Seattle News Bites! seattlenewsbites@hotmail.com April 24, 2001

Local News' Top Stories

• The 11 AM broadcast of KOMO TV4 lead off with the story of Gail Atwater, a Texas woman who had been arested for driving without a seatbelt and allowing her 2 children to take their's off to look for a toy that had fallen while traveling 15 mph. She fought and the case ultimately ended-up on the U.S. Supreme Court, which had just ruled against her. KOMO then posed the question of whether this could happen in WA State?

  But they had practically NO ROOM in their broadcast for national or world stories.

• The Seattle P-I has a frontpage story, which happened a year ago, about a group of immigrants "smuggled" to Seattle onboard a container ship and the suffering endured during their voyage. The story continues and takes up roughly 3/4 of page 4, followed by a full page ad on page 5. Now while this story is rather interesting and is a good human interest, does it deserve FRONTPAGE coverage?

  And on the FRONTPAGE of their business section is a huge story about the local wine industry, together with a smaller one about a local web company cutting an additional 118 jobs on top of 65 previously announced.

  But NOWHERE was there room for Compaq's cutting of an additional 2000 jobs on top of the 5000 already cut!

  Nor was their room for predictions of rising gas prices during the summer.

• The 5 PM broadcast of KING TV5 lead-off stories: a missing Kent man found dead, another local person missing, and local teachers possibly going out on strike.

  Almost 15 minutes into their news, they had a quick "2 second" squib about the Mississippi flooding situation, which was the first national story in their broadcast.

  Immediately following, they spend almost 3 minutes talking about weather. Now that's ok when there is something to talk about, but today there was sunshine and warm temps. NO rain! NO storm! NO reason for this amount of coverage!

  Roughly 20 minutes into their broadcast were some details about the accidental downing of a plane by the Peruvian missionary.

  Roughly 25 minutes into the broadcast was a story about about changes being considered to a 30 yr-old Oregon bottle refund bill. What does this have to do with us? And what makes it important?

  Towards the VERY end of their broadcast was the rescue story of the ill doctor, Dr. Shemenski in Antartica.

• On the 10 PM Q13 broadcast, it took 23 minutes for the anchors to get to the Davenport flooding situation.

  Roughly 27 or 28 minutes into the broadcast came sports coverage, which included the Mariners, Ricky Henderson (a former Mariner), the Huskies baseball game, the Utah Jazz and 76'er basketball games, and 2 WNBA games. Oh, and of course, commentary about Shaq's sunglasses, while he's speaking.

  Don't know about the anchors, but there were other professional teams playing! And who thinks the Huskies should come before any professional team, or for that matter, at all?