. In an email to the WNC, they stated:
"After several conversations as part of the News Council negotiating period, KIRO eventually agreed to pull down their stories from the Web site if we would muzzle ourselves and not inform the News Council of the nature of this accommodation. This we cannot agree to, since this leaves KIRO offering very little and conceding nothing.
"At the same time, we weary of this frustrating battle and the countless man-hours devoted to researching chapter and verse of this sorry episode, and we see little value in continuing to bang our head against the wall, knowing that KIRO will boycott the proceedings and will not acknowledge errors in fact and in tone, much less fix the problem. A News Council finding in our favor would not change the dynamic; properly, in a nation that so values the First Amendment, the council cannot order KIRO to do anything."
True: We cannot order KIRO to do anything. However, we invite members of the public to view or read the stories and to read Sam Reed's complaint and letter.
We also invite members of the public to vote on the Draft Questions that the News Council would have voted on IF this case had gone to a WNC hearing.
In other words, we're inviting you to be members of a "Citizens Online News Council" and render a public verdict on the merits of this complaint. Call it a "virtual hearing."
Posted by Ron Hebron at April 19, 2009 07:07 AM | Email ThisWhatever KIRO did, he deserves a hell of a lot more.
Posted by: Hinton on April 19, 2009 12:55 PMI did, and it overwhelmingly points to a reporter who wanted to write a sensational story, and did so by cutting corners and not thoroughly checking sources. This is journalism at its worse.
KIRO must agree, since the stories have disappeared. They are also refusing to defend Chris Halsne. Their silence is deafening.
But if you want to continue thinking that Sam Reed deserves to lose his job due to false claims and outrageous accusations by a supposed respected member of the media, then I guess there isn't much else to be said. Your mind is made up, and facts just don't matter.
Posted by: janet s on April 19, 2009 02:20 PMI thought that years before the story ever appeared; I thought it when he ran that asinine bill giving felons voting rights before they completed their sentences; I thought it when he utterly failed to do anything to insure that only eligible citizens were on the voter roles (i.e., require proof of citizenship to register to vote) and I thought it for the 8 years that he did absolutely nothing to address the felon voter issue, except to avoid it.
Where it matters, Reed has been an abysmal failure as a Secretary of State AND as a Republican.
Nothing about this story changes any of that. I judge him on what he has accomplished... or in this case, failed to accomplish.
And THOSE facts matter completely... Since you asked.
Posted by: Hinton on April 19, 2009 08:57 PMReed's complaint: the process for restoring rights was inaccurate. True, but in minor ways that don't matter to most people and have no effect on the rest of the story's point. (However, this inaccuracy did apparently negatively influence the research behind the story in multiple ways.)
Reed's complaint: "KIRO then broadcast a story suggesting that all of these persons were felons not entitled to vote." That's not true -- no such implication was made IMO -- although KIRO should have been more clear, and some people could have drawn such an inference if they weren't paying attention.
Reed's complaint: "KIRO undertook no analysis to determine who on the list had been convicted of a felony, or who on the list had had voting rights restored." And they made this clear in the story, as I recall it.
Reed's complaint: "So over half (52%) of the 6,812 records in the sample were invalid matches." So just under half (48%) were not ...
Reed's complaint: "Many of the remaining cases (48%) were pre-1984 offenses, prior to implementation of the Sentencing Reform Act, resulting in minimal and incomplete information in the Department of Correction records. For many of these cases, over 10 years has passed since conviction or release, so voting rights have likely already been restored." Is that 48% of the 48%, or "many" of the 48%? Either way, a lot are left over, and Reed should be thanking KIRO for the ones where ten years has NOT passed.
KIRO did mess up here, a lot, if the complaint from Reed is accurate. However, the complaint appears to me to concede that there's plenty of illegal felon voters still out there that they just can't do anything about, when in fact, KIRO identified a lot of people and Reed's office was able to exclude a lot of them as illegal felon voters, giving them a list of possible illegal felon voters that they should be acting on ... a list they could have, and should have, created for themselves already.
Too bad one person read the correction for every hundred who read the original sloppy lie. But it's the principal that counts. :)
Posted by: AD on April 20, 2009 09:09 AMUsing the Department of Corrections database, we have removed 13,022 felons from the voter list since January of 2006, when a statewide database was launched pursuant to legislation requested by Secretary Reed. Our commitment is to use every reliable database we have access to as we review the rolls for duplicate, deceased and ineligible felon voters. We want no unqualified individual voting, period. The old database used by KIRO for their erroneous reports was not accurate or reliable and did not provide a sufficient basis for denial of this basic civil right. - Brian Zylstra, Deputy Communications Director, Office of Secretary of State
Sorry, Brian... that's simply not true.
Columbian, June 8, 2005 "State czar for voting: Let felons cast ballots"
Talking to reporters at the Clark County auditor's office, Secretary of State Sam Reed for the first time came out solidly in support of letting freed felons vote, regardless of their court-imposed debts.
Seems like "support" to me. And it also seems like FOUR years ago.
Then this effort from right here at Sound Politics (2 years ago), an effort referencing the self-same Blinn's efforts in the Leg:
Sam Reed's position on restoration of voting rights to non-incarcerated felons
Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell disputed my assertion that Sam Reed supports restoring voting rights to all non-incarcerated felons. Listen to the committee hearing, including testimony from Reed's lobbyist Katie Blinn.
Discussion of this bill starts at 58:40, Blinn's testimony at 1:10:05:
The Secretary of State's Office is not taking a particular position ... about the policy issues of when the right to vote should be restored. But Blinn goes on to explain that there is no single database with information about felons' eligibility for voting, and that this bill offers a more straightforward way to determine eligibility:
The Secretary of State's Office is going to be supporting bills that make it clear who is eligible and who is not.
Impressive attempt at triangulation, but the bottom line is that Sam Reed supports a bill restoring voting rights to all non-incarcerated felons.
I don't make this up. I don't NEED to make this up.
"Finally, let's not forget that the criminal justice system cannot provide a list of all people in Washington convicted of a felony, cannot provide a list of all felony sentences completed, cannot provide a list of all felony cases still open, cannot provide a list of all felons whose right to vote has been restored, and cannot provide a list of all felons still ineligible to vote. Our Elections Division would love it if such lists actually existed."
So, by all means, show me the bill(s) he had dropped demanding that they do or requiring that they do any or all of these things.
It would be one thing if he had done EVERYTHING he could (and having someone testify that his office would support someone ELSE'S effort to define the criteria for a felon to vote" isn't "everything") to make these things happen, but clearly, when you've stated you WANT felons voting, why on earth would you go out and do anything to stop them?
In the last election, thousands of felon voters received ballots. http://www.libertylive.org/Uploads/EFF%20Response%20to%20Reed.pdf
With equal clarity, that is Reed's responsibility. And his drumbeat to allow felons to vote because of his administrative incompetence certainly drowned out his efforts to identify them to keep them from doing so.
Your failure to address the issues surrounding voter identity and citizenship are noted, Brian.
Have a nice day.
Posted by: Hinton on April 20, 2009 06:59 PMReed tells the tax payers a lie of ommission, KIRO tells a lie of exageration, and Reed complains about a lie about his lie.
While it's wrong to tell any lie, it's nice Reed is suffering from poetic justice!
Vote him out!
Posted by: David on April 21, 2009 08:41 AM