Saturday, September 17, 2005

Oh, this is going to be an interesting one. It seems there might be a little more to tonight's "Top Story" than KPTV reported. In fact, the version they reported might not be exactly accurate.

Top Story

There was a fire in a house behind a school in Salem. Upon investigation, it turned out that a meth lab inside had blown up, causing the fire at about 11:30 AM Saturday. According to KPTV, a teenaged girl summoned a mailman, who kicked open the door to the home. The girl was described as "humble" about her role in the story. So far, so good, right? Well, maybe not.

My wife happened to have seen Channel 8's version of the same story. KGW had the mailman on camera and he never said anything about kicking in the door OR being summoned by a teenaged girl, humble or not. He said the windows and door of the house were open and he simply walked in after noticing the smoke and flames.

Of note is the fact that KGW's version was taped during daylight hours and KPTV's was done after dark. The fire department was still on the scene when KGW showed up; I'm guessing that the mailman was still there because the fire investigators and/or police weren't done questioning him. KPTV showed up hours later, it would appear, when the mailman was long gone (their video was clearly shot after dark). It seems to me that they simply accepted the "humble" teen's version of the events without checking with the police or fire departments.

If the mailman had indeed kicked the door in, isn't it probable that he would have mentioned this to KGW? After all, it's a pretty important part of the story, right? Wouldn't he almost certainly have also mentioned the girl who supposedly alerted him to the fire in the first place? The fact that he mentioned neither strongly suggests that they weren't part of the real story.

My guess is that KPTV ambled by when they finally got around to it and David Frietas/Freitas talked to the only person he could find at the scene who claimed to have witnessed the original event, the "humble" teen. It would appear that the girl either mispoke, was misinterpreted or simply made up the part of the story in which she allegedly played a part. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a clarification or retraction by KPTV; facts have a very small role in scarenalism.

A Southeast Portland tavern was the scene of a brawl. 4 people were involved; 2 of them were hurt, 1 having been hit on the head with a hammer. Both victims are going to be OK. Man, this sounds like the kind of place you want to go on a first date, huh?Some idjit went cuckoo in downtown Portland and cut three people, including his girlfriend, with a knife.Fox 12's Most Wanted

• Eugene Cloud is on the run. He was stopped by a state trooper and didn’t want to stick around, apparently.

• Robert Stoddard is a bad boy. Besides having been involved in several felonies, he hasn’t checked in with his parole officer in a few months.

Asia Bell was murdered 4 years ago. The cops say she was an accidental victim and her life was remembered in a ceremony on Saturday.

A Portland area man is accused of smuggling many Mexicans across the border into Arizona. This is illegal. He is in trouble.

A homeless guy is accused of taking crosses intended to honor service members lost in war and burning them on Nye Beach near Newport. Well, it’s not like he could afford those $5 bundles of kindling, you know.

2 men are cooling their heels in the Multnomah County jail on Federal gun charges. The cops say they are members of rival gangs. Wouldn’t it be a safer (and more interesting) world if gangs just had dance-offs like in West Side Story and the Beat It video?

A car crash has left a teen dead in Washington County.

Former governor Atiyeh is in the hospital with chest pains.

Northwest Tonight

• “KPTV’s Nicole Sanchez” told us that a Washington man was shot by the cops around 2 PM Saturday. The cops had dealt with the guy, who has a history of mental illness, before. The whole mishegas is under investigation.

• That Washington state man who shot and killed two registered sex offenders while impersonating an FBI agent a few weeks back says he’s not guilty. He claims he was disgusted by the idea that they might harm his own daughter and that he was “haunted” by his own experiences as an abused child. So, where’s the “not guilty” part?

• A group called Moms Fight Meth is now active in Washington State. Take a wild guess as to what they mission is.

• Boeing’s machinists are still on strike. Some other unions which support them donated $125,000 to their cause.

Break.

America Tonight

• A train crash near Chicago killed 2 and injured 80. “Amtrack: We’ll get you there, dead or alive.”

• An entire family was found dead in their home in South Ogden, Utah.

• A small plane had its landing gear lowered manually by a guy standing up in a car beneath it as it flew barely above the ground.

• Today’s Car Driven Into House story came to us courtesy of Minnesota.

• A woman who is accused of murdering her daughter went ape shit in court, ranting and raving. Since courts are generally closed on the weekend, this story was at least a day old.

World Tonight

• Gee, here’s something you never see: chaos in the Middle East. People are running through holes in the wall at the Egypt-Gaza strip border.

• There was an explosion in a market near Mexico City. It was caused by a fire at a fireworks stand. This is why you can only buy those pussy kind of fireworks that don’t blow up at Fred Meyer for the Fourth of July. It isn’t like the Fourths I remember from my boyhood in New York City when a bunch of us, including Ace Frehley in his pre-KISS days, would drive down to Chinatown and buy high explosives from a guy on a street corner. Ah, memories!

Fight For Iraq

• “KPTV’s Courtney Kealy,” a new addition to the list of reporters who don’t really work for KPTV, told us about a bad day in Iraq. More than 30 people died when bombs blew up south of Baghdad. Plus: more shit went boom around Iraq.

Break.

Remember that new FBI crime lab that opened in Portland a week or so ago? KPTV brought a camera inside it to show us some gee-whiz equipment. As my genius of a wife pointed out, despite the impression both the Bureau and KPTV tried to give the viewer, the stuff we saw—hard drive analyzers, automated CD copiers, etc.--was more suited to catching people who illegally copy software than protecting the public from some shadowy menace. By the way, it’s all so super-secret that the FBI isn’t going to allow cameras inside the lab from now on. Yup, gotta keep the taxpayers from seeing what their tax dollars is paying for.

Break.

A Troutdale police officer has contracted leukemia and a local Little League held a car wash to raise money for his medical care. Do I really need to point out yet again that if this was any other industrialized country this wouldn’t be necessary because he’d be covered by a national health care program?

For reasons I didn’t understand, Beaverton held a parade on Saturday, the theme of which was “Living the life.” Was it Redundancy Day or something?

Work has begun to remove the HOV lanes in the Vancouver area. You know, the HOV lanes that KPTV originally (incorrectly) reported were being removed from all of Washington State. The HOV lanes that the hack right-wing reporter from Fox News Channel (that they claimed as “KPTV’s”) said were an example of “social engineering.” Yeah, those HOV lanes.

I made a mistake in yesterdays report when I said that the Race for the Cure was going to be on Saturday morning. It’s actually SUNDAY morning when the Race will screw up downtown Portland. The do-gooders will be gone by 11 AM, though.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

Katrina’s Devastation

• Hmm, the first coverage of the hurricane aftermath appearing at 40 minutes into the show can only mean that we’re just about due for another story to grab the attention of the tabloid “journalists” at KPTV. Missing blonde, anyone?

• There’s controversy about New Orleans mayor Nagin’s announcement that he wants people to start moving back into the city. Some people, including the Coast Guard admiral who is now in charge of the cleanup, say that it’s still too soon for people to move back into a city which only has electricity in some sections and which smells really bad. Plus, at least some of the levees are still broken. I gotta say I agree with the admiral on this one. “KPTV’s Phil Keating” was the face on this piece.

• A man in his late 60’s was found inside his attic in New Orleans, having been stuck there for 18 days!

• More Oregon National Guard soldiers will come home from the hurricane-ravaged area Sunday. Again we were told about how they’ll have to burn the clothing they wore while down there because it is toxic from contact with the contaminated water.

• Local kids put together “comfort kits” in a school cafeteria to send down to the gulf states to try to make life a little easier for children there.

• Dri-Eaz, a Washington state company that makes dehumidifying products, is selling a lot of stuff these days, thanks to people affected by Katrina. They’ve pledged to give half of their profits to the Red Cross.

• It was Evacuees Day at Six Flags America, near Washington D.C. I’m guessing the water rides might not have been all that popular.

Meth Watch

• David Frietas/Freitas was near the KPTV “news” van, holding a laptop computer, to tell us about people selling cold meds containing pseudoephedrine on eBay. This is happening, of course, because of the new laws cracking down on the over-the-counter sale of the meds. eBay says it will cooperate with the cops in trying to stop the auctions.

Hollywood Buzz

• Top model and human toothpick Kate Moss has admitted to cocaine use. A British tabloid caught her snorting the Bolivian Marching Powder and ran photos of it on the front page of the paper. Although she is now an admitted drug abuser and should be treated exactly the same as any non-famous junkie (or the laws should be changed), her current employer (some high fashion outfit) says they will keep her as their spokesmodel.
• Minimally talented “actress” Tory Spelling is separated from her husband. Lower all flags to half-staff!
• Johnny Depp got his hand and footprints immortalized in cement in the courtyard of Graumann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Oh man, is that stretch of Hollywood Boulevard ever Tourist Trap Central! You have all these “celebrity look-alikes” walking around so you can pose for photos with them, hoping you’ll give them a tip. It’s like some weird-ass Twilight Zone episode.

Boy, did this American Idol story blow! The tease for it implied that it was going to show some bad singers who got rejected at Idol’s Chicago auditions. Nope, all we got was literally about a half-second of a girl who actually sang pretty well. Gyp!

Last was this piece about some obnoxious local teenager named Austin Reed. Austin is one of those kids who actually knows what he wants to be when he grows up, the kind of kid you hated in high school. Austin wants to be a TV news personality. I didn’t get the impression that Austin wants to do TV news because he wants to “speak truth to power” or any of that commie stuff; Austin just wants to sit behind a desk and exude gravitas for the camera. His dad, seemingly untroubled by his offspring’s lack of commitment to bringing truth to an audience sorely in need of it, has built the little overachiever a home video studio, the better to produce TeenEdition.tv. I get the feeling young Mr. Reed is the news equivalent of this kid. Ambition uber alles!

WHAT KPTV DIDN'T TELL YOU ABOUT TONIGHT (a sampling):

• Man, is FEMA fucked-up! Click here
• Still nothing about vice-president Dick Cheney going into the hospital next weekend for surgery on an aneurysm behind his knee.
• Health insurance premiums have gone up 73% since 2000, wildly outpacing inflation. Click here
• U.S. consumer confidence hit a 13-year low in early September. Click here