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It's now a score. Two decades of exploiting human misery and frailty and cashing in while doing it.
Twenty years ago, I got my first real paying job in television news, and it's clear the world and the media are far worse now than when my career commenced. Whether those events are related is open to speculation.
I got into television news after earlier careers in politics and corporate flackery. Politics became tiresome and I lost my faith in democracy when I was re-elected.
The corporate world was tired of me and some long-forgotten mediocrities showed they could improve their head count, minus mine.
So what do you do at age 34, during a severe recession, to make a living? Well, I had worked closely with the despised media in my prior jobs and I had a decent inside understanding of what reporters were supposed to do.
Although I had no actual education in journalism or experience, I figured watching these birds make their nests for so long gave me some credential to fly with them.
I got my first break when former Niagara Gazette reporter Michael Brown landed an assignment at WNEP, the ABC affiliate in Scranton, Pa. Michael is a superb reporter and, while at the Gazette, he broke the story of the Love Canal and alerted the world to the dangers of buried toxic wastes. He wrote a book on the subject and then, based in New York City, he occasionally did some television work.
I had known Michael from his days covering Niagara Falls City Hall. We were friends and he often told me I thought like a reporter. God forbid.
The assignment was to prepare a documentary on organized crime activity in northeastern Pennsylvania and Newark, N.J. Michael brought me along and we hooked up with a former Scranton thug who had run with the wiseguys in Jersey and was then in the federal witness protection program.
Michael taught me a great deal about the reporter's craft as I watched his exhaustive work and research. I began to grasp the techniques and jargon of television.
We spent several months chronicling mob tricks and treachery, and when the one-hour report hit the air, it was a ratings success. The news director at WNEP was Nick Lawler and he started talking to me about coming to work there full time.
I had impressed him by linking cars we spotted to known mob figures, and even being able to provide their criminal records. A Republican law enforcement source and friend back in Niagara County was invaluable in that effort. Thank you, Your Honor.
But then television's market-bouncing syndrome hit. Nick got the news director's job at KOCO in Oklahoma City. Gannett owned the station and I got a tip another friend and Niagara Gazette veteran was working on a big project out there.
The Niagara Falls Reporter's Washington Bureau Chief John Hanchette was then and for decades to follow the ace of the Gannett News Service Staff.
Based in Washington, John and his partner Carlton Sherwood had just grabbed the Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports exposing the corruption and crimes of an order of Polish priests.
John and Carlton also had good information that priest pedophiles were rampant and the church was covering up the crimes. The Gannett brass didn't want to appear as Catholic bashers at the time, so that project was nixed. Imagine that.
The Oklahoma story involved the physical abuse of children in state institutions for juveniles and the mentally disabled, and the thoroughly corrupt politicians who used those facilities to fuel their patronage machine.
John lobbied to get me on board, and before you know it, the Oklahoma station hired me and I was assigned to Gannett News Service to work on what was my first big and -- until this day -- best story.
Knowing the world of politics helped immensely, and I soon had a pretty good handle on the disgusting snakes who ran things in Oklahoma while lining their own pockets, getting fat jobs for their relatives, and allowing defenseless children to die, literally.
I started spending most of my time in Oklahoma and got deeper into the story.
In one case, I helped profile the death of Linda Kay Johnson at the Pauls Valley State School. Her death certificate indicated she had died from cardiac arrest, but it struck me as curious that no autopsy had been performed.
Linda was mentally disabled and only 19 years old. The politicians in Oklahoma didn't give a damn why she had died. I did.
The doctor who signed the death certificate, it turned out, didn't even have a license to practice medicine in the United States. He had failed the examination for foreign-born physicians, and we learned he would sign death certificates willy-nilly, with little or no investigation.
Linda's body was disinterred and the autopsy revealed she had been strangled. No one was ever charged, which wasn't surprising, considering the pervasive corruption in Oklahoma.
But public awareness was growing, and our reports caused the governor and the state welfare director, who ran the schools with an iron hand, to become increasingly irritated and angry. I was learning more about television and the stupid politicians were providing me with the cheap theatrics that proved to be most entertaining on broadcast news.
I was only there a week when Lloyd Rader, the welfare director, called me a litany of terrible names and had armed security guards remove me from a meeting.
Another time, John Hanchette and I were talking to Gov. George Nigh, and this sweet-talking charlatan got so enraged with John's pressing questions that he started wagging his finger, grabbed the microphone I was holding, and then stormed off into the Oklahoma sunset.
The state of Oklahoma actually hired a sleazy private detective firm to follow us around and see what we were up to.
By official proclamation, the Oklahoma State Senate condemned our reports. We were all so proud.
The politicians and the rest of the Oklahoma media despised us, but we kept coming at them. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on the Oklahoma snake pits, and the pressure kept building.
Finally the governor dumped the welfare director, who had been the most powerful politician in Oklahoma for 40 years. Loyalty took a back seat to the fact that the governor was standing for re-election that year.
Working with John Hanchette, Carlton Sherwood, and some wonderful people at KOCO was an unbelievable education. I learned great lessons, not only about journalism, but about myself.
You can make a difference and, once in a while, we really do comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Our reports won the George Foster Peabody Award, broadcasting's oldest and most distinguished honor, and I had a job in television news one score years ago.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 9 2002 |