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Last week I found out my local news 'exclusive' was just a press release from the city

I was watching the 6 PM news and they ran this big segment about a new park renovation that was supposedly uncovered by their investigative team, but I had literally seen the exact same wording in a city council memo three days earlier. Has anyone else caught their local station recycling press releases as 'breaking news'?
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3 Comments
jordan_hill
That's just lazy journalism.
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paige166
paige1664d ago
Our station did that with a school budget story last year.
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wells.christopher
Oh man, you're not wrong but I gotta push back a little on one thing. It's not just press releases they're recycling, sometimes they're literally just reading the mayor's Facebook posts word for word and calling it an exclusive. I caught my station doing that with a snow plow update last winter. The whole segment was basically a carbon copy of what the city posted at 3 PM, but they ran it at 6 with that dramatic "Breaking News" banner and a reporter standing in the cold. It's like they think we don't have internet access or something. The worst part is when they add that little "investigative team" graphic at the bottom like they actually dug something up. It just makes me trust the whole thing less honestly.
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