That’s parody, but it’s exactly how stupid the “news” cycle was late this week.
The Seattle Times joined Fox News in an effort to discredit Mayor Wilson by pretending a letter about public safety written by some rich people who hate taxes is “news.”
The letter, signed by a bunch of regional CEOs, demands a “plan” for public safety, as if there was none, and then offered a bunch of specific micromanaging demands about what to do.
But as it turns out, Seattle’s murder rate is one of the lowest for big cities in the country, has dropped below the exemplar cities they reference in their letter, and is dropping so fast we are almost to a record low.
Imagine if a 35 random-ass citizens wrote a letter demanding that Amazon develop a “plan” to grow their revenues, and then told them how to do it! You’d never know about it, because news organizations would have zero interest in publishing the crackpots.
But our local news loves a crackpot that hates our Mayor so much that they think it is news when it happens.
That’s why when we have rapidly dropping crime rates and unimaginably more safety than in the past, they
constantly publish crime stories and
give people who are worried about safety (or worse, don’t care, but want to hurt the Mayor) a big platform.
That hurts the public’s perception of the Mayor on safety. So when a poll shows that, they make it news too (a reality they created!).
And now when some CEOs say - “hey, your public perception on safety isn’t great” they amplify that as well.
which is a reliable strategy to lower people’s perception of the Mayor on crime, which they’ll surely write more stories about.
And they didn’t do this with Bruce Harrell, when crime was higher and going up.
It’s almost like the CEOs and the media have an agenda that has nothing to do with public safety!
Perhaps we should have 35 politicians who know nothing about what is actually going on at Amazon or what Amazon’s plans are or how to run a company release a letter demanding that Amazon publish a 100 day on plan on how it is going to “grow,” and then let’s make some demands about how they “grow” and point to companies that are largely doing worse than Amazon to make the point.
And then I’m sure the Seattle Times and Fox News would love to write how under fire Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy is. Right? Run up to him and ask when he is going to respond?
This arrived in my inbox the same time as a Danny Westneat column that highlighted the fact that Nordstrom downtown is unable to get the police to respond to calls about theft or disruptive customers, while its store at Southcenter gets a response from Tukwila police 100 PERCENT OF THE TIME! I'm all in favor of throwing brickbats at rich people and those who want better service without paying for it. But is that really what's going on here? I know if my house was ransacked and the police didn't respond I'd be ticked off. This is not a Katie Wilson problem, let's be clear. Westneat posits that it's an SPD staffing issue. Maybe. But I'm not as quick to dismiss the issue with a knee jerk condemnation of local businesses large and small.
Seahawks winning is too easy. I think they'll demand she'll make the Mariners win.
I do think there are legitimate public safety issues, including for retail businesses. But the point is that they are ongoing, have deeper roots, including a tax system that still leaves our city short for both public safety and social services. And as you say, they didn't make that kind of statement when Harrell was mayor.
Paul Loeb--author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Hope and Perseverance in Troubled Times.