The Seattle Times opinion editor added an error to an otherwise clear and correct opinion letter. "Screwup," or sabotage?

A look behind the curtain at how editors censor and actively misinform the public

More and more I’m aware of and appalled by the extent that the media censors speech, and deliberately misinforms the public about gender ideology. Journalism is the fourth estate—democracy cannot exist without an informed electorate and free speech, and journalism has abandoned that duty. Media, and I mean virtually all major media, simply don’t cover the many examples of how women are harmed (and by harmed, I mean rape, assault, death threats, loss of jobs, slander, sexual harassment, loss of basic human rights) by gender ideology. The examples I linked to are from Reduxx, the Guardian, the Telegraph, and individuals’ social media accounts, not mainstream media. Because according to mainstream media, those things never happened.

It’s almost impossible for the general public to know what’s missing from their news. The New York Times and NPR did not announce their capitulation to radical ideology. Readers trust that these legacy media outlets cover what’s important, and do so accurately and objectively. That trust has been betrayed. Every major news source in this country, with the possible exception of Fox News, which, for a large portion of the public, was never seen as a trusted news source, has abandoned accuracy and objectivity in favor of advancing an ideological agenda. But, like seeing the stories that aren’t in the news, it’s hard to see biased service to ideology, and censorship of opposing views, it’s hard to see decisions made by editors and publishers, until you actually experience it firsthand. Like Anne Simpson and Carol Brown did.

Anne Simpson and Carol Brown, both Washington residents, wrote a letter to the editor of the Seattle Times about an upcoming vote on the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association’s eligibility policy for girls’ sports. They assumed letters to the editor were, in fact, the words of the letter writer. Their experience, which I detail below, including emails between Simpson and Brown and the Seattle Times deputy opinion editor, provides a look behind the scenes at how far that news outlet has fallen from journalistic integrity, to the point of altering the meaning of Simpson and Brown’s letter, introducing an error where none existed, and purposely misinforming readers. The Seattle Times deputy opinion editor blew it off as a “screwup.”

Simpson and Brown submitted a letter in support of Amendment #7, a proposal the WIAA is considering that would change high school sports categories to an Open category for all sexes and gender identities, and a Female category for those whose biological sex is female. The Seattle Times deputy opinion editor accepted the letter for publication back in January, and emailed Simpson and Brown earlier in February to say the letter would be published online on February 24 and in the print paper on February 25. While the editor did contact Brown the day before publication, asking her to double-check the accuracy of the caption that ran with a photo, she did not mention that she’d rewritten their letter, introducing an error that was not in the letter they submitted.

Imagine their shock when they saw that the Seattle Times’ editor had rewritten their letter, leaving out the extent of harm to female athletes by allowing males in female sports, and introducing erroneous information about what Amendment #7 proposed.

Below is Simpson and Brown’s letter as it was submitted and accepted by the Seattle Times:

We are Title IX girls. Born in the ’50s. Played sports in high school on teams limited to girls. We were the first generation of female athletes to benefit from that groundbreaking legislation guaranteeing young women their rightful place in the classroom and on the playing field. Both of us joined our respective university’s rowing teams and even competed against each other. After college we took different paths - one continued with her sport, competing on three Olympic teams and the other followed her dreams into the male dominated profession of aviation. Both of us have attributed 50 years of life and professional success to the many things we learned from sport and competition – hard work, dedication, leadership, teamwork. Thanks to Title IX protections on the basis of sex, we were given a mostly level playing field where fair sport and safety governed the female category.

Today in Washington state the playing field is not fair or safe for girls. Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association’s (WIAA) policy on transgender athletes gives boys unrestricted access to girl’s teams and to their locker rooms. Our state’s female athletes are losing team spots, state championship and many other opportunities to progress to higher levels of competition and potential collegiate scholarships. The WIAA is ignoring the science that has proven time and again that male athletic advantage is real and endures even when testosterone is medically suppressed. The WIAA, whose mission is to govern fair, safe sport is telling all of our young female athletes that boys are more important than they are.

The WIAA’s current transgender policy is in violation of the federal Title IX law. If this policy is not updated to protect female athletes from discrimination and the right to privacy in their locker rooms, the Association, their board members, school boards, individual school athletic departments and coaches are at risk of being sued. This is currently happening in Connecticut where courts have ruled that Title IX, as a federal law, supersedes any state laws. (https://sportslitigationalert.com/federal-judge-denies-connecticut-defendants-motion-to-dismiss-title-ix-claim-involving-trans-issue/)

To be clear, this means that any WIAA district, any individual athletic department, any school board, and even individual schools could be subject to a lawsuit by any athlete claiming a Title IX violation. Female athletes on teams who compete against a school/team with a male athlete can bring a lawsuit. Title IX is the federal law and WIAA cannot hide behind WA state law.

The opportunity for reform is now. The Lynden School District has submitted Amendment #7 to the WIAA. This amendment proposes two categories: OPEN/BOYS (open for any student athlete regardless of sex, identity or expression or other status) and GIRLS (whose biological sex is female). It is supported by several other school districts.

The vote on this amendment will take place in April. We strongly urge you to use your voice. Speak to your principals, school board members, athletic directors, and other parents. Title IX was enacted in 1972 to protect girls and women from sex-based discrimination. Our daughters and granddaughters deserve those same protections today. Do not let them down!

Immediately upon reading the altered version on February 24, Brown and Simpson fired off an email to the Times opinion editor, pointing out that the rewrite of the paragraph describing what Amendment 7 proposed was incorrect. They juxtaposed what they’d written with what the Times rewrote and published:

What Brown and Simpson wrote:

The opportunity for reform is now. The Lynden School District has submitted Amendment #7 to the WIAA. This amendment proposes two categories: OPEN/BOYS (open for any student athlete regardless of sex, identity or expression or other status) and GIRLS (whose biological sex is female). It is supported by several other school districts.

What the Seattle Times edited and published:

The opportunity for reform is now. The Lynden School District has submitted Amendment No. 7 to the WIAA, which proposes an open category, where athletes can compete based on gender identity, while maintaining the boys’ and girls’ divisions. It is supported by several other school districts. (Another proposal would prohibit trans girls from competing in girls sports.)

As their letter clearly explains, Amendment #7 proposes two categories, Open and Female. Simpson and Brown wrote the very clear, very accurate description—girls’ sports are for athletes whose biological sex is female. The editor inserted an erroneous description of the Amendment with three categories, and then added the oft-used biased statement using confusing inaccurate ideological language that Simpson and Brown purposely, rightly, chose not to use—the proposal would prohibit trans girls from participating in girls’ sports. As the editor knew, her statement centers trans-identified males, uses ideological language—trans girl, rather than boy—and makes this proposal seem like an attack on the rights of “trans girls.” This is purposeful bias, yes, very normalized biased language but biased nonetheless, and the editor knew it. This Amendment, as Simpson and Brown clearly described, returns the right to sex-based sports to biological females. It is girls’ rights that are now being violated, and this Amendment aims to fix that. But that’s not what thousands of Seattle Times readers understood. They read the altered incorrect version, and likely did not reread the corrected version that ran the next day.

The editor further added some extraneous information and edited out some important details Simpson and Brown had included in the second paragraph. Their letter read:

Today in Washington state the playing field is not fair or safe for girls. Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association’s (WIAA) policy on transgender athletes gives boys unrestricted access to girl’s teams and to their locker rooms. Our state’s female athletes are losing team spots, state championship and many other opportunities to progress to higher levels of competition and potential collegiate scholarships.

The Times editor altered it and published it this way:

Today in Washington, the playing field is neither fair nor safe for girls. Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association’s policy on transgender athletes, established in
2007, allows students to compete on the team that corresponds to their gender identity, and gives boys access to girls teams and locker rooms. Our state’s female athletes are losing opportunities to progress to higher levels of competition and potential collegiate scholarships.

The Times editor, loyal to genderspeak, sought to soften the accurate, sex-based boys-in-girls-sports by saying, yes, but these boys had a girl identity. Simpson and Brown purposely, clearly, stuck to the facts of the issue—boys are male, they do not belong in girls’ sports or locker rooms.

And why did the editor introduce the year, 2007? It might make readers think Gosh, it’s been in place all this time. Why change it now? A little historical note that the editor failed to include is that when the WIAA instituted that policy in school year 2006/2007, boys had to have a gonadectomy and hormone treatment for two years to compete in girls’ sports. Which might explain why there were very few boys who identified that much with being a girl. The surgery requirement was soon dropped, and as of about 2020, hormones too were eliminated as a requirement, so now, straight-up males simply raise their hand and say they identify as girls, and Bob’s yer uncle! They’re in. That history would have been a clarifying and relevant bit of information if the editor felt the need to improve on Simpson and Brown’s letter. But she didn’t include that information. The editor also edited out that female athletes were “losing team spots and state championships.” You can just hear her muttering yeah yeah, we get the idea, as she red penned those words.

Simpson finished her email to the Times opinion editor: “Carol and I are at a loss as to why a paper of the Times reputation would make these unwanted changes. We ask that our letter be published as we wrote it.”

About 24 hours later, and after thousands of readers had already read the altered and factually incorrect version of their letter, the Seattle Times deputy opinion editor responded to Simpson and Brown with this email:

First, I apologize for the editing error I made, in confusing WIAA amendment 7 with 8. I was trying to clarify what changes were going before the voting body in April and inadvertently created yet more confusion in the process. I am making the fix online and we will have a correction in Wednesday’s paper.

The WIAA site describes 7 and 8 in basic terms (screenshot below) but doesn’t take into account the proposal to allow trans athletes to compete on boys’ teams.

As for the other concern, op-eds are very rarely published exactly as submitted, and our guidelines state that. We reserve the right to make changes for newsroom/AP style, usage, grammar, clarity, and so on. Even letters to the editor are subject to editing.

That said, you retain the rights to your piece and now that we have published it, you are free to publish it elsewhere without any change.

Again, my profound apologies for the screwup.

An experienced senior editor admits that she “tried to clarify” something that was already objectively clear, decided to expand the scope of Simpson and Brown’s letter to include Amendment #8, which Simpson and Brown did not do because it would be confusing, mixed the two amendments up, and made their letter muddled and incorrect.

I’m calling BS on the editor’s mea culpa. Is it standard operating procedure for opinion editors to expand the scope of expert-written letters? Simpson and Brown, the experts in this case, wrote only about Amendment #7 which proposed Open and Female categories. The Times editor expanded the scope of their letter, “for clarity,” to include Amendment #8 which proposed three categories. Why? Why did she think she needed to expand Simpson and Brown’s letter to include a different amendment? As it is, she got the details wrong in the process of “clarifying” and made the letter not only confusing, but incorrect. Though her confusion and editorial overreach must have been apparent even as she did it, the Times editor nonetheless pushed her “screwup” out the door and published it.

I wonder, when the Seattle Times publishes some stuff from Dr. Bradley Anawalt, which it does with some regularity, do the editors expand the scope of Dr. Anawalt’s opinion piece, for clarity, to include the mountains of science that say Dr. Anawalt’s view that human sex can be changed by getting a boob job or tinkering with one’s hormones is, generously, not compatible with reality? My experience is that Dr. Anawalt, and even people without an MD degree, who speak in favor of males in female sports are regularly published unadulterated by expanded focus, facts, or clarity. I see this on a daily basis, in the Seattle Times and in every other mainstream media outlet.

At what point did the Seattle Times deputy opinion editor realize that she had “screwed up?” Apparently, she thought the confusing, erroneous changes she’d made to Simpson and Brown’s letter were A-okay to publish. Because she did. And thousands of people read her effed up version. Those people will, in all likelihood, not go back and read the corrected version. Did she only “realize” her “mistake” when Simpson and Brown, and I (full disclosure—I fired off an email to the Times editor immediately on February 25, pointing out what I thought was extreme editorial overreach) pointed it out to her? If we had not complained, would her “screwup” have gone uncorrected? I asked the deputy opinion editor these questions but she did not answer.

The Times editor’s obsession with clarity is contextual, given that she went to great trouble to introduce confusion by using the term “trans girl,” which fully one third of readers do not understand. Is that a girl who identifies as a boy? Or a boy who identifies as a girl? Has this person truly transitioned to the opposite sex? Simpson and Brown’s letter was perfectly clear, using sex-based language, which the Times opinion editor reinstated in her corrected version.

The Seattle Times obsession with clarity would seem to preclude use of the biased and perspective-free statement, “Another proposal would prohibit trans girls from competing in girls sports.” Because, to be clear, the Amendment #7 sought to return girls right to single-sex sport to them, as enshrined in Title IX. For clarity, the editor should have explained that, at present in Washington, girls’ rights are being violated, and the proposal sought to rectify that. But she didn’t. In fact, she added a biased, false statement to a letter that had been clear and accurate.. None of the reasons she gave for editing a letter—for newsroom/AP style, usage, grammar, clarity—applied to Simpson and Brown’s piece. The Times editor admitted as much, and reinstated the original wording in the corrected version which was published later on February 25. So, why did that “screwup” happen in the first place? The Times editor’s mea culpa did not answer that.

The corrected version had this post script:

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include correct information about the proposed Amendment 7 to the WIAA.

The Seattle Times occasionally closes comments on stories. To respond to this
op-ed, send a letter of no more than 200 words to letters@seattletimes.com.

Notice that the Times editor did not admit she was the one who introduced the incorrect information. Anne Simpson emailed me: “Also, I have heard from a few people that they have written letters in support of our opinion. To date, I have only seen one 1 letter published saying that our opinion is outdated rhetoric. It is interesting that the paper decided not to allow online comments for our piece. That is very unusual in my quick scan.” The Seattle Times did not print my response to Simpson and Brown’s letter either.

I wonder if this example of editorial overreach happens frequently? Is it standard operating procedure to add confusing, biased, irrelevant, and erroneous statements to letters from the public? Is it journalistic policy to edit out a letter writer’s arguments, and to expand the scope of the letter writer’s focus? Of course, many opinion letters are never published at all (I have a great deal of personal experience with this), but to accept a public commentary and then alter its meaning and accuracy is…something, something unethical. It’s not journalism, but the average reader of the Seattle Times doesn’t know what has happened behind the curtain.