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Seattle Times/P.I. Bury Bad News About Big Advertisers

In July of this year, the state attorney general announced that Smith's Home Furnishings paid $450,000 to settle a deceptive advertising and sales practices lawsuit filed by the state over two years ago. The settlement was the largest ever for a deceptive advertising case in Washington state.

One would think such a large consumer fraud case might warrant some serious interest from Seattle's daily newspapers. Then again, if you read the Times or the P.I. regularly, you would probably know that you can get a Leather Trend "Bordeaux" sofa from Smith's for the low, low price of $1695 sooner than you would know that the company prompted so many consumer fraud complaints that the state felt compelled to sue. Perhaps that's because Smith's is a major advertiser in both the Times and the P.I. - right up there with the Bon and Ernst's - and both papers downplayed the story of the settlement.
You're likely to stumble upon a Smith's ad just by virtue of opening The Seattle Times on any given day, yet you would have had to burrow all the way back to the bottom of the business front on July 13 to find a seven inch story about the Smith's lawsuit. The P.I. played it a little higher on the business page, but didn't give it any more space.
While the Times relegated breaking news of a major retail establishment getting slapped with fines from the state to a small business news hole, its top front page story was more blather about Microsoft stockholders making yet more money. "Microsoft investors smiling: Many happy returns for longtime holders with stock at all-time high, " read the Times' headline. Now that's a scoop.
In addition, the reporting and writing in the Smith's stories followed a format seen so often in mainstream stories about consumer fraud it must be taught as a fill-in-the-blanks story template to young reporters. First, relay the news of the lawsuit or settlement, then quote the head of the company saying that A) "This settlement is in no way an admission of guilt" (a la Mike Lowry or Michael Jackson) or B) "Yes, we messed up, but we don't do those sorts of things anymore." Maybe wrap it all up with a mushy quote from a lawyer saying how the case will help consumers. Definitely do NOT talk to any actual consumers.
Both the Times story of July 13 and the P.I. story of July 14 followed this format to a T. Each quoted Smith's Chairman Glen Grodman saying that the store had changed its sneaky ways. Neither paper actually talked to any customers. Or if they did, it never appeared in print. Perhaps it was edited out by panicky business editors with even more panicky advertising sales reps looking over their shoulders. You see, the Times had a two-page color ad spread to run for Smith's in the A section just two days later. A single full-page ad in the Times or the P.I. costs up to $20,000 (on Sundays), with similar ads during the week going for about half that. Smith's surely gets a discount for frequent advertising; nonetheless a very conservative calculation would have Smith's spending several hundred thousand dollars on ads in the Times or P.I. each year.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to surmise that advertising dollars affect news content. Newspapers can try very hard to be fair and even-handed, but "objectivity," especially when you are writing about people who give you lots of money each week, is simply unattainable. If giving a consumer fraud story the play it warrants means that a company will pull thousands of dollars in advertising, it won't see the light of day at most dailies.
The state's investigation of Smith's was prompted by about 200 consumer complaints. Any reporter with some rudimentary research skills could have tracked down and talked to people who were duped by the company. That neither of them did is simply poor - or spineless - journalism.
We talked to one. Lawrence Lessard is an apartment manager on Capitol Hill who bought a computer from Smith's last year after seeing one of their ads. He says his new computer brought him nothing but trouble. The ultimate diagnosis was a faulty sound card and CD-ROM drive, which Smith's had repeatedly denied as being sources of the problems. The company insisted the computer was fine and Lessard was merely running conflicting software. Lessard filed a complaint with the AG and eventually got his money back, but says the company's representatives belittled him throughout his ordeal. "I will NEVER purchase anything from Smith's again," he says bitterly. "And I'll recommend to anyone I meet not to buy from Smith's."

-Mike Blain
The Free Press

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Contents on this page were published in the August/September, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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