Category: Media

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.”

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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.

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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.

Media, Police, Uncategorized

“I Drag Him, I Throw Him to the Side”: Right-Wing Activist Claims “Self-Defense” In Attack on Trans Woman

Cop’s verdict: “He’s fuckin’ lying, dude!” 

By Erica C. Barnett

A fired local TV reporter who now makes videos for Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk’s youth group, Turning Point USA, admitted punching and dragging a trans woman along a sidewalk near a temporary migrant encampment earlier this year, telling Officer Nicholas Burgess he was acting purely in “self-defense” after a “mob” of people tried to prevent him from doing “my job as a journalist.”

PubliCola reported on the incident, in which multiple witnesses say ex-KOMO news staffer Jonathan Choe repeatedly punched the woman and dragged her along the sidewalk, ripping out her hair, in April. Since then, we obtained body camera footage of Choe’s conversation with police through a records request.

The video shows that immediately after Burgess hung up with Choe, the other officer in the car shouted out, “He’s fuckin’ lying, dude!” Burgess responded, “I don’t know” before turning off his camera, ending the tape. Burgess later wrote that he found Choe’s claim of self-defense “plausible,” but his partner, after listening to Choe’s version of events, clearly did not.

“As a journalist, what I do is I show up and get video and do interviews,” Choe told Burgess, who responded to Choe’s 911 call from his car and put him on speakerphone. “And as I was at the press conference, about two, three minutes in, I’m recording, and then the crowd turns on me after they notice what I was doing. And a lot of folks in this crowd don’t like my kind of reporting, because I tell the truth, so they basically said I wasn’t welcome there.”

As we reported earlier this year, multiple witnesses reported that Choe pulled out a retractable baton and wielded it in a threatening manner in the vicinity of a Angolan migrant who was living at the temporary camp near the Garfield Playfield. The woman Choe punched and dragged told us she put her body between Choe and the man but did not touch him. A heavily edited video Choe later posted on X showed him taunting a person holding their hands in the air, calling them a “little soy boy” and repeatedly threatening to call the police.

Later, according to several witnesses’ official statements to police, he punched the woman in the face and dragged her by her hair, ripping out a chunk of it before grabbing her phone and running away, dropping his baton in the process. The witnesses who told police what happened included a Parks Department employee who happened to be working nearby.

In his call, Choe appears confident the police are on his side, telling him he was just trying to report on what was happening when a “Hispanic kid” “bumped” him, forcing Choe to attack her in self-defense. (In addition to mentioning the woman’s ethnicity three times in a seven-minute call, Choe consistently misgendered her.)

So, Choe continued, “I’m trying to clear the situation. I push this guy away. My hand gets tangled on this guy, so I’m on the ground. I’m walking away from this guy, and this guy’s on the ground, so I’m pushing him off, and then I leave.”

Choe—who told Burgess he has sent SPD “numerous hours” of video in the past—emphasized that he was definitely capable of “beat[ing] up” the woman he punched and dragged. “If I wanted to beat him up, if I wanted to attack him, I easily could have, but I left the scene,” Choe said. He added that he wanted to press charges against “at least the Hispanic kid.”

“I’m sick of being bullied,” Choe continued. “I get assaulted at these things all the time.” After Burgess suggested his version of events was pretty confusing, and told him the woman said Choe had assaulted her, Choe chuckled loudly. “That’s hilarious,” he told the officer. “Yeah, if ‘assault’ means I defended myself, because they instigated everything. Last I checked, in America, I’m allowed to defend myself.”

Choe appeared keen to make sure the cops knew he was a serious journalist with real credentials—not some random weirdo wielding an iPhone and a retractable weapon at a refugee camp. “I’m trying to do my job as a journalist. I have a long history in the city. I have a full body of work. And, you know, people are on the far left accuse me of all kinds of things, and they now try to be the victim the moment I defend myself. … I’m gonna stand for truth.”

Choe never posted any evidence that he was assaulted. He told the officers he put his phone away during those critical moments, “so the actual self-defense piece is not recorded.” This is par for the course: Videos from other events Choe has attended show him instigating conflicts by rapidly invading people’s personal space, then running away while threatening to call the police or claiming someone assaulted him, often with their phone.

Choe did not respond to a request for comment. The last time we reached out to Choe about this incident, in April, he responded by boasting about his follower count on X and his new position at Kirk’s organization, which he described as a “national cable channel.”

City Council, Mayor Harrell, Media

What Seattle Will Lose If It Loses the Seattle Channel
City Council candidates Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Tanya Woo on a recent episode of “City Inside/Out.”

By Erica C. Barnett

In planning for a potential $260 million budget shortfall this year, Mayor Bruce Harrell asked most city departments to come up with potential cuts of 8 percent—a worst-case scenario the mayor’s office avoided by using about half the funds from the JumpStart payroll tax to pay for staff and services that are usually funded through the city’s general fund.

One department that did get gutted—not cut by 8 or 10 percent, but slashed in half—is the Seattle Channel, the city’s award-winning source for arts coverage, interviews with elected officials, campaign debates, and other original programming.

Harrell’s budget proposal would eliminate the jobs of three videographers who film, produce and edit programs and meetings, two half-time web positions, a senior producer, and the channel’s  operations manager. The cuts would mean the end of all original Seattle Channel programming, leaving only city council meetings and mayoral events.

During a recent presentation to the City Council, City Budget Office director Dan Eder that with the decline in cable subscriptions, the cable fees that help fund Seattle Channel are no longer enough to keep it going. “At this point, we just didn’t have enough money available to us… to continue that program,” Eder said.

In an email, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, Callie Craighead, made a distinction between “primary programming of government affairs” and “supplementary” or “additional” programming like the original work that has been the Seattle Channel’s mainstay for the past two decades. “Should the revenue forecast improve or if the City can arrange for other funding solutions, we would be supportive of restoring this additional programming,” Craighead said.

The cuts would save about $1.6 million—about 0.085 percent (0.008) of a $1.9 billion general-fund budget that includes tens of millions of dollars in new spending on police overtime, planning for the 2026 FIFA World Cup (which will include six matches in Seattle), and downtown beautification projects such as removing the fountain in Westlake Park.

The city has known about the decline in cable revenues for many years; last year, Harrell’s budget suggested using new tax revenues, based on the recommendations of the city’s Revenue Stabilization Work Group, to sustain the Seattle Channel and other programs with dwindling or unstable revenues. After voters elected a new, anti-tax city council last. year, Harrell changed his tune, issuing what amounted to a no-new-taxes pledge.

Shows that Harrell’s budget would eliminate immediately include “City Inside/Out,” a public affairs hosted by broadcasting veteran Brian Callanan; Art Zone, a “weekly love letter” to local arts and culture hosted by Nancy Guppy; and BookLust, a popular interview show hosted by Nancy Pearl, along with 20 other shows. Callanan, along with longtime producer Susan Han, has a year-to-year contract with the channel; both will lose their jobs if the cuts go through.

Gary Gibson, who managed the Seattle Channel from 2002 to 2007, recalled that the city set up a commission in 2001 to help revitalize the city’s cable-access channel, then called TV SEA, which only aired city council meetings and mayoral press conferences.

“It was a vehicle for putting out council meetings and the mayor’s press conferences—that’s all they did. There was no original programming and there was no enterprise reporting or any kind of content creation.” The commission said the channel should create engaging shows that would have an audience beyond meeting watchers, and put those shows online so people could watch them any time. “They had this idea to create a democracy portal—a two-way communication between government and the citizens,” Gibson said.

Now retired from broadcasting, Gibson led the channel through its transition in the early 2000s, from a standard public-access cable channel (called TV-SEA) that aired mayoral press conferences and council meetings, into a unique online resource offering original shows like “City Inside/Out,” “Ask the Mayor,” and election debates.

Under Harrell’s plan, the Seattle Channel would once again be little more than a portal for council meetings and press events.

Han, who has been with Seattle Channel for 17 years, said she “did expect some belt-tightening” this year, but was surprised that Harrell proposed eliminating all of the channel’s award-winning programs. “We’re just going to have to really fight to try and save the show,” she said, referring to “City Inside/Out.” “I don’t know if we have the ability to save the station.”

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Harrell’s cuts would eliminate coverage that no one else in the city is providing—coverage that’s made possible, in part, because Seattle Channel is part of the city itself and has spent decades building trust with city leaders. The tone of its coverage is genuinely fair and balanced, and producers go out of their way to give both sides of an issue or campaign an opportunity to make their best case.

For example, during the heated debate over a proposal to recall then-council member Kshama Sawant in 2021, Han was able to convince Sawant to appear on a panel, moderated by Callanan, with representatives from the “Recall Sawant” campaign. It was the only time Sawant and her opponents sat down for a debate.

“I tried to get her own the show from April until November, and she finally said yes,” Han recalled. “That’s the thing with producing our show—you make a lot of phone calls before you hone into the right balance. And it’s not like we’re being paid hourly. We just really care that we have the best version of that show.”

Later this week, Callanan said, the Seattle Channel will hold another debate between proponents and opponents of the $1.55 billion transportation levy—a measure that has received little recent coverage from the shrinking local press corps or campaign reporters, who are largely focused on  national and state races.

“It’s going to be half hour, we’re going to have opposing sides, and we’re going to present some pretty comprehensive coverage on an issues that’s huge” to the city, Callanan said. “Here are the pros,  here are the cons, here is what both sides say. It’s that type of reporting” that will be lost if Harrell’s cuts go through, he said.

“Art Zone with Nancy Guppy” is another longtime staple of the Seattle Channel’s coverage.

Beyond election debates, the Seattle Channel provides ongoing coverage about the details of what the city council, mayor, and city departments are up to—everything from profiles of department leaders to half-hour sit-down interviews with council members. “I think this is something city should be really proud of,” Callanan said. “For me, it’s the idea of the city standing behind this ethic of preserving quality journalism that provides transparency into what they’re doing.”

While the Seattle Channel serves as a forum for elected officials, it isn’t a mouthpiece—which is one reason many mayors and council members have complained about the channel’s coverage over the years. Common complaints include charges that the channel gives too much time to opposing views; that its reporters should be producing promo pieces for elected officials, not journalism; and that it’s unreasonable to expect officials to sit down and answer questions.

Callanan said his goal has always been “talking to local officials in the best way possible. I want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to provide those avenues for local officials to be in front of people, have people ask questions, and have the officials respond.” However, he added, “It has been more and more challenging to get public officials to commit to interviews.”

Sometimes, this pushback has led to involuntary programming changes; for example, former mayor Ed Murray ended “Ask the Mayor,” a show where the mayor responded to viewer questions, by refusing to appear on it, and no subsequent mayor has revived the show.

Harrell has also reportedly groused about the channel’s coverage, along with the fact that its camera operators can’t always drop what they’re doing to cover his events; however, he’s the first mayor to propose eliminating 100 percent of its original programming and its two-person web team.

The mayor’s office insists that its decision to eliminate the Seattle Channel’s programming is a matter of simple budget math, not a response to its coverage. “We looked at other comparable cities with an active government-access television channel and the proposed 2025 Seattle Channel budget of $1.7 M is more in line with those cities.” Craighead said.

Harrell’s budget assumes that council meetings and his own press events will go up online without the two people who currently make that happen, which Han calls unrealistic. “Our web team is fantastic, and they’re also the ones that do the live stream and put the show on all these different platforms,” Han said. “When the mayor says we’re still going to be able to put all this stuff out and do livestreams and all that, I think he’s mistaken.”

Gibson, the former Seattle Channel general manager, said he doesn’t “really get the calculus” that led Harrell to propose eliminating everything that makes Seattle Channel unique among municipal TV stations. “It just doesn’t seem like that much to pay for that kind of transparency into government activities.”

City council members Sara Nelson and Dan Strauss have both publicly expressed their support for Seattle Channel since the mayor released his budget, and Nelson told a constituent she plans to introduce a budget amendment that would restore at least some funding this week. Neither Nelson nor council spokesperson Brad Harwood responded to PubliCola’s questions about the Seattle Channel or Nelson’s amendment.

Editor’s note: After we posted this story, Nelson put out a press release saying she was “working to preserve funding for the city’s Seattle Channel.” The announcement did not include any other details.

Media, public safety, race

Top Fire Official Helped Concoct Hoax Against Department, Targeting “Woke” Policies Like Vaccine Mandate

 

The former deputy fire chief and another firefighter created a fake “proud Latino” from South Park. Messages also show department staff trading vaccine conspiracy theories, using homophobic slurs, and providing packaged, “paint by numbers” stories to right-wing media.

By Erica C. Barnett

A Seattle Fire Department deputy chief, Tom Walsh, and a longtime firefighter, identified in Signal messages as Paul Patterson, concocted a ruse to deceive fire chief Harold Scoggins into changing the language the department uses to describe staffing shortages in an attempt to prove the department was too “woke,” then shopped the story to right-wing media. KTTH commentator Jason Rantz picked up the story and ran with it last year.

The messages were obtained through a citizen records request and are available on Muckrock.

Walsh and Patterson were among many SFD personnel who were furious over the COVID vaccine mandate that went into effect in 2021. Signal messages between Walsh and a half-dozen other fire department employees show the men endorsing conspiracy theories, making racially insensitive comments (such as suggesting that Scoggins can never be fired because he’s Black), and using the f-slur for gay men.

The story Walsh and Patterson peddled to Rantz involved a fabricated South Park resident, “Armando Paredes de Castillo,” a “proud Latino currently living in the South Park neighborhood”  who was offended by the term “brownout,” which fire departments use to describe short-staffing. Both Patterson and Walsh are white.

Patterson and Walsh spent weeks working on a letter to Scoggins, which they also released to Rantz, expressing outrage about the term and calling it racist against Latinos; the goal was to get Scoggins to direct staffers to stop using the term, which would supposedly demonstrate that the department was too “woke” and focused on the wrong things. The Signal messages suggest that Patterson was the primary author of the “Armando” emails, with assistance and editing from Walsh.

Neither Walsh nor Patterson responded to questions sent earlier this week.

Patterson went by the handle “L11Tillerman” in Walsh’s Signal account but was identified by name in several exchanges, including one from Walsh that read “Paul Patterson: The Harriett Tubman of SFD.” (In a message to a city IT staffer, Walsh referred to himself as a “modern-day Harriett Tubman,” apparently referring to his “path back” into the department despite being unvaccinated. The deputy fire chief and the IT staffer also discussed Bitcoin, “one-way tickets to South America,” and places they might move now that living in the US was untenable.)

“Armando” began writing to Scoggins in the spring of 2022, complaining in April, for instance, that “brownout” was a “discriminatory term” that was offensive to Latinos like himself. In a conversation with Patterson about an email from “Armando” in May, Walsh joked that the email was making him “tingle in my bathroom parts.”

On June 13, Scoggins distributed a memo saying they would stop using the term after “Concerns were raised that the term ‘brown out’ has negative connotations for communities of color. This change has been made to reaffirm SFD’s commitment and mission to serve all communities with dignity and respect.” In an exchange with Patterson that day, Walsh wrote, “And Armando’s memo just came out,” to which Patterson responded with an image (or GIF) of dancing monkeys. “Exactly,” Walsh responded.

Rantz reported on the memo the following day, touting it as an “EXCLUSIVE.” In his post, Rantz called Scoggins’ response “a wholly contrived issue that the chief is using to signal his wokeness. It’s as if he was under pressure to show his commitment to ‘equity’ but couldn’t think of any that are woke enough, so he made up an issue for the pats on the back he’ll no doubt receive.”

Rantz remained in contact with “Armando.” In August, Rantz filed a followup based on more info he’d received from “Armando,” reporting that “internal emails obtained by the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH show how the department kowtowed to the increasingly aggressive demands of one random Seattleite.”

In November, Rantz returned to the story yet again, this time with an email exchange with Patterson. (In a message to Walsh in October, Patterson wrote, “Jason asked for an interview, I declined but said I would give him a [sic] that was quotable. Feel free to edit or give your input”).

Walsh and Patterson debated how to talk to Rantz over Signal, and ultimately decided to deliver him anonymous quotes over email; in his piece, Rantz wrote that “Armando” “said he is an internal Seattle Fire source that wishes to stay anonymous.”

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Despite being fine with quoting a source who was anonymous even to him, Rantz’ followup excoriated Scoggins for failing to “vet” Castillo to determine that he was who he said he was—a Latino resident of South Park. (The city does not track down and verify the identity of every person who writes to them, which would cause obvious privacy and workload issues.) Patterson forwarded the story to Walsh, writing, “He didn’t hit a home run, but…”

The following February, after a lengthy back-and-forth on Signal to fine-tune the wording, “Armando” sent a followup to Scoggins and Harrell mocking the fire chief for falling for their “brownout” hoax. The point of the prank, they wrote, was to bring attention to Scoggins’ efforts to “divide us on vaccination, religion and race.”

Besides the vaccine mandate and the “brownout” language change, the letter complained about Mayor Bruce Harrell’s reaction when a firefighter wrote the mayor to complain about the mayor’s pro-choice statement when Roe v. Wade was overturned, which the firefighter called “virtue signaling, politically motivated nonsense.” Harrell’s office sent the email to the fire department’s HR department, which told the firefighter he should only communicate with the mayor through his chain of command.

The letter began, “I am the troll that single handily played into your woke ideology and manipulated you into the BROWN OUT cancel culture BS!”

You have shifted the paradigm and culture within the Seattle Fire Department from being a tight nit inclusive family to a poorly run business that has been run with tyranny & bias!

I highlighted the gaping tear in the fabric of common sense by arbitrarily saying I found the term “BROWN OUT” offensive. We are living in ridiculous time where anyone can “identify” as whatever they want and then throw a flag that the rest of society has to bend and lean into their irrational behavior and insist we reinvent language to accommodate made up feelings.

The purpose of this dog and pony show was to bring attention to couple of things that you have done that have ripped a gaping hole in the fabric of the Seattle Fire Department!

It went on for another 2,500 words in this vein.

Rantz wasn’t the only local right-wing commentator who ran with a packaged story from Walsh and Patterson. In February 2023, the pair shopped around a letter from a group of firefighters who claimed Scoggins had engaged in “presumed criminal activity” during the 2020 protests by, among other things, loaning stretchers to volunteer medics in the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).

After failing to get traction with Rantz and considering both Brandi Kruse (a former FOX13 reporter who, according to Patterson, “owed [Walsh] one from the Chaz”) and local right-wing provocateur Katie Daviscourt, the two men decided to go with Post Millennial writer (and failed Seattle City Council candidate) Ari Hoffman.

In their texts, Walsh and Patterson described the story as a “paint by numbers” piece. In a separate email with another firefighter, Steve Collins, around the same time, Walsh wrote, “Hoffman’s not gonna have to do any work. I’ve done it for him.’

Hoffman ran with the story on March 15, posting it under the headline, “EXCLUSIVE: Seattle fire chief faces backlash after coordinating with BLM, Antifa rioters during CHAZ occupation.”

The Signal messages included in the records request include Signal messages from deputy fire chief Walsh from 2021 through 2023. Many of the conversations are about the vaccine mandate, and refer to right-wing conspiracy theories that have been thoroughly debunked.

In many of the texts, Walsh and other fire department employees complain that the department has been taken over by “woke” vaccine proponents. “These fucking people are ruining my beloved fire department,” Walsh wrote in November 2021. The following March, Walsh wrote that he had “zero fucks left to give”; two days later, he wrote, “The city was monstrously good in the way they prosecuted the mandate. Fuckers. Evil, but good,” then made a joke about Seattle restaurants requiring “a proof of Ukraine support card before they’ll serve you.”

Despite writing that he would likely lose his job over the mandate, Walsh remained in his position until June, when he retired after 27 years at SFD. As of last year, he was still complaining about the vaccine mandate, writing, “Cocksuckers. Every last one of them” in an exchange with Collins on September 7, 2023.

In a separate exchange with Walsh, Collins said he was being disciplined for calling someone a “f-g” on Facebook after the other person was “whooping up the mandate;” Collins complained that the person sent the exchange to HR. “Of COURSE he did,” Walsh wrote. “Seattle is such a ‘run and tell mom’ town.”

Walsh also speculated, in a conversation with a fire lieutenant, about whether someone was a “tranny” or a “chick.”

As of July 31, Patterson was still listed as an active firefighter in Seattle’s online wage database and in the city’s internal employee directory. Collins left the department in 2021 after refusing to get the vaccine, and we were unable to locate contact information for him; however, he was quoted in the Free Beacon, a right-wing website, in 2023, complaining that “woke tests are making it harder for the macho guys to get hired” at SFD.

The Seattle Fire Department responded to our questions with the following statement: “The Seattle Fire Department is unable to provide comment due to an ongoing investigation and pending litigation.”