Coverage concern
As the Mercer Island PTA Council, we write to both commend and express concerns about your recent coverage of the Town Hall school funding event. We appreciate Andy Nystrom’s accurate reporting in his January 10 article, “People Speak Up.” His coverage reflected the event’s true focus on addressing funding gaps in transportation, MSOC, and special education.
However, we must address serious concerns regarding the January 13 article, “MI Budget Webinar Highlights Budget Crisis.” This piece contains multiple factual inaccuracies that misrepresent the Town Hall’s purpose and content and contradicts Andy Nystrom’s accurate reporting of the event.
First, the article incorrectly stated that the event’s “primary goal was to urge legislators to address the funding shortfall… by increasing taxes.” Rather, your own reporter, Andy Nystrom, accurately stated the purpose of the event, which was to speak to legislators as a united coalition “about how ‘the state of Washington continues to fall short of its paramount duty to fully fund basic K-12 education.’”
Second, the January 13 article erroneously claimed that “State legislators expressed unanimous support for reforming the regressive tax system and pledged to introduce bills… to increase tax revenue.” This mischaracterizes the range of opinions and approaches expressed by legislators during the event and contradicts your prior news story by Andy Nystrom.
The article also incorrectly stated that the reduction in the state education budget from 50% to 43% was not mentioned, when in fact it was addressed by at least one speaker. Of particular concern is a lengthy paragraph that appears more suited for an opinion piece than a news article. This section makes several claims cited from www.washingtonpolicy.org, but our attempts to verify this data have been unsuccessful as the provided links are non-functional.
The only verifiable claim we found appeared to be outdated, using data only up to 2018 while presenting it as current information.
The article’s departure from the Mercer Island Reporter’s typically high standards of journalistic integrity is concerning, especially given that it was written by a member of the public rather than a staff reporter. This raises questions about your current editorial standards for news stories, particularly regarding fact-checking, bias and independence.
We respectfully request:
1. A correction of the factual errors in the January 13 article.
2. The relocation of opinion-based content to an appropriate opinion section.
3. Clarification of the Mercer Island Reporter’s current editorial standards, especially regarding education coverage.
We continue to value the Mercer Island Reporter’s vital role in our community and appreciate your attention to these concerns.
Mercer Island PTA Council