That shift, of course, is the result of the development of investigative journalism, which started back in the late 19th century and really got going in the last hundred years.  It's hard for anyone now to seriously argue with the results of Upton Sinclar's The Jungle or Woodward and Bernstein investigating Watergate.  But, the fact is that, since the Watergate fiasco especially, things have changed in the journalism business.

For the last several years there's been a new focus in journalism: instead of reporting on what has happened and analyzing it and covering the issues in depth, every person who even thinks of him or herself as a journalist is trying to break that next big story.  Sometimes it's wonderful, while sometimes it blows up in their face.  All you have to do is remember the horribly handled CNN story a little while back about chemical weapons use in Vietnam.

The proliferation of TV journalism has made this trend even worse, because on TV in addition to breaking the story, you've got to have gory action video to go along with it.  Whether it be undercover investigations, ala ABC's Food Lion fiasco, or any number of consumer product safety stories where they actually show the product being defective.  Now, the king of those exposes, of course, was Dateline NBC's's story several years ago about the tendency of of certain General Motors trucks to explode in side impact collisions because of the location of the fuel tanks.  

The fact that the trucks blew up when hit from the side wasn't a good enough story for NBC.  They had to capture the moment on video, of course.  If you remember they tried it several times, to get the truck to explode on video, and it didn't work.  So, some brain surgeon decided to strap on a couple of model rocket engines to the fuel tanks to produce an explosion.  This they did, and it worked, and it produced spectacular video.  The only problem was that it wasn't really news - it was a stunt.

Nonetheless, TV journalists continue to try and break that big story and get the juicy video along with it.  Sometimes, it doesn't work.  Sometimes when it doesn't work it's not evil or dastardly or anything like that, it's just really really funny.

Witness 12 October 1999, during the 6pm newscast of Channel 6, the NBC affiliate here in Beckley.  They had a story about how kids' halloween costumes can be flammable.  Now, by costumes I'm talking about the really cheap $5  nylon/plastic things you used to be able to get at the GC Murphy's in downtown South Charleston.  Completely disposable, in other words.  

So, we have this story and all these dire warnings about the safety of trick or treaters.  Now, cut the the Channel 6 reporter who is standing outside the studio. She has 2 costumes hanging behind her on the wall, sort of flanking her to either side.  While she prattles on about the danger of these costumes, they attempt to demonstrate just how dangerous and highly flammable these things really are.  Her assistant/producer/peon (I don't know which) tries to light the leg of one costume on fire with a cigarette lighter.  He tries it a couple of times at first, without success.  So he just stands there and holds a flame on this costume for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably about 20-30 seconds.  For crying out loud, if this is what it takes to turn Johnny into a human torch, just how long would he have to stand on top of a lit pumpkin for it to have any effect?  

The punchline, of course, is that it didn't work.  The material down along the leg got a little singed, right where the flame had been applied, but it never combusted.  So, diligently, our hero assistant/producer/peon went over to the other costume and tried again.  Alas, to no avail.  At no time during this entire display did the reporter ever skip a beat.  She didn't even bother to try and cover up what was going on - she was simply oblivious to it.  I think that goes to show what the real impetus is behind those stories - crass sensationalism, with gory video if we can get it.  Hey who are they to let the facts get in the way of a good story?

When I was in college, my roommate had a saying when we started talking about the fourth estate.  Invariably after any story about something foolish that someone at CNN or at a big newspaper would do, my roommate would automatically chime in: "fucking journalists."  Now, as a lawyer I certainly know what it's like to be a member of a despised profession.  But it always warms the cockles of my heart to know that no matter how low we go, we'll never stoop to the level of trying to set halloween costumes that won't burn on fire or blowing up pickups with model rocket engines.  Some consolation, huh?