Please note that I begin with a question, not a statement.  I do that because I heard a remarkable story on public radio, but can not verify it, easily.

Some background first, for those who do not follow Washington state politics:   Republicans last elected a governor of Washington state in 1980.  (Many Republicans, including me, would say that we won in 2004, but got cheated in the recounts.)   This year, the Republicans have a strong candidate in Rob McKenna, our brilliant attorney general, who has been elected twice, state wide.  Early polls gave McKenna the lead; more recent ones, like this one, have given a narrow lead to his opponent, former congressman Jay Inslee.

So in the next month, we can expect a very tough election race here in Washington state.  And, sadly, we can expect many of our "mainstream" journalists to join in on the Democratic side.

Ten days ago, KUOW's Gang of Four were discussing the gubernatorial race.  The usual panel was there, KUOW host Steve Scher, former Seattle Weekly editor Knute Berger, Seattle Times assistant political editor Joni Balter, and the associate editor of the Stranger, Eli Sanders.

At 28 minutes and 40 seconds into the program, Sanders told us this story:

Sanders:  Another interesting thing on the Mckenna campaign and its, you know, perception among voters and its perception in the media.  I think it was this week or late last week, they cancelled this rolling weekly conference call that they were doing with reporters I think because they hoped it would get their message out.

Now certain reporters were allowed on the call, others were not.  No one from the Stranger was ever allowed on the call.  But they stopped doing it and I believe they told the Seattle Times it was not working.

Scher:  It seemed like there were too many Inslee talking points in the questions.

Sanders:  But this is a win for the Inslee campaign.  They essentially used McKenna's own conference call as an opportunity for themselves to hold a press conference.  You know, they knew when the calls were happening.   And they would talk to the reporters who were going to be on the call and say: "Hey, maybe you should ask them about this.  What about that?"  And then right after the calls, sometimes they would release, you know, statements and it's, you know, it was a mistake on the part of the McKenna campaign to even do this in the first place.  And it was interesting to see them so openly conceding that.

Note please, that these unnamed journalists were, according to Sanders, systematically coordinating with the Inslee campaign.

There were three other journalists there besides Sanders.  None of them, not Scher, not Berger, not Balter, said anything disapproving about this story.  It would be wrong to infer from their silence that they approve of this concerted attack on the McKenna campaign by journalists; it would not be wrong to say that they are willing to tolerate the attack.

Is the story true?  Probably, in my opinion.  It is consistent with the one thing known publicly, that the McKenna campaign did cancel that weekly call.

On the same day of that Weekday program, Gallup released their finding that distrust of the media had hit a new high.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

(You should be able to find the MP3 file at the KUOW site.  The name of the file that I downloaded is: WeekdayB20120921.mp3.  Most likely the name is still the same in their archives.

Note: In the interest of readability, I cleaned up the transcript slightly, eliminating some of the cross talk, repetitions, and "uhs".

The grade for that Weekday program is 0.0.  There was no attempt by anyone on the panel at partisan or ideological balance.)