In a recent segment of "Problem Solvers" on KOMO-TV news, reporter Liz Rocca bounded toward one of the city-owned public toilets with a camera close behind. On the way she turned to an off-camera group and, in a performance only a first-year acting student might have believed, she rather unconvincing beseeched, "Would you guys call 911 if we get into any trouble?"
Here, Seattle might have hit a low point in its news coverage of the controversial public toilets, one of which sits on Broadway on Capitol Hill.
Opportunistic journalism
What's truly compelling about this current debate is not what it reveals about whom the toilets serve or what they're used in the service of, the focus of the KOMO piece and many other news reports on the topic, but rather what the debate reveals about us, namely, our naiveté about the nature of drug addiction and our penchant for opportunistic journalism that often claims to help solve a problem but, instead, merely takes advantage of it.
These toilets help meet one of the most fundamental human necessities as defined by Maslow's hierarchy of needs - disposal of bodily waste. Yet in doing so, these toilets simultaneously fulfill a corollary need for privacy that, in our culture, is inextricably linked to that disposal. Indeed, when we use a toilet no matter where it is located, we each enjoy a modicum of something that our attention, nay, our shock concerning this public-toilet problem reveals we take for granted.
Drug addicts misuse this publicly-provided privacy and, in turn, this acts as a catalyst for much of the media coverage. That coverage, however, acts to obscure the underlying problem and, hence, obscures the questions we need to ask to find an actual solution.
When a person becomes a drug addict, using the drug turns from choice to necessity. Hence, drug usage becomes instinctual and joins the person's base level of needs. It is no longer a choice but a requirement for survival. This explains why withdrawing from drugs is so difficult, relapse so common and recovery so elusive. Our shock and dismay that public toilets are used to this end only reveal our naiveté about the nature of addiction more generally.
You might think or even hope that this naiveté would be countered by local news organizations whose purpose at some level must be educating the public. Well, keep hoping. Instead, the media acts to only further obscure the true problem by engaging in opportunistic, sweeps-week journalism.
The KOMO-TV "news" segment, replete with special effects that mimic the zoom lens of a voyeuristic undercover camera and sound effects that mimic a camera's shutter-snap, coupled with the other news reports that similarly play-up the shock value of the topic, do little to solve the problem no matter the titles the media wishes to give those reports. Instead, they parasitically profit through the very problem they portend/pretend to help solve.
Reporters now get to play the dual role of private investigator and society's knight in shining armor who rides into town on a white horse to save the day when, instead, their reporting hinders the very solution they purport to inspire. Is it any surprise that, according to Rocca's report, three months after she presented her findings to city-leaders, the problem has not been solved? It's because reports like these actually do nothing to solve the problem.
Were news organizations truly concerned with addiction and public drug-use, we might reasonably expect them to stake out the bathrooms of local taverns, dance clubs and after-hours clubs. Of course, they don't. Drug use in such places certainly occurs but since those patrons have the disposable income to enjoy such businesses, they in turn receive a free pass from the media glare that focuses on those less fortunate. The latter are simply easy targets and this targeting reveals just how far afield these reports are from helping us find a solution.
Indeed, the extent of the irony here is truly Shakespearean: we create an opportunity for drug addicts to use in private, which inevitably will happen and we should know it (do we actually believe crack-smokers and meth-heads have a sense of public propriety?). Then, when this inevitable occurs, we have the nerve to act shocked and dismayed. Finally, when we might address the inevitable's underlying causes, the media instead plays to the lowest common dominator in all of us - our love of the scandal.
Out of sight ...
The media's attention to the public toilet debate reeks of just that and ultimately asks a truly disingenuous question: how can we get the drug-addicted to do their drugs where we don't have to see it and where it won't affect tourism?
The questions we instead need to ask ourselves are: how can we counteract drug-use in our society and how best can we help those who become addicted? These questions, of course, don't easily lend themselves to fancy- schmancy television special effects or undercover investigative reporting, let alone ratings. They require a meddlesome self-reflection that our society apparently cannot afford, does not have time for or prefers not to engage in.
Until we do, drug addicts will still use drugs wherever they can and the news media will continue to use those addicts as fodder in the ratings war. And when addicts use, especially in locations where we as a city have provided them privacy, we need to stop feigning shock or the loss of our collective innocence and begin a legitimate problem-solving process.
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