Dear Mr. Fancher,

Thank you for writing “High End Reporting At Risk In Newsrooms,”  published by The Times today. I appreciate that you provided the views expressed in your capacity of Executive Editor for The Seattle Times. I found the below quote from that article particularly interesting:

“Journalists truly must reinvent themselves and their work. They must do new things that connect with new readers, especially younger readers. They must do old things in better ways. And they must recommit to the notion that a public journal is a public trust. We must constantly earn the attention, respect, trust and loyalty of our communities. Readers can help the cause by demanding journalism that makes a difference.” (Underline added.)

I note with interest The Times also published today “Vote For Clean Air,”  which included the following statements:

“A WORKPLACE should be free of dirty air. Washington voters need to ensure that is the case by passing an initiative to ban smoking in all places where people work. Washington would be following a number of other states and nations that have instituted bans on smoking in places such as bars and restaurants. The Times recommends passage of Initiative 901, a common-sense initiative that amends the 20-year-old Clean Air Act that banned smoking in most workplaces. The initiative would add smoking bans in bars, restaurants, non-tribal casinos, skating rinks and bowling alleys, which are exempt from the Clean Air Act. Grabbing a quick bite to eat in a smoky restaurant now and again might be a nuisance, but for the employees, the daily exposure can be devastating. Enough evidence shows that secondhand smoke can cause health problems in non-smokers, the same that are seen in smokers, such as lung cancer and heart disease. In Helena, Mont., a study found that the number of people going to the emergency room for heart attacks dropped by almost half after smoking was eliminated for six months in bars, restaurants and other workplaces.”

Well, apparently there’s hope! Should readers follow The Times’ voting recommendation for I-901 based on the Helena study, in a mere six months from election day we the people of the State of Washington will experience a 50 percent decline in persons admitted to the emergency room for heart attacks! We’ll be tracking that “statistic” and report about how well Washington did in the event I-901 passes.

The two news stories cited above are intertwined and directly related.  The two news stories above also bring forth important subjects that directly address public trust. For example, if one truly believes in a workplace “free of dirty air” and policy supported by legitimate claims the last thing to do is vote for I-901:

1. I-901 does not “ban smoking in all places where people work,” as falsely stated by The Times in the above-referenced “Vote For Clean Air.” Indeed, since all hospitality venues subject to the jurisdiction of 29 recognized Washington tribes will be exempt from I-901 precisely the opposite will predictably occur. Patrons who choose to smoke as an integral part of their hospitality experience will simply take their business quite literally next door and a block down the street in many cases to a tribal establishment. Hospitality workers who look to continue their livelihoods consistent with their skills will therefore migrate to smoking-ban-exempt and tax-exempt tribal employers. We will wind up with more workers in expanded tribal hospitality establishments working in less-regulated and smoking-ban-exempt workplaces. The fact of tribal exemption from I-901 is well known to The Times, including 2004 press reports about a Pierce County superior court judge who ordered that descriptive language about failed I-890 include that information. Yet your news paper published an editorial endorsing that initiative which completely ignores such reality.

2. As an added “benefit” for citizens and taxpayers, our state’s experience with the Pierce County smoking ban last year clearly demonstrates that I-901 will ultimately eliminate taxpaying nontribal hospitality mom and pop small businesses that currently permit smoking. Taxpayers who vote for I-901 are therefore voting for their own new tax increases in the future to make up for revenues lost as hospitality revenues migrate to tax-exempt tribal venues and taxpaying nontribal hospitality businesses close their doors. This predictable consequence of I-901 should be abundantly clear to The Times because the damage to small businesses in Pierce County last year caused by that smoking ban were widely reported in the mainstream press.

3. The statement by The Times to the effect that Environmental Tobacco Smoke can cause lung cancer in nonsmokers has not only been thoroughly debunked by our federal courts concerning the 1993 EPA report on secondhand smoke but was also directly contradicted by a recent study published in the March 2005 issues of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. See “Study Examines Role of EGFR Gene Mutations In Lung Cancer Development,” published in the March 2005 edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) and reported by Science Daily. Science Daily quoted that study’s authors: “These results also ‘suggest that exposure to carcinogens in environmental tobacco smoke may not be the major pathogenic factor involved in the origin of lung cancers in never smokers but that an as-yet-unidentified carcinogen(s) plays an important role.’” By endorsing I-901 in the face of that JNCI study The Times completely ignores important public health information that is directly material to the true causes of lung cancer in nonsmokers, while falsely promoting cancer risks that do not exist as represented. The fact and content of that study published by JNCI was brought to The Times’ immediate attention through my submission of a Letter to the Editor September 7, 2005 (see ST090705.PDF). That letter was not published. Not that we should be surprised by the Times’ refusal to publish anything that contradicts its pre-determined agenda; such behavior by your newspaper dates back at least to April 1999 to my knowledge (see STCORR.PDF, your letter of April 28, 1999 to me on Seattle Times letterhead.)

4. Your endorsement of I-901 also includes claims about heart attacks allegedly caused by Environmental Tobacco Smoke. There is one study concerning the alleged cardiac affects of ETS that has an even lower peer-reviewed standing than that given to the Helena study by responsible researchers and scientists. I refer to the Otsuka Study (see OTSUKAABS.PDF), which is the source of the unfounded claim that even 30 minutes of exposure to ETS causes cardiac response in nonsmokers. As is painfully evident from that study’s abstract, Otsuka did not even measure ETS. The alleged astudy of ETS was simply a measurement of carbon monoxide. Moreover, peer review of that study pointed out quite forcefully the fact that the study did not discuss or quantify ventilation systems employed. Finally, other peer review comments openly questioned whether the exposures cited were typical of those encountered in public places. Those peer review concerns expressed were, in fact, quite legitimate: on review of data table in the study it becomes apparent that nonsmoker study participants were taken from a ”Smoke Free” environment of 0.40 parts per million carbon monoxide to an environment of 6.02 parts per million (see OTSUKAD.PDF.) The normal CO levels encountered in my facility and six other office buildings that permitted smoking during the 1990s was CO of about 1.7 parts per million, which was also on average less than outside air. So what Otsuka did was take study participants from and environment that was less that one-fourth of typical CO exposures and immediately place them in an environment three and one-half times more concentrated than typical exposures, thereby inducing – artificially causing -- a predictable cardiac response irrespective of any ETS exposure.

The above are very limited and brief examples of important public health and fiscal responsibility information that The Seattle Times chooses to ignore in making its statements to support I-901. Unfortunately, should I-901 pass nonsmokers who would like the American Cancer Society to spend its dollars searching for the real cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers will continue to be sadly disappointed; nontribal hospitality small business owners will realize the economic consequences of last year’s smoking ban in Pierce County; many nontribal hospitality owners will lose their livelihoods; taxpayers will set themselves up for future tax increases; and consumers who choose to lawfully purchase and use legal tobacco products will once again feel the sting of ostracization and exclusion.

While that occurs the Times will continue to bank pharmaceutical advertising dollars, The American Cancer Society will continue to rake in direct cash payments from “Smoke Free” nicotine distributors Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, and professional anti-tobacco activists will be assured of next year’s grant. In short, it will be business as usual for Washington political agendas and related media support.

So please count me in as a reader who you said “can help the cause by demanding journalism that makes a [positive] difference.” Editorial endorsements that stridently proclaim false information about important health subjects while relying on the most abject, lowest forms of junk science to do so clearly violate the public trust. At the least, The Times could stop suppressing important information that conflicts with its pre-set political agendas.

But there is very, very good news to report, too. As you and The Times continue to decry stagnant advertising revenues and declining readership that you reported in “High End Reporting At Risk In Newsrooms” alternative media sources such as Forces.org enjoy expanding readership. So I applaud your efforts as outlined above, and appreciate your best efforts at buffaloing the public into voting for I-901. Please keep it up, we appreciate the support. Pretty soon you will prove the adage that it is impossible to be an intelligent bigot, such folks ignorantly continue to promote their fatally-flawed social engineering swill long past the time when normal folks come to understand how passé such pronouncements really are. Eventually, good folks wake up with a smile of relief on their face, realizing that the incessant drone of special-interest political reporting by The Times has finally gone silent for good.

Norman E. Kjono

PS: So what are you going to write next year about Environmental Tobacco Smoke should a majority of the public have the common sense to vote “NO” on an initiative that will not and cannot “protect all workers” as it claims, shuts down many bars and taverns that have relied on outdoor smoking areas for years with its 25 foot rule, and that will cost citizens future tax increases? I suspect the next thing we’ll hear about ETS is that it is the “proven” source of cancer of the wallet (a just claim, indeed, judging by the above observations.)