Don’t expect right wing media to apologize for deceptively declaring I‑1639 to be dead

Last week, when Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge James Dixon ruled in favor of the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion and Alan Got­tlieb’s legal chal­lenge to Ini­tia­tive 1639, order­ing Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman not to place it on the Novem­ber 2018 bal­lot, right wing blogs and media out­lets had a field day.

In their rush to cel­e­brate, they neglect­ed to empha­size (or did­n’t men­tion at all) that Dixon’s deci­sion was being appealed and would­n’t be the final word.

“NRA Wins Law­suit in Wash­ing­ton State, Pre­vents I‑1639 From Appear­ing on Bal­lot,” read a tri­umphant head­line on the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion’s web­site.

“Judge Sides with NRA, 2nd Amend­ment Foun­da­tion, Dis­qual­i­fies Wash­ing­ton Gun Con­trol Ini­tia­tive,” pro­claimed a lede on the right wing web­site Bre­it­bart.

“NRA wins Wash­ing­ton case, stops gun con­trol ini­tia­tive from going to bal­lot,” read the title of the MYNorthwest.com staff report on Dixon’s rul­ing. (MYNorth­west is the online home of right wing talk­ers like Dori Mon­son and Jason Rantz.)

Even Sin­clair-owned KOMO TV got in on the deception.

“This fall, you won’t be vot­ing on an ini­tia­tive to make it more dif­fi­cult to buy a semi-auto­mat­ic rifle,” anchor Mol­ly Shen impru­dent­ly told KOMO view­ers at the top of an evening news­cast on August 17th. Coan­chor Eric John­son added by way of expla­na­tion: “A Thurston Coun­ty judge ruled today that the peti­tion for Ini­tia­tive 1639 did not meet all the require­ments to make it onto the ballot.”

All of those ledes con­sist­ed of what are now indis­putably erro­neous state­ments. Peo­ple were wrong­ly encour­aged to believe that I‑1639 was dead, when it wasn’t.

Last night, in an opin­ion signed by Chief Jus­tice Mary Fairhurst, the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court put the kibosh on Dixon’s rul­ing, unan­i­mous­ly over­turn­ing his deci­sion and hold­ing that he erred in grant­i­ng the NRA and Got­tlieb’s motion for a writ of man­damus. The high court’s rul­ing means that the NRA has actu­al­ly lost its law­suit and Wash­ing­to­ni­ans will get to vote on Ini­tia­tive 1639 this November.

But you would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know that from look­ing at the NRA’s web­site. While the NRA did link to Joseph O’Sul­li­van’s Seat­tle Times sto­ry on the Supreme Court’s ver­dict, it has not updat­ed its orig­i­nal post from last Fri­day to clar­i­fy that it did­n’t actu­al­ly pre­vent I‑1639 from appear­ing on the bal­lot after all.

The only indi­ca­tion that Dixon’s rul­ing (hailed by the NRA as a “Wash­ing­ton Win!”) might not be an endur­ing vic­to­ry is at the end of its post­ing, where it admits: “The ini­tia­tive pro­po­nents will like­ly appeal the deci­sion to the state Supreme Court.”

KOMO’s sto­ry like­wise acknowl­edged that an appeal had been filed with the Supreme Court, but that came much lat­er in the seg­ment than it should have.

Here’s a tran­script for full context:

ANCHOR MOLLY SHEN: This fall, you won’t be vot­ing on an ini­tia­tive to make it more dif­fi­cult to buy a semi-auto­mat­ic rifle.

ANCHOR ERIC JOHNSON: A Thurston Coun­ty judge ruled today that the peti­tion for Ini­tia­tive 1639 did not meet all the require­ments to make it onto the bal­lot. KOMO’s Suzanne Phan joins us from Belle­vue with the reac­tion tonight. Suzanne?

REPORTER SUZANNE PHAN: Well, gun-con­trol advo­cates say they are shocked [and] they’re sur­prised that a judge sided with the NRA and not the 378,000 peo­ple who signed the peti­tion. Mean­while, gun rights advo­cates say that ini­tia­tive is flawed.

VOICEOVER (AMANDA TURNER, BRADY CAMPAIGN TO PREVENT GUN VIOLENCE): “Def­i­nite­ly, it was a blow today.”

SUZANNE PHAN: It’s a big blow for some, and a big win for oth­ers. Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court ruled today in favor of the NRA, and stopped I-1639 from appear­ing on the bal­lot. The ini­tia­tive has to do with the sale of semi-auto­mat­ic rifles in Wash­ing­ton State.

The mea­sure rais­es the age lim­it from eigh­teen to twen­ty-one to pur­chase semi-auto­mat­ic rifles. It would have required a ten-day wait­ing peri­od for the pur­chase of those guns. It requires more exten­sive back­ground checks for the weapons.

The NRA and the Sec­ond Amend­ment Foun­da­tion [in actu­al­i­ty, Alan Got­tlieb, not the Sec­ond Amend­ment Foun­da­tion] filed a law­suit against the Sec­re­tary of State claim­ing the peti­tions did­n’t fol­low the law, that the font size was too small to read, and did­n’t include strikethroughs. The judge agreed.

JUDGE DIXON: It’s not read­able to me.

SUZANNE PHAN: Sup­port­ers of I-1639 were stunned.

PACIFICA LAW GROUP’S GREG WONG: At no point in Wash­ing­ton State has [a court] ever pre­vent­ed an ini­tia­tive from going to the bal­lot based on alleged defects in the petition.

SUZANNE PHAN: Aman­da Turn­er of the Brady Cam­paign to Pre­vent Gun Vio­lence was sur­prised by the court ruling.

AMANDA TURNER [VIA PHONE]: They know Wash­ing­ton sup­ports safer com­mu­ni­ties and safer schools. Because they can’t change the hearts and minds of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, they’re going through the court sys­tem, and try­ing to nit­pick things apart, because that is the only way they can win.

SUZANNE PHAN: Alan Got­tlieb is with Sec­ond Amend­ment Foun­da­tion. He agrees with what the judge did this morn­ing, and says the ini­tia­tive is flawed.

ALAN GOTTLIEB [ON-CAMERA INTERVIEW WITH PHAN]: We all want to end gun vio­lence, we all want to end shoot­ing deaths, but you don’t do it by tak­ing away law-abid­ing peo­ple’s rights and restrict­ing things that aren’t going to solve the problem.

SUZANNE PHAN: And we talked to the Alliance for Gun Respon­si­bil­i­ty this after­noon. They say they’ve already appealed today’s deci­sion with the state Supreme Court. Live in Belle­vue, Suzanne Phan, KOMO News.

ERIC JOHNSON: Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman react­ed to the deci­sion. She cer­ti­fied the peti­tions at the end of July. Her state­ment said: “No mat­ter the issue, this office has a long track record of pro­tect­ing the peo­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum. When­ev­er ques­tions are raised about peti­tions sub­mit­ted by ini­tia­tive back­ers fac­ing a statu­to­ry dead­line, my office has con­sis­tent­ly act­ed accord­ing­ly.” And she thanked the judge for mak­ing a quick deci­sion so her office can con­tin­ue to pre­pare for the election.

Last night, about ten min­utes into its 11 PM news­cast, KOMO report­ed on the Supreme Court’s rul­ing revers­ing Judge Dixon. In a brief seg­ment, anchor Mary Nam informed view­ers that I‑1639 would be on the bal­lot after all.

Of course, no men­tion was made of last week’s erro­neous lede.

As bad as the KOMO and NRA ledes were, though, Bre­it­bart and MYNorth­west­’s con­duct was even worse. Nei­ther both­ered to men­tion to their read­ers that an appeal had been filed with the Supreme Court when they wrote about Dixon’s deci­sion. Omit­ting that key piece of infor­ma­tion was irresponsible.

For the sake of com­par­i­son, here is the open­ing para­graph of the MYNorth­west sto­ry on Dixon’s deci­sion and the open­ing para­graph of the sto­ry writ­ten by The Seat­tle Times’ Joseph O’Sul­li­van, who is a respect­ed jour­nal­ist:

Notice how dif­fer­ent those ledes are. One lends the impres­sion that I‑1639 is dead and buried. The oth­er lede (O’Sul­li­van’s) accu­rate­ly con­veys the true state of affairs, relat­ing that I‑1639 has been dealt a blow by a judge, but isn’t dead yet.

Only a few para­graphs lat­er, O’Sul­li­van’s sto­ry respon­si­bly informs read­ers that the Supreme Court has been asked to weigh in by Safe Schools Safe Com­mu­ni­ties, the Yes on I‑1639 cam­paign, rep­re­sent­ed by Paci­fi­ca Law Group’s Greg Wong.

The MYNorth­west staff report, mean­while, did­n’t men­tion this fact at all.

It’s too bad that the right wing blogs and media out­lets called out above chose not to be forth­right with their audi­ences when they trum­pet­ed Dixon’s rul­ing. Even advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ists can be com­mit­ted to fair, hon­est, and sound reporting.

If we held our breath wait­ing for an apol­o­gy or a cor­rec­tion from these guys, we’d pass out from a lack of oxy­gen, so we cer­tain­ly won’t be doing that.

But we do think this decep­tive report­ing makes for a good case study. It’s a reminder that many right wingers just don’t care about jour­nal­is­tic ethics. They’re more inter­est­ed in pub­lish­ing pro­pa­gan­da and pro­ject­ing their dis­hon­esty onto oth­ers. When you hear some­body reg­u­lar­ly scream­ing “Fake news!”, that’s a sure sign they’re a reg­u­lar pur­vey­or of infor­ma­tion that is false or out of context.