January 03, 2003
Government Waste
Okay, I have almost assiduously avoided the recent cover story in Willamette Week in which reporters for the paper went through the trash of some local political figures. Mainly because, as it turns out, it made the rounds, both on the Web and off, rather quickly.
But in the end I would be remiss to not mention it at all:
Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. Their sordid haul, which included a bloody tampon, became the basis for drug charges against her.
Local law enforcement had, in essence, decided that one's trash is no longer covered by a presumption of privacy once you set it out to be picked up. So, naturally enough, reporters for WW went through the trash of local officials to see how they liked it, and to dramatize the issue.
Just as naturally, our Mayor fumed and rattled the saber of a possible lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the WW published an update this week, the Portland Tribune awarded the weekly's "garbage editor" the Least-Wanted Job in Journalism award, and today The Oregonian editorialized that the local officials' personal complaints aren't very consistent with their professional stances, and that the reporters' "stunt was more politics than journalism" -- as if the two are forbidden to set foot in the same room together.
Sorry, guys. But if this isn't muckraking in an almost literal sense, I truly do not know what would qualify.