TWN Forty years!
THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER
Publisher pleads with Trudeau’s mom for help at Point Roberts!
July 2021
Page 3
Journal of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association
Anti-SLAPP law protects against suits
Cal Bratt calls it a career at Lynden Tribune
LYNDEN — On June 30, Cal Bratt retired after four decades in the newspaper business. Ironically, he wasn’t the first Bratt to see his name in the local paper. “My mother and two youngest brothers were featured in a story that I still have, focused on a recipe she would share,” Bratt recalled recently. The time was March 1969. “I was always aware of the Tribune. Everyone got the Tribune, and everyone read it.” By always, Bratt means once the family moved from the Midwest to Lynden when he was 13. “In the back of my mind, I always figured journalism would be my job,” he said. “I always loved working with words, reading, and following current events.” Bratt has always had a way with words, his wife Melinda said. “He’s a very good writer, he’s just so really good with words,” said Melinda Bratt, Cal’s wife since 1979. “He’s a very good listener, too. Always tried to be fair in treatment of
Cal Bratt last month ended a 40 year run as an employee of the Lynden Tribune. Bratt joined the staff first working part-time and then full-time in 1980. the article and the person.” Not just fair, Bratt was “always kind of there, wherever there was,” said Gary Vis, executive director of the Lynden Chamber of Commerce. “Openings, closings, times of joy, times of sorrow, special events and mundane meetings. Cal was there to do his best to get the word out to the community about what was going on, and when, and the facts as best they were known,” Vis said. “Cal is up in the legendary status, no-last-name needed range. He’s ‘Cal from the Trib.’ I have spent more time with him as either the only other fellow (City Council) meeting attendee, or when I was on the
Cal Bratt early in his career Lynden Tribune. other side of the table. He was quite often the only person in attendance.” Vis explained that Bratt
with daughter Rachel at the didn’t just report on Lynden, that he has been and will continue to be “a part of the See BRATT, Page 5
On July 25, a new law took effect in Washington to defend against lawsuits aimed at chilling First Amendment rights. The bill protects people from “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” known as SLAPP suits. The classic SLAPP scenario is a libel lawsuit filed against the press, designed not to obtain legitimate relief but to chill the publishers’ and reporters’ free speech rights. Washington is the 34th state along with Washington D.C. with a law that provides effective anti-SLAPP protections. Anti-SLAPP laws are designed to enable targets of these abusive lawsuits to secure early dismissals, with expensive discovery blocked and reasonable attorneys’ fees awarded by court order when the case is dismissed. The new law applies to any lawsuit targeting the “exercise of the right of freedom of speech or of the press, the right to assemble or petition, or the right of association, guaranteed by the United States Constitution or Washington state Constitution, on a matter of public concern.” In addition, the law includes a reminder that the law should be “broadly construed” to protect these important constitutional rights, and also that “consideration must be given to the need to promote uniformity of the law . . . among states that enact it.” Washington adopted the law using the Uniform Public See SLAPP, Page 2