I'm a little disappointed in Channel 5
Remember how they launched their new investigative unit a month or so ago - with that giant team of grim-looking tough, seasoned reporters striding across the screen like colossi?
After only a month, they've already devolved into reporting such shocking news as the fact that even out-of-shape (yet not unattractive) Channel 5 producers can buy health-club trainer certificates online. And this after they reported that the town of Ipswich Web site lets you find out information about people, like what their address is, by typing in their license-plate numbers (assuming, of course, they live in Ipswich). Horrors! Nobody better tell Channel 5 about the White Pages (or, gasp, the annual Ipswich residents' list, which will even tell you what these people do for a living).
Thankfully, Channel 25's investigative unit continues to crack the big stories. For example, tonight, they ask:
FLUORIDATED WATER: WILL IT GIVE YOU CANCER?
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I'm a hard news reporter!
My favorite line from those promos for Channel 5 is the woman who says, slightly out of breath, "This is why I became a journalist!"
Oh, sweety, you're not a journalist. I mean, really.
TV 'investigations'
I love how TV news labels a story "investigative" when it is doing the type of shoe-leather reporting common in print journalism, especially since most of the news on TV is of the "Rip and Read" type to begin with. What's more, is when they take a canned wire story and shine it up with a local talking head for a minute-30 of air time and call it investigative. They resort to that that when they're just subtly pitching a product line suggested to them by some publicist.