In 1998, Ross felt management's mailed fist after he finished work on an investigation of pedophilia and lax security at theme parks, including Walt Disney World, owned by ABC News's parent company. David Westin, the network's news president, killed the segment, resulting in a shouting match between him and Ross during which the reporter came to the brink of quitting. Such tensions between TV investigators and their bosses are the inevitable byproduct of the wave of consolidations that swept the industry starting in the mid-1980s. Investigations are often speculative, and always expensive, like drilling for oil. It's far cheaper and more efficient for a TV newsroom to fill its airtime with live stand-ups and video clips of breaking news derived from the police scanner.
Nothing does that quite like investigative reporting.
At the networks, too, fewer major investigations have received the green light in recent years. One big problem, Wallace adds, is that it's not easy to find good investigative reporters and producers who know how to do the often-gruelling trench work. I always consider that investigative reporting is wasted unless you keep going back to the story and peeling away more layers of the onion. When television does it right, though, it's very powerful. But it doesn't seem to be a big priority.