The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists denounces the Shasta County Registrar of Voters’ targeting of Shasta Scout and urges the Registrar to immediately restore the publication’s access to press releases. 

Shasta Scout has been reporting diligently on local elections and on the policies and practices of Registrar of Voters Clinton Curtis, providing insight into proposed election reforms and a critical accountability tool for a community with diverse political perspectives. Not long after Shasta Scout reported that the California Secretary of State had refuted Curtis’ claim that his election plans had been approved by that office, the Registrar of Voters issued a press release and excluded Shasta Scout from the recipient list. 

Curtis claims to have omitted Shasta Scout from the distribution list because he does not consider it to be a legitimate newsroom, accusing it of “political lean” and making vague accusations about Shasta Scout’s nonprofit status. 

In a previous interview with Shasta Scout, Curtis said he would speak to people who were “semi-friendly, anybody else I stop talking to altogether.” In the same conversation, he said court precedents “don’t matter anymore.” Later, Shasta Scout’s editor said Assistant Registrar of Voters Brent Turner made baseless accusations that she was “meddling” in elections, even going so far as to describe her reporting as “election interference.”

These are alarming stances for any public official to take, but especially for public servants charged with running free and fair elections. SPJ NorCal condemns these statements and the Registrar of Voters’ attempts to target Shasta Scout. We have seen officials attempt to exclude reporters from press announcements before, a reprehensible and counterproductive practice that erodes trust in government and has a chilling effect on free speech.

The Registrar of Voters’ move to question Shasta Scout’s nonprofit status is a red herring and offers no legal basis for its exclusion from receiving media announcements. The First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan free speech advocacy organization that is representing Shasta Scout in this matter, has laid out the reasons for this in detail in a letter to Curtis. We understand he has responded by claiming his office would stop all media releases. We urge the Registrar of Voters to operate with maximum transparency and provide timely, accurate information to the press and public.

We stand with Shasta Scout and the First Amendment Coalition, and urge Curtis and his office to immediately restore Shasta Scout’s access to press announcements and cease making baseless allegations about Shasta Scout’s integrity.