When a reporter covering Boeing for a Western Washington newspaper was researching an article about the company's environmental record - a story that the company knew would contain embarrassing information - Boeing's public relations team shifted into full-speed damage control.
"Boeing was really irritated that I was doing it," said the reporter, who asked not to be identified. "They spend a lot of time and money putting a good face on their environmental record. They laid it on really thick that I was misguided."
Boeing public relations staffers, the reporter said, wanted to send a message.
"They threatened me," said the reporter, who had a standing request in to interview Boeing's top man. "They said in no uncertain terms that if I wrote that story, I wouldn't get an interview with Frank Shrontz."
The story happened. The Shrontz interview didn't, though the reporter couldn't establish a definite link.
"They have a bully approach with the press," the reporter said. "They make it clear that they can shut you out."
When a Free Press reporter called Boeing spokesperson John Kvasnosky to talk about the company's environmental record, Kvasnosky reminded the reporter about Boeing's position and influence. "We are a major force in the region," he said at the outset of the conversation.
Beyond the question of whether these are isolated cases of Boeing flaks pressuring reporters, every journalist who attempts to cover Boeing must bump up against a company known in media circles as perhaps the toughest nut to crack in the Northwest. Whistleblowers and chatty disgruntled employees are few. The P.R. staff, with whom all journalists first must consult, can be "obnoxious and rude," the reporter said.
Throw in Boeing's importance to the Northwest economy, its tentacles throughout the community, the its enormity and aneffective corporate advertising campaign, and media people speak of an institution with virtual immunity from sustained media criticism.
And with the Seattle Times and P-I dedicating to Boeing only two to four reporters who mainly cover business news, media observers say the newspapers are in no position to conduct an earnest review of the state's second-biggest polluter.
As the experience of the reporter seeking an interview with Shrontz illustrates, the dynamic between journalist and subject is a powerful yet shaky one. Sacrificing access to a corporation's top brass in the name of publishing tough stories is a choice that all reporters inevitably face. Usually, reporters can turn elsewhere for information about their subjects; a reporter investigating government corruption, for example, can tap the resources of private watchdog organizations.
In Boeing's case, however, the alternatives aren't as obvious or numerous.
"For the people who cover Boeing," the reporter continued, "who are their main sources? Stock analysts. And stock analysts don't give a fuck about the environment. There is very little access to Boeing to begin with. So you turn to the only detached observers there are. But stock analysts have a very limited focus. It's hard to find anyone else to call."
Making matters tougher, getting government officials and others to speak freely - much less critically - about Boeing is a chore, the reporter said. "Everybody seems to
be in various stages of delicate negotiations with Boeing, they are unwilling to say anything ... Everybody is so afraid about losing Boeing."
That fear - of criticizing a huge company threatening to move jobs elsewhere - is felt by Puget Sound's print and broadcast media when they cover a Boeing story. Particularly during times of a real or suspected Boeing downturn - such as recent months - reporters and commentators fixate on "what it would mean" if Boeing built a new plant somewhere else. They talk about unemployment, housing slumps, a slow retail market and so on.
With this pattern at work, Boeing's environmental problems - already treated as incidental - get pushed farther down on the list of media priorities, media observers say. As a result, print and broadcast media coverage of Boeing's environmental misdeeds is prompted, almost without exception, by a government fine, a lawsuit or some other point-source news event. Broader, in-depth reporting of Boeing's environmental citizenship, particularly of the critical nature, is rare.
Not since Wall Street Journal reporter Bill Richards wrote a series of articles more than 10 years ago while at P-I has any publication taken an up-close look at Boeing's environmental record. The P-I's commitment appears to have left with Richards.
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'The coverage has been exceedingly narrow and exceedingly shallow. Boeing is the biggest sacred cow in the State of Washington.'
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When a Boeing environmental problem does make headlines, it's usually in print only for a day, and articles usually are limited to two news sources: a government official and a Boeing spokesperson. By comparison, stories with an economic theme usually are packed with "experts" talking about whatever layoffs or airplane orders were announced that day.
Sometimes, the dailies don't call any sources. On several occasions in recent years, the Times and P-I have printed a wire-service story about a Boeing environmental problem. Why is this worth noting? Because when this happens, newspapers usually do none of their own reporting - the wire version merely is run verbatim, with the exception of some cosmetic editing.
Last Dec. 17, for example, the P-I ran an Associated Press story about Metro's record-breaking $228,000 fine against Boeing for a huge discharge of toxic chromium into Metro's sewer system. Despite the violation's gravity, the P-I did no original reporting on the story. (The AP, which based its dispatch on a Valley Daily News article, inexplicably elevated a cheerful quote by a Boeing spokesperson to the top of its story from its original location at the very end of the Daily News article.)
How superficial are the daily papers when it comes to covering Boeing's environmental problems? A scan of every Times article written in the past three years reveals no stories about a Boeing environmental problem that was not connected to a specific enforcement action or lawsuit. This despite mounds of publicly available government records chronicling Boeing's environmental history.
One of the biggest Times articles published recently about an environment-related issue concerned a Boeing machinist and his wife who were poisoned by lead in the man's workplace hammer. The story, though discussing just two people, was longer than nearly every recent Times article about any environmental problem.
Nationally, the coverage is equally as sparse. A scan of a database of hundreds of periodicals turned up more than 700 articles about Boeing since 1990. One was about the environment, and it was about the highly publicized 1990 federal trial pitting Boeing against its insurers over the cost to clean up two hazardous waste sites.
Editors at the Times and P-I did not return telephone calls from a Free Press reporter to explain their philosophy of covering Boeing's environmental record.
Ironically, it was a former Times reporter, Doug Underwood, who explored the apparent non-aggression pact between the local news media and Boeing. In a 1988 article in the Columbia Journalism Review , a New York City-based trade journal, Underwood explained how the Times and P-I missed golden opportunities to expose possible cases of Pentagon-related corruption, bribery, faulty workmanship and antitrust violations at Boeing. He drew some compelling conclusions.
"There's no doubt that Boeing sometimes treats the Seattle press with the arrogance of a company in a company town ... The company presents a formidable obstacle to local press coverage," wrote Underwood, now a University of Washington communications professor. "But it may be that Boeing is too deeply rooted in the community for the Seattle media ever to take off the gloves."
Self-defeating factors also have been at work, Underwood wrote: Robert Twiss, the Times ' aerospace reporter until 1982, regularly played cards with Boeing public relations staffers. And, Seattle's two dailies told Underwood that they can't afford to assign more reporters to cover Boeing.
A colleague of Underwood's, UW professor Don Pember, also has kept his eye on media coverage of Boeing. "For years, Boeing press releases were printed word-for-word with the aerospace reporters' bylines on top of them," Pember said. "(The newspapers) consistently have shielded the Boeing Company."
Another media observer, who asked not to be named, had even a more critical view of the Boeing-media relationship.
"The environmental coverage (by the Seattle media) has been zero. The coverage has been exceedingly narrow and exceedingly shallow. Boeing is the biggest sacred cow in the state of Washington. It is the giant moo of them all."
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