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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A request for correction by Rep. Matt Shea was not ignored. It never arrived.

The Spokesman-Review

On May 6, a letter to the editor published in the Opinion section stated that then-congressional candidate Jered Bonneau had received an endorsement from Rep. Matt Shea. The statement was incorrect – Shea endorsed Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, as this paper reported in August.

The letter in question was identified by Shea in a social media post Thursday. In the post, he accused The Spokesman-Review of “lies,” implying the paper ignored an email he sent in May requesting the correction. He included what appeared to be a screenshot from the email, sent to the address voice@spokesmanreview.com.

That address is not affiliated with this newspaper, which uses the domain spokesman.com.

Shea’s Thursday post also described an incident from earlier this month in which he demanded a reporter answer for the paper’s lack of a correction, later publishing video of the interaction to Facebook. He did not, however, identify the letter during that conversation, and did not respond to an editor’s follow-up request for clarification.

When reporter Jim Camden wrote earlier this week that “No one at the newspaper recalls Shea calling and asking for a correction to the letter,” he did so truthfully – the request was made by email, to an address that does not exist. Attempts to email voice@spokesmanreview.com were returned with an automated response of a delivery delay.

The Spokesman-Review is committed to accuracy, and encourages readers to point out errors so they can promptly be corrected for the record. However, errors cannot be corrected if they remain unknown to the paper. In this case, a phone call or email exchange would have alerted editors of the mistake. Readers are encouraged to do so in the future.

Corrections to letters to the editor should be submitted to editor@spokesman.com.