It’s a holiday season tradition! Here, for the 16th year, is my list of overhyped and underreported local stories of 2011. As usual, there’s no shortage of candidates — add your own! And here’s to better local news coverage in 2012.
Most overhyped local stories
•Amanda Knox — “Knoxsie” got three separate categories of overhyped: the overturning of her verdict in Italy; the hyperventilating, pointless coverage of her return to Seattle; and perhaps most irritatingly, the ongoing “sightings” of Knox around town.
Here’s a photo of Knox in line at a Starbucks! Here’s exclusive footage of our Amanda getting in a car! And so on, ad nauseam.
One last time: Knox was a party girl who got involved in an ugly incident overseas a few years ago — that…is…all. Leave her alone.
•Boeing sells a jet — And another jet! Look, three jets! Whoops, that evil Airbus got an order (hissssss).
Boeing is not even a Seattle company any longer. Nor is it the largest employer in the area. That would be...
•Microsoft, home of lousy software — Which is usually three steps behind the competition and summarily flops in the market. Yet, time after time, a Microsoft acquisition or product launch is treated to the sort of fawning local coverage that might as well be (and probably is) produced directly by Redmond’s PR people.
Objective coverage of Microsoft’s loss of its innovative edge would be genuinely interesting. But that’s not what we get — ever.
Plus, as usual, car crashes; fires, violent (and potentially violent) crimes; big (or not) weather “events”; heartwarming stories of photogenic, plucky kids overcoming adversity or reuniting with pets; and every other staple of Chuckle-Buddy News. Every time you watch local TV news, it lowers your IQ by two points.
Most underreported local stories
•Seattle Police are a problem — The various travails of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) in 2011 got plenty of coverage. But not until the federal Department of Justice forced the issue at year’s end was any of it framed as a systemic, department-wide issue.
Instead, there was an incident here, a bad policy there, a training procedure that needed review over there and a police union defending every act of thuggery that made the news.
We now know that the rot and the propensity for needless (and illegal) use of force are hard-wired into both SPD’s training and its culture, and the problems start at the very top. Hopefully, we’ll get coverage that acknowledges as much in 2012.
•The impact of corporate money on local elections — Here, too, there was coverage, but it was never put in context. All three statewide initiatives were sponsored primarily by single donors, and Costco set the price ($23 million) other companies can now pay to get their very own customized state law.
Meanwhile, Seattle’s crisis-plagued school district reelected three of four board members, and a city utterly lacking City Council leadership reelected all five incumbent council members, in a post-Citizens United year when individual donations to campaigns were down and corporate donations (which almost always favor incumbents) were up.
Nobody connected the dots.
•Oh, yeah, remember the school district? — When the board preemptively canned Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, coverage of the assorted scandals magically disappeared. Business goes on as usual at the “glass palace.”
•You can’t afford college — The state Legislature set no limit on how much state colleges could raise tuitions. Everyone from the University of Washington to Seattle’s community college system promptly became that much less affordable.
Students noticed; parents noticed. Editors? Nah.
•Local and West Coast radiation levels spiked after Japan’s nuclear disaster — But officials assured us it was safe (what else do they ever say during nuclear disasters?), so local media decided there was nothing to report.
•Gov. Christine Gregoire’s cowardice — Often politicians not seeking reelection are freed to take risks and show leadership they wouldn’t dare do otherwise. Instead, Gregoire acted like she was auditioning for her new lobbyist job: refusing to consider revenue increases or closing corporate tax loopholes in a gutted state budget, vetoing a medical-marijuana bill for transparently idiotic reasons, suggesting privatization of both liquor sales and the state lottery, and acting to make state government less transparent.
Nobody in the media held her accountable.
•Remember Tim Eyman? — It was an Eyman initiative that gave Gregoire and the Legislature the cover for focusing on brutal budget cuts and accounting tricks rather than addressing revenue issues.
When Tim’s initiatives pass, they’re somehow sacrosanct; when voters repeatedly act to fund K-12 education, not so much.
•When the Alaskan Way Viaduct closed, nothing happened — No gridlock, no carmageddeon; people adjusted just fine. Why was this important? Because the dire predictions of downtown gridlock in its absence were the sole justifications given for a bazillion-dollar downtown tunnel Seattle can’t afford.
Enjoy your new hole in the ground.
GEOV PARRISH is cofounder of Eat the State! He also reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM.
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