...don't even ignore 'em.
-- Samuel Goldwyn

Friday, April 08, 2005

Breaking Gas?

KING-TV's (Seattle) lead story on its early evening news tonight was a reported threat of a terrorist gas attack planned for downtown Seattle for the end of the month (presumably April). [Update below] The KING anchor made it "very" clear that this is a "very" unsubstantiated threat, which means it's not as scary as a plain old unsubstantiated threat, I guess. They showed a video clip of the Seattle police chief saying it was a "very low" probability situation, but that he had informed his officers, the fire department, and the mayor, and was passing the word to other agencies. The threat was reportedly contained in an unsigned email received by the FBI. I love TV news, don't you? It's so understated. And KING is the best TV news operation in town.
Update 04/09/05 -- KING's Web site has dropped this non-story down a few places today, but on-air this morning it was right up there behind Charles and Camilla. This was a news conference story--our Police Chief doing rumor control and marketing how on-top-of-it he is. The way other news organs played it is of interest. The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer both gave it a decent burial. KOMO-TV kept it in perspective fairly well, but KIRO-TV, consistently our shrillest adreno-hyper, at this writing, treats it as their "Top Story." They also incorrectly called the report a "rumor" in their Web lead. KIRO's Web story runs under a hundred words. They spend another twenty to declare their copyright on it. As if.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why do you think I don't watch the news anymore?

Here's where the news is at at:
What Really Happened

and here:
Guardian Unlimited

-Mr.Manifesto