TV sweeps and your hard-hitting local I-team

This could have gone in journalism topics, but after consideration I decided to post here since what these hacks do, for the most part, is as far from meaningful journalism as Bob the Anchor's hairpiece is to real hair. Getting to that ridiculous time of year, TV sweeps, in which local stations sic their all-powerful investigative teams on hard-hitting journalistic endeavors like...

Here in Cincinnati, the lame-ass ABC affiliate is hyping two reports. One, in which a pair of police officers injured in the line of duty are having workers comp problems, and the second a revisit of last year's breathtakingly important examination of restaurants' low-cal alternatives and... DA-DA-DAAAAAAAAA!... just how many calories are in them. :

Dear God. You've got time and resources to invest in really covering a story, and THIS is what you choose? I guess there's no longer corruption around Cincinnati, egregious underservice of the poor, or laughable hypocrisy in its politicians and or newsworthy folk. That's it -- we've found Utopia! And it's Cincinnati!

Anyway, what groundbreaking journalism is coming up in your market?

 

Mine had something about a cat falling 17 stories and surviving.

 

SLIME IN THE ICE BOX!

I don't get Houston TV, but I miss that guy.

 

This reminds me of when the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati spent about half of 1999 investigating "THE MOLDY HOTEL!" in Fairfield.

 

Hookers and revisiting old murders here in Oregon.

 

Black light in hotel rooms.

 

Was that Fairfield? Or was that "El Rancho Rankin" in Mount Washington?

 

The "investigative" reporter at our ABC affiliate is pimping a report about how he went to 500 area restaurants and demanded to see each restaurant's health inspection report. He's pushing the parts taped at the restaurants who gave him a hard time, of course.

Probably one of the reasons I no longer watch the local ABC affiliate's news.

 

The CBS station here was teasing to their big expose of counterfit money during today's Titans game.

 

I love it when the TV hacks to "investigative reporting." As proof they show a big pile of documents and drop them on a table and then to an ambush interview with a contractor with a suspended license or even better something with "nightvision."

 

Well, now the Cincinnati Fox affil just chimed in with its I-team hype. They're doing a piece on security cameras. "Find out how often and where Big Brother is watching YOU." Jesus Christ.

This, mere minutes after I watched a 60 Minutes piece that was what these local hacks should aim for. 60M did a piece on e-waste -- CRT and computer pieces from the U.S. that are illegally being dumped overseas. One such dump, in China, is so riddled with lead and toxins from e-waste that 7-in-10 kids have unsafe lead levels in blood, the water is undrinkable (they have to have drinking water shipped in) and cancer-causing carcinogens are the highest on the planet. And most of it is traceable back to U.S. companies. They talked to one guy who was playing the role of gentle green CEO with a heart of gold. Then, confronted him with his bullshit.

GAO report said there are at least 50 companies in U.S. doing same shit. Can't believe that there aren't any within stone's throw of Cincy.

But thank God we're looking at how fattening the menu is at Applebees first.

 

Later this week it's "strip search," a look into those new security machines at the airport that blow air on you, and the pictures they take of you from all over...