In case you missed last week's parade of headlines and televised "top stories" in The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer and on KING 5, the U.S. military recovered enough materials from terrorist training camps in Afghanistan to fill a giant warehouse. Among the mountains of photos, documents, and landmark references were photos of the Space Needle and other areas in Washington state.

Most of the national media ignored the Seattle and Washington state connection. The New York Times, which mentioned the Space Needle briefly, seemed to get the story right. Most of the photos were out of date, the January 31 New York Times reported, and lacked any real intelligence value. There wasn't anything else to report based on the evidence. The real story was the found chemical weapons instructions, and diagrams of nuclear reactors and dams throughout the entire country, not the "Space Needle threat." But that didn't stop Seattle headlines:

"Al-Qaida Had an Eye on Needle" --P-I

"Space Needle May Have Been Terrorist Target" --Times

Yes, the photos are news because they involve a local angle. But a weeklong front page/top story marathon focused almost exclusively on the Space Needle? This is a case of a "local angle" run amuck. We've known about the threat of terrorism here ever since Ahmed Ressam was caught at the Washington/Canada border a few years ago with explosives (with which he planned to bomb the airport in Los Angeles), and obviously, since September 11. Blowing the "Space Needle threat" out of proportion, which our local media did, is the same thing the Bush administration used to do when they announced every few weeks that an attack could happen any day now. It does nothing but scare the shit out of people. We're already on high alert, what else can we do?

Not only was the "Space Needle threat" exaggerated, but the Seattle Times coverage in particular was misleading. In the opening graph of the February 1 story "Terror Data Repeatedly Mentions Seattle," the Times reported that the Justice Department ordered a special investigation into the Seattle connection. But that's not true, judging from the rest of the Times' own story. Seattle is only part of the larger Justice Department investigation into all cities with landmarks or other potential targets. There is no special investigation into Seattle, as the Times insinuates. That's what most of the coverage did last week: It insinuated a bigger threat and blew a minor story out of proportion to sell papers and attract viewers, while scaring locals and tourists. Judging from the evidence presented so far, there is no special link between terrorists and Seattle. But our local news wants you to think there is.

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