by Mark Worth

The Free Press

The lawsuit, filed June 30 in Pierce County Superior Court, marks a milestone in Sandy Nelson's nearly four-year struggle to regain her job as education reporter for the Tacoma-based daily newspaper. The case may lead, for the first time, to court-defined limitations on how far media corporations can go to gag reporters' political speech and block their political participation under the guise of maintaining "objectivity" in the newsroom.

"Any good journalist is in search of the truth," Nelson said from her home in Tacoma. "I am trying to find out if journalists in this country have the same right to free speech as their employers and other citizens. Or are we serfs on the Fourth Estate?"

Nelson also sees the lawsuit as an opportunity to expose the lie of "objective" journalism perpetuated by mainstream newspapers, whose strategy is to alienate as few readers as possible in order to enhance advertising revenues and circulation numbers. Nelson also wants to unmask the double standard that allows newspaper publishers - including MNT publisher Kelso Gillenwater - to use their positions for personal political gain while relegating reporters to the status of political mutes.

Said ACLU of Washington executive director Kathleen Taylor: "That Sandy Nelson is a reporter does not change the fact that she deserves to live her life as she sees fit. The newspaper's desire to be perceived as objective can be met with less drastic measures."

Nelson also says there's a double standard that protects MNT employees who are active in their churches and communities - some of whom she's overheard talking on the phone in the newsroom about their participation - while punishing her, a radical lesbian and Marxist-feminist. (See text of Nelson's written statement.)

Even before the lawsuit was filed, Nelson's battle had gotten the attention of journalism professors, labor leaders, political activists and sympathetic reporters throughout Puget Sound and, for that matter, the entire country. The ACLU lawsuit has elevated Nelson's predicament to a higher level of awareness, drawing phone calls from reporters from national media organizations, including Newsweek (whose photographer was kicked off News Tribune property while trying to take Nelson's picture for a story).

From Award-Winner to Pariah
Hired by the News Tribune in 1983, Nelson had received two Society of Professional Journalists awards as a feature writer and education reporter when, in August 1990, management became troubled by her outside political activities.

An organizer for the Committee to Protect Tacoma Human Rights, Nelson was working on a ballot initiative to reinstate discrimination protection to gays and lesbians, which Tacoma voters had rescinded in a referendum. In her work for the committee, Nelson organized petition drives and occasionally spoke at public forums.

Handed the choice of giving up reporting or activism, Nelson refused to abandon her political work. She was taken off her education beat and given a job on the paper's copy desk - editing other reporters' stories and writing headlines.

"I believe I was set up to fail," said Nelson, who says she has yet to receive any in-house training for the job. "The fact I'm here now is a credit to my work during my off hours."

She twice appealed her transfer without success to the National Labor Relations Board. Six months after her last appeal, she inexplicably received a rating of "good" for her final year as a reporter after having received "excellent" ratings. She fought management over the downgrading, again without success.

Nelson's story is not unique to today's journalism industry. Many decades removed from the era when newspapers espoused clearcut political agendas, most mass-media organizations now prohibit their reporters from becoming high-profile political activists. Many companies disallow reporters from having so much as political bumper stickers on their cars. Others are more lenient.

At The Seattle Times, a contract with the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild forbids staffers from engaging in outside activity that would be "embarrassing" to the publisher. And an ethics code - which Times management tried to put in place unilaterally in the '70s - prohibits reporters from being involved in issues and events that they cover. (A decade ago, an arbitrator ruled that the Times wrongly restricted columnist John Hinterberger's rights when the paper forced him to withdraw from a water district runoff election in north King County.)

Staffers at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer work under a union contract that prohibits outside activity that does not "conflict" with their jobs, though there is no formal, written ethics code.

When Nelson was hired 10 years ago, however, she was working under a guild contract that allowed reporters to engage in outside political activity, so long as they did not run for political office, Nelson said. Then, in 1986, the Sacramento-based McClatchy Corporation bought the News Tribune, fired the editorial staff, canceled their union contracts and forced staffers to reapply for their jobs. Nelson and most other newsroom staffers quickly got their jobs back.

But the union and management couldn't agree on a new ethics code stipulating an acceptable level of reporters' political involvement. Nelson fought management's proposed code, which sought to limit political activism. Management rejected the union's version.

When management forced Nelson into a copy-editing position in 1990, the management-union impasse over the ethics code had not been bridged, and no formal, written code was in effect. But that detail doesn't seem to bother MNT managing editor Jan Brandt, who, as an assistant to then-managing editor Norm Bell, supported the decision to transfer Nelson. (Before leaving the paper, Bell wrote a now infamous column blasting gay and lesbian activists who questioned Nelson's transfer at a public roundtable in August 1991.)

"There are standards of conduct that are shared by people in the profession whether they are written down or not," Brandt said. "We don't have signs on the wall saying 'Don't shoot your manager.' But that doesn't mean that people don't know not to do that."

(Brandt's metaphor conjures a peculiar irony. Three years ago, the NLRB ordered News Tribune management to put a sign up in the newsroom for 30 days saying that supervisors would not threaten to shoot workers. The union had complained to the NLRB after MNT personnel manager Steve Robinson was overheard saying that union members demonstrating at a minority job fair "ought to be taken out and shot.")

Perception More Important than Reality?
A year after Nelson's transfer, News Tribune management finally succeeded in having the Newspaper Guild's Tacoma unit decertified. Though wages and health-care benefits were the key sticking points embroiling the two sides, the unresolved ethics code issue didn't help matters. It was August 1991, and there was still no written ethics code to justify Nelson's transfer.

Brandt said a new ethics code has been in the works since last year, but that it has not been approved by publisher Gillenwater. As it stands now, Brandt said, the permissibility of a reporter's political involvement is handled on a case-by-case basis. She said reporters are allowed to do such things as attend their election-year political caucuses, but that "they are really careful not to appear as being political activists in a leadership position."

The problem with that, Brandt said, is "the perception of a conflict of interest," which she said would be "a tough thing to erase in the minds of readers.

"The concern here is the credibility of the paper. We promise readers fair and unbiased reports, and we want to ensure that our reporting is unbiased."

In the past few years, the News Tribune has told several staffers that they had better put a stop to their outside activities. Dan Voelpel, a former reporter who now works for the city of Tacoma's community relations department, was told he couldn't edit a newsletter to help promote the Billy Graham Crusade. Reporter Debbie Abe was told she couldn't take part in the Asian Forum, a networking organization for Asian-Americans. And reporter John Gillie had to give up his position with a neighborhood association in Tacoma's "Wedge" area.

Others have been treated more favorably. As an assistant managing editor overseeing the business news staff, Blaine Johnson was allowed to get discounts from a Port of Tacoma commissioner who ran a paint business. And former reporter Mark Sauter was allowed to write about POW/MIA affairs even though he was a highly visible activist in that arena. The paper, however, did print a disclaimer to that effect at the bottom of Sauter's POW/MIA stories; it's a solution that many in the media business support.

As these current and former staffers show, it's pretty tough to be a journalist and not feel the urge to get involved with your community and your world. Brandt, however, ignores this reality. She also overlooks the fact that most readers already realize that reporters - like every other citizen - have well-defined personal political biases, regardless of whether they are visible political participants. And she discounts the fact that Nelson has never written a story about gay and lesbian rights while at the paper, much less a slanted news story about homosexuals.

This point raises the question: Is a politically active reporter necessarily bad for news coverage? Not according to University of Washington communications Professor Roger Simpson.

"Community-minded reporters like Sandy Nelson are alert, informed observers on our behalf," Simpson said. "She should be viewed as an asset to journalism, not as someone to be disciplined for her activities."

In her suit, Nelson is charging the MNT with restricting her constitutional rights to free speech and to participate in the initiative and referendum process. She is asking for her reporting job back, protection from retaliation from MNT management and an unspecified amount in damages. She's also asking that the MNT be prevented from instituting an ethics code that violates reporters' rights of speech and political involvement.

Nelson's legal fees are being covered by the ACLU, though a legal-defense fund that pays for outreach and other activities continues to accept donations. The address for the Sandy Nelson Defense is P.O. Box 5847 Tacoma, WA 98415.

[Home] [This Issue's Directory] [WFP Index] [WFP Back Issues] [E-Mail WFP]

---

Contents on this page were published in the July/August, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright © 1993 WFP Collective, Inc.