Category: Media

Mayor Wilson, Media, Opinion, Police, public disclosure

Mayor Wilson: Audit SPD’s Public Disclosure Office!
A few of PubliCola’s records requests that have been “grouped” by the Seattle Police Department. SPD’s public disclosure unit will not begin (or resume) responding to any of these requests until they’ve completed the one they’re currently working on. We filed that one, for information about SPD’s use of generative AI, in September; so far, we’ve only gotten only a delay notice in response.

SPD has shown they won’t comply with the state Public Records Act on their own. So make them.

Erica C. Barnett

It’s time for the city to audit the Seattle Police Department’s public disclosure office—and, if they ignore the auditor’s recommendations, for incoming Mayor Katie Wilson to force SPD to follow the law.

The state Public Records Act makes it clear that the government’s obligation to disclose information is no trivial responsibility. “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them,” the PRA says. “The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”

For years, SPD has failed to comply with this bedrock premise.  Instead, they’ve evaded disclosure by delaying responses until the records they’ve held back are no longer timely, refusing to work on more than one request at a time, and using the public disclosure process to conceal information that used to be public as a matter of course, including police reports and responses to basic factual questions.

Public disclosure of public information is in everyone’s interest, but for PubliCola and other media outlets, the availability of public records also affects our ability to keep our readers informed. Currently, PubliCola has 10 open records requests with SPD, with the oldest dating back to mid-2023. (We had older unfulfilled requests, but closed them in an effort to triage requests that were still relatively timely).

In all of 2025, SPD provided a single document in response to one of our public disclosure requests—a one-page Excel spreadsheet showing the total compensation for police officers in 2024.

Not only did SPD fail to meaningfully respond to our outstanding requests, they will no longer respond to more than one request at a time from individuals or entities with multiple requests. This practice, known as “grouping,” violates a 2023 agreement between the city and the Seattle Times, which is currently fighting SPD in court to eliminate grouping entirely. It also appears to violate the Public Records Act, which requires agencies to respond to individual requests “promptly,” with specific estimates for the time it will take to respond to each request.

As the Times’ recent motion for summary judgment puts it, “The Grouping Policy denies prompt responses to those disfavored requesters who cannot wait for an old request to slowly emerge from SPD’s backlog before making a new request. …  Nothing in the PRA authorizes an agency to choose which requests to process and which ones to leave on a dusty shelf.”

I’ve filed a declaration in support of the Times’ latest lawsuit, describing the ways in which SPD has thwarted PubliCola’s requests for public records and how these actions have affected my ability to keep the public informed about what SPD is up to—from former chief Diaz’ alleged coverup of an unethical affair with a staffer he hired into a specially created position, to the investigation into a police union official who whooped it up over the killing of a pedestrian by a speeding cop. Times reporter Mike Carter’s own declaration shows a similar pattern of selective inaction by SPD—including one request for which he waited 19 months, only to receive the documents unexpectedly because SPD fast-tracked a similar request from a KOMO reporter.

If the Times prevails over SPD, it will directly benefit those in the public and independent press who can’t afford to fight years-long legal battles against the deep-pocketed police department. Meanwhile, though, SPD is still claiming the right to effectively deny records requests by putting them off for years. Earlier this month, the department moved its generic “placeholder date” for PubliCola’s nine inactive “grouped” requests from December 31, 2025 to December 31, 2026. Unless something changes, the remaining unfilled requests will get pushed forward to 2027 at the end of next year.

The single PubliCola records request SPD says it is working on—for information about SPD’s use of generative AI—has already been delayed by three months, until January, and could move again. Until SPD has finished responding to this one request, they will do no work at all on our other nine requests.

Because SPD refuses to process more than one request at a time, I have stopped filing records requests with them. It’s pointless. In effect, their obstructive decisions have succeeded—whether I go through the motions of filing a request or not, SPD will never respond “promptly,” as required by the PRA, or provide the “fullest assistance” the law requires.

 

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

So, in addition to conducting a formal audit, Mayor-elect Wilson should send down legislation to eliminate “grouping,” which has not accomplished its purported goal of weeding out bot requests and those that are excessively burdensome or “extraordinarily broad.” If bots are a problem, separate legislation can address that issue; if a huge number of people are filing harassing or unreasonable requests, the burden should be on SPD to prove this is happening, and to work with the mayor and city council on legislation to address that narrow problem. SPD is currently using city dollars in a legal battle to use “grouping” to conceal public records. It’s long past time (and should not require a lengthy legal battle) to take this tool away from them.

SPD’s lack of compliance with basic public disclosure standards has gotten worse in recent years. But it isn’t new. In 2015, the City Auditor’s Office audited SPD’s public disclosure unit and found serious problems with how the office handles public disclosure requests.

That audit recommended that SPD hire more public disclosure officers, implement a centralized system for managing records requests, and streamline the response process by handling simple requests before more complex ones and prioritizing timely responses. It also recommended some basic best practices—like asking requesters for clarification when necessary and “proactively communicat[ing]” with people who ask for records—something that currently does not happen consistently, if at all.

SPD did not concur with most of the 13 recommendations in the 2015 audit, agreeing explicitly with just two—the recommendation to hire more public disclosure staff, and the one suggesting they set up a new records management system. Over the past 10 years, SPD has added nine new positions to the public disclosure unit to keep up with the increasing pace of requests, up from just five in 2014. That’s a positive step on paper, but it doesn’t actually help if public disclosure officers are steeped in SPD’s current culture of concealment.

Another practice SPD uses to evade public disclosure is expanding the type of records the department refuses to hand over without a public disclosure request.

In the recent past, for instance, SPD put ordinary police reports online as a matter of course—an extension of the department’s earlier practice of printing out copies of police reports and making them available at police precincts. (Yes, you could just walk in to any precinct and grab the day’s police reports!)

Today, police reports are no longer available to the general public through SPD’s website and the reports SPD provides to media (when they choose to do so) consist of heavily redacted and edited “narratives” that omit important information that the public generally has the right to know, such as the names of the officers who respond to calls and write the reports.

Additionally, SPD sometimes refuses to provide police reports, including those cleaned-up narratives, without explanation. Although SPD’s policy manual says explicitly that “Media Representatives May Obtain Copies of Police Reports Through the Public Affairs Unit,” that unit frequently directs PubliCola to file a records request for police reports.

This “file a records request” brushoff applies not just to written reports but to questions of all kinds. If SPD’s communications office—headed, under Police Chief Shon Barnes, by a former corporate PR representative with no prior experience in government—doesn’t want to answer a question, “file a records request” is a polite synonym for “fuck off.” Too far? Not when you consider that even the simplest records requests often take years—if I want to know about a crime that took place downtown last night, the Wilson administration could be halfway over before I find out.

The police, in short, are getting away with refusing to follow the letter and spirit of our state’s strongly worded public disclosure law—a law explicitly designed to ensure that the public has access to information that isn’t mediated and managed by government agencies and their press offices.

SPD has made it very clear that they won’t meet their legal obligation to provide public records unless they’re forced to do so—by legislation, a court order, or a directive from the mayor, who has the ability to fire for reprimand the police chief if his department is failing to comply with expectations.

It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that the Seattle Times will prevail in its current attempt to get SPD to stop grouping records requests, taking away one of the department’s current methods for withholding public documents.

But undoing a culture of obfuscation could require forcing, rather than asking, SPD to meet its obligation to provide records that ultimately belong to us, the public.

An audit laser-focused on these tactics will outline the problem and lay out solutions and a timeline for compliance. Mayor Wilson can then show she’s serious about transparency by requiring SPD to show progress on public disclosure, and holding Chief Barnes directly accountable if his department fails to act. SPD has had plenty of chances (and received plenty of public funding) to fix a broken process. It’s time they face consequences for their inaction.

Media

Cascade PBS Lays Off News Staff, Citing Federal Cuts

By Erica C. Barnett

Cascade Public Media, the Seattle-based PBS affiliate that owns the long-running website Crosscut, is laying off most of its newsroom staff, eliminating 19 local news positions—16 of them filled— just months after finalizing a union contract with newsroom staff.

The cuts mean the end of the road for Crosscut, a nonprofit news website started by Seattle Weekly co-founder David Brewster and two former Weekly editors in 2007. Crosscut merged with the PBS station KCTS 9 and lost its original name in 2024, when both outlets became part of Cascade Public Media.

PubliCola reported the news exclusively on Bluesky earlier this afternoon.

In an internal email to staff, Cascade CEO Rob Dunlop said the decision to “cease production of our long-form journalism published online” was one of the “hard choices” the nonprofit had to make in response to federal funding cuts for local public media. “Sadly, we are joining public radio and television stations around the country who are making similarly difficult choices,” Dunlop wrote.

According to internal emails, Cascade PBS will “focus going forward” on video, including local series about history, hiking, and food, including Mossback’s Northwest, The Nosh, Nick on the Rocks, Out & Back, and Art by Northwest, and expand its quick-bite video series, The Newsfeed, to five days a week.”

“These are painful decisions to make and none of the impacted team members did anything to bring this about. They have served Cascade PBS and this region with passion and distinction. To the journalists affected, their work has earned much well-deserved recognition that has elevated our mission,” Dunlop wrote.

Dunlop blamed the layoffs on federal funding cuts in July that slashed $3.5 million of the station’s funding, or about 10 percent of its budget 10 . “While we had prepared for this possibility, it is still a significant blow to our organization and to public media nationwide,” he wrote.

Don Wilcox, Cascade’s director of programming, marketing, and communications, told PubliCola that the Trump Administration’s decision to shutter the Corporation for Public Broadcasting “is a seismic event that is reshaping public media nationwide. The permanent loss of more than $3.5 million each year is massive, and it’s forcing us to make difficult choices. We’ve decided the best way forward right now is to focus on the video programming that our communities have relied on for decades.”

Cascade has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from new members since the CPB announcement in July, and still more from current members who’ve increased their giving in response to the federal cuts. Wilcox, echoing Dunlop’s internal email, said Cascade can’t make financial decisions based on the upsurge in individual contributions.

“We know from experience that heightened, crisis-related donation levels are not sustainable, and there is no indication that federal funding will return,” Wilcox said. “It would be irresponsible to deplete our finite resources based on speculation or wishful thinking. This isn’t what any of us wanted, but it’s the most responsible course in the face of drastic cuts and an uncertain future.”

Cascade’s news reporters watchdog City Hall, do lengthy, in-depth investigations, and provide important analysis of what’s happening in state and local politics. It’s the kind of coverage that’s becoming increasingly rare in Seattle’s  media ecosystem, which has seen a fair amount of upheaval, including last year’s sale of the Stranger, in recent years. Josh Cohen, Cascade’s city hall reporter, covered news for PubliCola back in the early 2010s, and is a ubiquitous presence City Hall—a welcome face who we hope we’ll see again soon when another publication scoops him up.

The news team at Crosscut recently finalized a contract that included moderate wage increases after stalemating with management for more than a year. Among other wins, the Cascade PBS Union (part of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild) ensured a minimum starting salary of $67,000 for its unionized newsroom workers and guaranteed that no one in the bargaining unit would make less than $70,000 a year.

Last year, according to Cascade’s IRS filing, Dunlop had total compensation of more than $550,000. In all, Cascade’s nine executive staff made a total of more than $2.2 million.

Wilcox said there are no plans to cut compensation for executive-level staff. “We still need to attract and retain talent to support the success of the operation,” he said.

Courtney Scott, executive officer of the newspaper guild, said the union is “deeply disappointed that Cascade PBS is choosing to eliminate its newsroom and lay off of its reporters at a time when we need good, thoughtful journalism more than ever. We do not yet fully understand why this decision was made and we will be meeting in Cascade PBS executives and management in the coming days to discuss the impact on our union members and the reasoning behinds these decisions.”

Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson, a former Crosscut contributor who wrote an op/ed for PubliCola after Crosscut shut down its opinion page, has floated a democracy voucher-style program to fund local media, including small and nonprofit publications. Mayor Bruce Harrell has ridiculed that idea as “taxpayer funds for online blogs,” and called it an “unachievable goal.”

Wilson said that with the Trump administration “hellbent on dismantling our democratic institutions, this is a terrible time to be losing journalists.

“We desperately need a sustainable funding model for local news, and I believe Seattle can be a leader, Wilson said. “As mayor, I hope to develop such a program to strengthen our local news ecosystem and ensure that everyone has access to the information and analysis needed for a healthy civil society.”

Cascade management held all-staff meeting today at 3:00.

This is a developing story.

City Hall, immigration, Media

No, the Library Did Not Tell Employees to “Capitulate to Fascism”

By Erica C. Barnett

A story posted earlier today in the Burner—an online publication started by former Stranger writer Hannah Krieg—claimed that the Seattle Public Library was “capitulating to fascism,” as Krieg put it on X, by forbidding frontline workers from recording ICE raids in library buildings on their phones and telling them that ICE does not need warrants to barge in and make arrests.

Citing a memo titled “Protocols for Immigration Enforcement: Compliance and Readiness at The Seattle Public Library” as well as an all-staff email from library director Tom Fay, the post also claimed that library staffers can’t ask ICE for a warrant to make arrests, and that SPL will not protect any employee who’s arrested for allegedly interfering in an ICE arrest.

What’s more, according to the article (written by a guest writer but posted by Krieg) the memo itself was apparently written by someone every progressive hates—Republican City Attorney Ann Davison.

Banning staffers from asking ICE agents for warrants? Prohibiting people from recording arrests on their phones? It all sounds quite alarming—and it would be, if any of it was true.

The Burner, which represents itself as independent journalism with a lefty twist, seems to have forgotten the journalism part. I got a copy of the memo, which was not linked in the post, and it took about five seconds to realize that at least one of the statements the publication represented, between quotation marks, as quotes from the memo … is not actually a quote from the memo.

These misrepresentations would just be sloppy if the memo actually did tell library staff that ICE never needs a warrant or that people can’t record ICE on their phones, as the story explicitly claims. But the memo (which is 12 pages long) basically says the opposite, so the misquotes are really misinformation.

The false quote from the memo is “Do not record interactions on a phone.” In fact, the memo (and a followup email to staff from Fay) emphasizes that it is legal to record ICE interactions, but that employees should use their personal devices to do so and understand the risk that a cop might get excited (as they do) and decide to arrest them. Describing a shitty fact about police behavior is a far cry from the saying that the “City will not defend, support or represent them in any legal case,” which is how the article describes the policy. The memo does not say any of that.

“This guidance does not intend to to strip library staff of their citizen right to film law enforcement,” Fay wrote, adding a link to  guidance on recording police officers from the Freedom Forum, a First Amendment advocacy group.

UPDATE: On Wednesday, in an email to staff that also advised staff about the Burner’s inaccurate reporting, Fay said the library’s guidance not to record on city-owned phones was “the result of a misunderstanding that occurred at a citywide training in February.” That was the only part of the guidance that was specific to SPL’s protocols; now, the rules at the library are identical to those for all other city of Seattle staff.

This change won’t actually impact any frontline library staff, because none of those staffers have city-issued phones. In fact, just 76 of the library’s more than 650 employees have phones, including regional managers, supervisors, gardeners, and maintenance workers.

The story also says the memo directs staff that “warrants [are] not required” for ICE to make arrests. “[A]rrest warrants definitely are required except in limited cases (the memo does not acknowledged this),” the piece claims, contrasting the library’s policy unfavorably with a Seattle Public Schools policy that requires ICE to present a warrant before entering school buildings.

In fact, the memo dedicates several pages to the library’s protocol for barring ICE officers from all non-public spaces unless they can present a judicial warrant; explains the difference from a judicial and administrative warrant and notes that the latter isn’t sufficient; and gives staffers a script to use if an ICE officer tries to get into areas where they aren’t allowed without a warrant.

“Officers need a judicial warrant to enter and search non-public areas,” the memo says. (Emphasis in original.) “DO NOT consent/grant access to non-public areas. Please tell them the following: ‘You may not enter this non-public area, and I am not authorized to let you enter. I will notify Library administration, and someone will be coming to verify.” At that point, staffers are supposed to call their manager and document everything that happens.

Legally, ICE can make arrests in most public places, including libraries; schools were exempt under a federal policy that designated them as “sensitive” areas ICE needs a judicial warrant to enter. Although Trump rescinded that Biden-era policy in January, his executive order—which also covers churches, where the sanctuary movement began—is being challenged in court.

The library’s guidance comes directly from a citywide training on February 27 about how city employees should respond to ICE raids, among other topics related to immigration. The training was created by the city’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, which has a ton of other know-your-rights resources on its website.

More than 1,000 employees across the city took part in the training, which explained existing city policies for dealing with ICE (which have not changed, but have obviously become more urgent) and included resources from Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and the National Immigrant Law Center.

I posted obliquely about this on Bluesky earlier, and I see that since then, the Burner has posted a whole separate post that now includes a completely different two-page memo, and has changed the headline on the original post, which was “Seattle Public Libraries Tells Workers Not To Interfere With ICE Raids.” Once you tell people they should be outraged at the local library for violating the First Amendment and forcing staff to roll over for ICE arrests, and shout on social media that they’re basically fascists, it’s pretty hard to walk that back.

“Library memo describes citywide ICE policy for public buildings, developed by Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs” isn’t much of a headline, though. That’s because it isn’t much of a story.

Update Wednesday: The original story has been removed, replaced by a new piece by Krieg asserting essentially the same facts and with a misleading headline that still suggests the library has ordered staff to stand by passively and not ask for warrants when they are required, which is false. The story was purportedly taken down because it did not include “copies of the memos” laying out the city’s policy, but the new piece still doesn’t include the the 12-page memo laying out the policy, which includes a script for demanding warrants and barring ICE from entering areas of public buildings where they are not allowed to be. The new piece also argues that SPL should order its frontline workers to be confrontational toward armed ICE agents. By doubling down on the false narrative and failing to correct or acknowledge any errors, the new post does not address any of the the issues outlined below.

Media, podcasts

Announcing “Are You Mad At Me?,” a Brand-New Podcast About Our Favorite Movie, Shattered Glass

Shattered Glass - Chlotrudis Society for Independent FilmBy Erica C. Barnett

Exciting news: Josh and I have started a limited-run podcast, “Are You Mad At Me?,” about the 2003 movie Shattered Glass. The title is a reference to something the disgraced journalist Stephen Glass says (in the film and, apparently, in real life) to disarm his bosses and colleagues.

Shattered Glass, which focuses on the rise and downfall of ’90s wunderkind reporter Stephen Glass, is my favorite movie, full stop. It’s the movie I used to use to suss out new guys I was dating, and it’s still the movie I’m most eager to tell new friends about. Journalists love Shattered Glass—it’s the movie that best captures what it’s like to be a reporter uncovering a story—but non-journalists love it too, because it’s a story about comeuppance, and who doesn’t love seeing a cheater get what’s coming to them?

Whether you’re a journalist or not, whether you’ve never seen Shattered Glass or saw it on opening night in 2003, as we did, do yourself a favor: Take 95 minutes out of your day to watch this thrilling, unforgettable film about one of the biggest journalism scandals in recent history. And when you’re done, listen to the first episode of “Are You Mad At Me?, where we’ll be taking a monthly look at this iconic movie and telling you why we love it—and why you should, too.

In the late 1990s, Stephen Glass was hot shit inside and outside D.C.: A young, charismatic reporter with a gift for worming his way in to places reporters ordinarily couldn’t access—like a weed-hazy hotel suite at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or a front-row seat at a hacker convention where a teenage black-hat hacker wins a security contract with a big-time software firm. Glass’ reputation as a colorful teller of untold stories quickly won him accolades, along with a freelance roster that earned him an estimated $100,000 in 1998, the year he turned 26.

Glass, of course, was a fraud—fired from The New Republic in 1998 after fabricating dozens of stories for TNR and many other print magazines that published his work, including Harper’s, George, Mother Jones, and Rolling Stone. Shattered Glass, which came out just five years later, tells the story of Glass’s rise and demise.

Actually, it tells two parallel stories. The first is about how Glass tricked his coworkers at the hidebound, wonkish New Republic into buying pitches that were—as one character puts it in the movie—literally “unbelievable.” And the second is about his downfall, facilitated by a team of digital journalists who combined phone-book, shoe-leather reporting with a basic understanding of the online universe—like the fact that a “big-time software company” wouldn’t have a website that was only accessible to AOL members—to dismantle Glass’ growing legend.

I was a very young reporter when Glass was on the rise, and subscribed to many of the magazines where his byline appeared. At the time, I was writing for an alt-weekly and amassing a growing pile of rejection letters from some of the same magazines that were publishing Glass’ colorful copy, and I couldn’t understand how a guy not much older than me was getting these kinds of scoops, while I was still calling in legislative updates from a pay phone at the state Capitol.

One obvious problem with Glass’ stories, upon more than a cursory reading, is that many of them included details just a little too perfect to be plausible—like anti-drug activists from DARE jamming TV news transmissions to conceal unflattering information about their program, or CPAC sociopaths picking up “a real heifer” at a bar and bringing her back to their hotel for a ritual humiliation.

As someone who endured many an editorial meeting, though, I’ve witnessed plenty of pitchmen spin almost equally dazzling tales—the kind that make your own story about ethanol subsidies, or whatever, seem safe and uninspired—and I recognized the kind of guy he was trying to be. Editors—credulous ones, anyway—love that kind of guy.

Shattered Glass captures this side of the story beautifully, down to the combination of hero worship and envy that surrounds a star reporter. The film also reveals why it’s so hard to capture a fabulist like Glass, even at a place with a rigorous fact-checking process like the New Republic. As Hayden Christiansen, playing Glass, explains in a voiceover: On certain stories, “the only source material available are the notes provided by the reporter himself.”

And then Shattered Glass goes back and tells the same story through a group of outsiders, led by Forbes Digital Tool reporter Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn), who are not susceptible to Glass and his charms. Penenberg, who’s initially motivated by irritation at being scooped by Glass, quickly realizes the story is “a fucking sieve.” Cue the reporting montage!

It’s hard to remember now, but throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, print publications often considered “digital” publications second-class, and journalists who published their work online often developed chips on their shoulders about print elitism. So there’s an extra layer of satisfaction, for those who reflexively sympathize with underdogs, in watching Penenberg and the Forbes team work tediously and tirelessly to unmask Glass—doing the work his editors didn’t bother doing because they trusted that anyone qualified to write for The New Republic wouldn’t just make it up.

The Forbes team confronts Glass’ boss, Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), with the facts they’ve gathered, and Lane goes on his own fact-finding mission, reporting on his own reporter until the story is solid.

It was all lies, from start to finish, but unmasking Glass’ fabrications took time, and the work—conducted in conference rooms, cubicles, and anonymous office buildings in Bethesda—was rarely glamorous. Shattered Glass manages something almost no movie about journalism ever has—it renders the processes of journalism thrilling and tactile, without misrepresenting any aspect of how journalism actually works. (Cue the montage of female journalists sleeping with their sources in a dozen other movies).

But the payoff this movie delivers isn’t the publication of an apology letter in The New Republic (which actually happened), or Stephen’s abashed return to his high school classroom (which, as far as I know, didn’t). It’s the aggregation of facts that leads to the foregone conclusion—from Zahn’s stunned look, as Penenberg, when his search for “Jukt Micronics” on you.yahoo.com (!!) gets zero hits, to the climactic confrontation between Lane and reporter Caitlin Avey (Chloe Sevigny) in the lobby of the New Republic building. “Go back. Read them again.”

In this first episode of Are You Mad At Me?, we attempt to ground our enthusiasm for Shattered Glass by discussing and dissecting some of our favorite scenes. One of my picks comes late in the movie, when Lane is pulling down every copy of The New Republic in which Glass’ work appeared from a wall display.

The scene demonstrates Chuck’s dawning awareness that Stephen has made up not one but dozens of stories, and his acceptance that the publication—which has taken public shots at other magazines that fail to meet its own rigorous editorial standards—is about to be humbled.

Lane thumbs through issue after issue and throws each one to the floor, as Christiansen reads snippets in voiceover, his fabrications interspersed with scenes of his laughing, applauding colleagues. It’s a quiet, devastating solo scene—until Stephen walks in, hoping to manipulate Chuck one last time by begging a ride to the airport.

“I’m afraid of what I might do,” Glass says, whimpering.

“Stop pitching, Steve,” Lane responds. “It’s over.”

We really hope you’ll join us on our 12-month journey to break down everything we love about Shattered Glass with each other as well as some special guests. And we hope that by the end, you’ll appreciate this wonderful movie as much as we do.

 

Media

Two Stranger Reporters Resign After Investigation Into Allegations of Ethical Breaches

By Erica C. Barnett

On Friday, January 31, two reporters from the Stranger, Hannah Krieg and Ashley Nerbovig, resigned their positions after the Stranger’s owner, Noisy Creek, the Noisy Union, and the two women reached a separation agreement, resolving an investigation involving allegations that Krieg and Nerbovig were dishonest and engaged in bullying and harassment in their capacity as Stranger employees.

The Noisy Union, a unit of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, represents editorial and tech staffers at the Stranger, Everout, and the Portland Mercury, which are all owned by Noisy Creek. Until her departure, Nerbovig was president of the Noisy Union.

The Stranger initially put the two on leave on or around January 16. It was the second time Nerbovig had been placed on leave during her two years at the paper; the first came after she posted a tweet joking about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, which led to a torrent of right-wing threats against her and other Stranger staffers, leading the paper to shut down its office for five days.

In a joint statement posted on social media Friday afternoon, Noisy Union and Noisy Creek said that while the investigation was unable to substantiate the “original allegations,” all parties agreed it would be a “fair solution” for the two to resign.

After this story was published, Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild Courtney Scott reached out to say, “We feel the employer made a good faith effort to engage with the union and give due process despite having no agreed upon language or legal obligation to do so,” given that Noisy Union members don’t have a contract with Noisy Creek. “We decline to comment further on the details of the investigation or private union meetings.”

Initially, according to sources inside and outside the Stranger, the “original allegations” included the charge that Krieg and Nerbovig had attempted to “lock down” a cover-up story about an inappropriate encounter that occurred last October between the Stranger’s former editor-in-chief, Rich Smith, and now-Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck. After Noisy Creek bought the paper, Smith was replaced by Hannah Murphy Winter and returned to his former job as news editor, where he supervised Nerbovig and Krieg.

The two were accused of failing to disclose Smith’s ethical breach to their editors, then attempting to conceal the fact that they had been aware of it for months by lying to colleagues, management, and their union about both the incident itself and how and when they first found out about it, multiple sources inside and outside the paper confirmed.

Additionally, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of events, the pair bullied and harassed at least one other Stranger employee as part of their efforts to keep the story from getting out.

Nerbovig and Krieg also contacted people outside the Stranger, including individuals close to Rinck, and asked them to deny that the incident between Smith and Rinck ever happened, external and internal sources told PubliCola.

In journalism, having an intimate relationship with someone you cover is a conflict of interest. Separately, newsroom staff who are aware of a conflict of interest, or other serious ethical breach, involving another staffer have an obligation to disclose the conflict, and an additional obligation not to lie about it when asked. Attempting to get others to help conceal the truth is also an ethical breach and a violation of journalists’ obligation to be honest.

These ethical obligations—avoid and disclose conflicts of interest; be honest—apply to all newsroom staff and are a bedrock of ethical journalism that reporters and editors, publications, and the unions that represent journalists have a vested interest in upholding. The Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, for instance, notes that “Journalists should avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,” and says that journalists must “be honest” and “ac[t] with integrity” on the job, and “avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Other, publication-specific codes of ethics spell out more specific obligations relating to honesty, conflicts, and the obligation to disclose information that could damage a publication’s integrity.

PubliCola spoke with ten sources with direct knowledge of events described in this story, including sources inside and outside the Stranger and the union. All requested anonymity.

According to internal and external sources, Nerbovig and Krieg didn’t just fail to disclose the ethical breach by Smith when they first learned about it in October—they told their editors, colleagues, and fellow union members and union leaders that they had just learned about it for the first time in January, and that they got the information from another Stranger staffer who they said was repeating a rumor, not solid information.

In fact, according to multiple individuals who spoke with them directly, the pair were aware of the incident almost immediately after it happened and began openly talking about it with people outside the Stranger shortly after it occurred. It didn’t take long for the story to spread throughout Seattle’s tight-knit local political community; by election night, November 5, it was circulating in the room at Rinck’s victory party.

The Stranger did not launch a formal investigation until January; it is unclear precisely when management became aware of the allegations. According to internal sources, Nerbovig, in her capacity as president of the Noisy Union, called a union meeting to discuss the allegations and drum up support for herself and Krieg after the investigation began last month.

According to Stranger sources, Guild leaders believed the false version of events presented by Nerbovig and Krieg—one in which the two were guileless victims— and began considering a full-throated mobilization on their behalf. The decision to jump straight to a mobilization was unusual, according to union sources, given that the two had not been disciplined and the union had not gathered all the facts about the case yet.

Because they don’t have a contract yet, Stranger employees don’t have access to a formal grievance process, but can file Unfair Labor Practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board.

Additionally, according to internal sources, the union argued that the investigation should be limited to internal allegations, rather than “external” issues such as whether Krieg and Nerbovig asked people outside the Stranger to back up a false story for them. As a result, the investigation was limited to allegations involving the Stranger and its staff, which appears to be one reason, according to sources, that the joint union-management statement says the “original allegations” were “not substantiated.”

The executive officer of the Newspaper Guild, Courtney Scott, and Noisy Creek management both responded to our questions by referring us to their joint statement. Prior to working for the Guild, Scott was a labor organizer with UNITE Here, which represents workers in the restaurant and hospitality industries, and the Actors’ Guild; they do not have a background in journalism, according to their public bios on LinkedIn as well as members of the newspaper guild.

As late as last week, according to sources with direct knowledge of the situation, the Guild was preparing to mobilize members in favor of Krieg and Nerbovig—at least somewhat convinced that the two women had been manipulated by Smith and were now being unfairly blamed for his actions. (Smith was fired last year; Nerbovig and Krieg, along with other members of the local media, publicly decried the decision, with many accusing Noisy Creek founder Brady Walkinshaw of having it in for him.)

The union scheduled an emergency meeting to interview Krieg, Nerbovig, and two of their colleagues last week, according to internal sources and communications, but then called it off the following day.

One revelation that the union became aware of late in the investigation—and that reportedly helped sway the union from going any further in defense of Krieg and Nerbovig—was evidence that they had engaged in a bullying and harassment campaign against at least one colleague, according to multiple sources inside and outside the Stranger.

This new evidence was compelling enough that it was a key reason the union decided to stop backing Nerbovig and Krieg last week, according to sources familiar with the union’s reasoning.

After the meeting was canceled, the union and management agreed on the joint statement and the two reporters were given the opportunity to resign with severance. (Several sources confirmed that Krieg was initially offered the opportunity to stay at the Stranger in a different role.) Both were asked to sign a mutual non-disparagement agreement that that would prevent each party to the agreement— Noisy Creek and its two former employees—from publicly criticizing the other.

Non-disparagement agreements are less restrictive than nondisclosure agreements, which impose broad confidentiality requirements and significant restrictions on speech.

After resigning, Krieg posted on X that she did not sign the separation agreement.

Media

Two Stranger Reporters Put on Leave for Investigation Into Potential Ethical Violations

By Erica C. Barnett

Two reporters from the Stranger—Ashley Nerbovig and Hannah Krieg—have been put on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations that they behaved unethically by failing to disclose and lying about a separate ethical breach by former Stranger editor Rich Smith.

Full disclosure: I worked at the Stranger from 2003 to 2009.

The investigation stems from a story that has been circulating in Seattle political circles since last year: Smith, who was then the Stranger’s news editor and the head of its endorsement board, had a one-time sexual encounter not long before the November election with Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who was then a candidate for Seattle City Council. Rinck was elected in a landslide last November.

In an email to staff yesterday, Rob Crocker, the chief financial officer of the Stranger’s parent company, Noisy Creek, announced that Nerbovig and Krieg had “been placed on paid leave,” and that both “are prohibited from representing themselves as employees of Noisy Creek or any of its properties. Their access to company information and communications is also suspended.”

The sternly worded email nods to the fact that Stranger reporters are now represented by the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, which is reportedly defending them against the allegations.”In the interests of fairness to Hannah, Ashley, and all other members of Noisy Creek, we need to undertake an internal investigation, which we hope to resolve quickly,” Crocker wrote. “We have contacted the Noisy Union and will be coordinating with them,.”

Hannah Murphy Winter, who replaced Smith as editor of the Stranger last July, told PubliCola, “I can’t speak to the nature of the investigation until it’s been completed,” but noted that “the allegations are serious.”

Smith was fired late last October for reasons unrelated to the incident with Rinck. “We weren’t aware of Rich’s alleged conduct at the time he was let go,” Murphy Winter said.

According to sources, the investigation that’s happening now concerns whether Nerbovig and Krieg  knew about the incident and lied about it to their editors. The investigation is also looking into allegations that they told their editors they just learned about the incident recently and attempted to convince people associated with Rinck to support their cover story. The Stranger has rarely put reporters on leave; the last time they did so was after a barrage of right-wing threats in response to a joke Nerbovig made on X about the first Trump assassination attempt.

There’s no evidence that anyone in Rinck’s circle agreed to lie on the reporters’ behalf, and the investigation, which Murphy Winter said would be “quick,” is reportedly intended to determine whether the allegations against the two reporters are true.

Smith and Rinck declined to comment. PubliCola sent questions to Nerbovig and Krieg and received a response from Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild representative Courtney Scott, which read: “Due to the ongoing investigation regarding Hannah Krieg and Ashley Nerbovig we have advised them not to respond to these questions. The Noisy Creek Union and The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild are cooperating with The Stranger’s management team in the investigation and have no other comments at this time.”

It’s obviously unethical for a reporter or editor to have intimate contact or a romantic relationship with a candidate or elected official the paper covers, because it creates a conflict of interest that calls the publication’s integrity into question. Any news staffer in that situation would be obligated, at the very least, to immediately tell their supervisor and stop covering that person or participating in editorial decisions that involve them, including not just endorsements but daily coverage and story assignments. Lying or concocting a false story to protect a colleague who committed an ethical breach is also an unambiguous ethical violation. The obligation to avoid dishonesty is spelled out in many publications’ code of conduct.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Murphy Winter replaced Smith as editor of the Stranger after Noisy Creek—a new venture started by former Grist CEO and 2016 Congressional candidate Brady Walkinshaw—bought the paper last July. At that time, Smith returned to his former position as news editor, and was fired from that position three months later.

While Murphy Winter couldn’t confirm any details about the investigation, she did note that the Stranger has “an employee code of conduct that we expect our employees to adhere to,” and that lying about or covering up an inappropriate relationship or incident “would very clearly fall into the terms of that code.”

There may be knee-jerk condemnations of Rinck for fooling around with the news editor of a publication that gave her their endorsement. But by all accounts, the Stranger had already endorsed Rinck, a progressive, before the incident took place—and her opponent was appointed council incumbent Tanya Woo, whom the Stranger called “[o]ne of the dimmer bulbs in the council’s already flickering chandelier, [who] evinces zero capacity for discussing complex legislation, no will to put forth any major legislation of her own, and otherwise displays total fealty to the corporate class.” (Thesaurus much?)

That said, the incident reflects poor judgment on both sides. For Rinck, who was running for office, it was clearly a lapse in judgment, of the sort that male politicians tend to get away with unscathed. For Smith, it appears to have been an ongoing ethical violation, since he did not disclose the incident to his bosses after it happened.

Smith did, however, reportedly tell Nerbovig and Krieg several months ago. The two reportedly did not disclose what they knew to management until earlier this month, when they said they had just learned about the incident for the first time last week. Apparently, in one version, I was the source of the supposed rumor: Someone who overheard me blabbing about it while out drinking with a group of journalists told them what I said. This did not happen.