5 'Big' Stories of 2022 that Faded Away

My view through a journalism lens

Everyone will have their own favorite short list of the stories they think turned into nothing burgers. This is my subjective top five. They are stories I followed closely that fizzled away. Fellow journalists understand all too well that a piece that captures headlines might sometimes fade without any significant follow up. Sometimes there are no more developments and other times journalists are distracted by the latest and shiniest candy on the media radar.

I have reported widely in both the pre and post digital world. The pressure today is not just to deliver a good story that breaks some news but also to attract clicks. Publishers know precisely how many people clicked on a story, they also know whether readers stopped after a paragraph or two or read to the last word. The digital measurements translate into a new media culture. Once the click traffic slows to a crawl on what is initially big news, editors stop assigning more reporting.

Of course, any of these can become a front-page story again in 2023.

I’m looking into some of them, and I trust other good reporters are doing the same. Below, I also take a guess at the ones I think might get resurrected in the coming year.

1. What happened to the leak investigation of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs draft that overturned Roe. v. Wade? Seven months have passed. It is not a large universe of people to examine. Electronic records and phone logs might uncover a direct link to Politico, which broke the story.

   2023 outlook? Little reason to think the Robert’s court will suddenly become transparent about the investigation or that anyone will be charged.

2. The JFK files. Fifty-nine years after the assassination we are still waiting for the government to release in full the final batch of classified files. Many had high expectations about the National Archives dump of 11,000 documents. Some conspiracy theorists claimed the new files established a link between the CIA and Oswald, ‘proof’ that there was a plot by the Secret State to kill JFK. Alas, the documents were mostly a big nothing. As I told The New York Times, anyone looking for a smoking gun in the new files was on a “fool’s errand.”

   2023 outlook? It will unquestionably return since the CIA and other government agencies have until May 15 to make their case to keep files sealed and President Biden could release everything to the public by June 30.

3. Are criminal gangs lining up to buy tens of millions in weapons the U.S. and NATO have shipped to Ukraine? That was headline news this past June when Interpol’s chief, Jürgen Stock, warned that, “The criminals are even now, as we speak, focusing on them…even those used by the military and including heavy weapons. We can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond. We should be alarmed.” Interpol asked all countries sending weapons to Ukraine to use a database to help “track and trace” the weapons. Some nations refused.

   2023 outlook? It will become front page again after the hot war stops and Ukraine is left with a multi-billion-dollar surplus of weapons. No one knows if that will happen in the next year. I am following it.

4. What happened to the Department of Justice criminal probe of the OxyContin Sackler family? In February, a group of senators asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the Sackler family - Purdue Pharma’s billionaire owners who made their fortune on OxyContin - should be criminally charged. Although there were more than $50 billion in civil litigation settlements in the nation’s deadliest ever prescription drug crisis, many activists and families of opioid victims demanded more. Are there DOJ criminal probes of the Sacklers or executives at other drug companies, distributors, and pharmacy chains? Justice will not confirm or deny whether a probe is underway, but many of us who have followed it think they are going to wait out the outrage and pressure to act, eventually doing nothing.

   2023 outlook? I do not have much hope for criminal charges to be filed unless new evidence of culpability and intent come to light. I, and other journalists, will continue reporting on it in the hope that a whistleblower might yet come forward.

5. What happened to Monkeypox? In the summer it seemed that every news outlet had a Monkeypox scare story, something along the line that it was the viral successor to Covid. “America has the largest monkeypox outbreak in the world,” was the Daily Mail headline in August. All the media hype was over 28 confirmed deaths in more than 72,000 infections. And the initial cases were limited to mostly gay and bisexual men. Still, media warned it was an equal opportunity infection that would be a worldwide scourge. Four months after the first reports, the number of cases had dropped by 85%.

   2023 outlook? Zero. The virus turned out to be more difficult to transmit than originally forecast and far less deadly.

I am looking forward in 2023 to reporting on some stories that will be new and interesting to a wide audience. It is a great time to be an investigative journalist. In the meantime, I am sending with this post the best New Year wishes to all my Substack followers. Thanks for making 2022 a great year.