No News Is Bad News

I'm once again fed up with my local TV news. Ever since the Bush regime's smack-down on speaking the truth, local TV news can't seem to get over the hump of realizing what reporters used to do before Bush. They used to dig for facts and they used to report in the interest of the viewers. Simple stories are always missing very vital information. No one is ever at fault, so the story is never about the facts. One example is the recent story about Seattle's new red light traffic cameras. Seattle is NOTORIOUS for having really messed up traffic light timing. It seems to stem from a 1960s era decision to retard the flow of traffic. Except now that traffic levels are quadruple what they were in 1960, the lights are still timed the same. And when new lights are added, they fall into the mess of the other lights. Most travelers are forced to stop at every single traffic light so no one can ever speed. (or get anywhere). In order to get through a few lights in a row, most Seattle drivers (who care about getting through a few lights at a time) speed up and risk running a few yellow lights or red lights. This situation has been brought up repeatedly with the city who denies the lights are improperly timed, and when people point out specific problems with light timing, the city always says, "We investigated the problem and found that the lights were out of sync, so we made an adjustment." Well, ALL the lights are out of sync, did you ever think of that?! Now, Seattle is installing many, many red light cameras to "crack down" on a deeply flawed system they created. Not ONE news report mentions anything about Seattle's screwy traffic light timing or the fact that red light cameras don't make intersections safer (accident rates don't drop). In fact, most TV news reports mention a "city study" that "finds" that "red light cameras make driving safer," which is simply not true based on reports from cities where they've had red light cameras for years. Even the newspapers dropped the ball on this story. No one even brings up the question of where the money from the red light cameras will go. The city is going to make a LOT of money off these cameras, but where will it be spent? Will it help to pay for re-timing all the other traffic lights in Seattle? Will it go to pay for another stadium we don't need? Will it go to pay for more light rail that will never open and goes nowhere? Reporters really need to dig a little and not just parrot the city press releases.