Hello Everyone,
Sorry I haven't checked the thread lately. Boy, I have missed quite a bit! Obviously, I needed to come in and set some things straight.
First, apparently we are not the only media outlet investigating Brushy Creek. Because we don't want to be the last one to get our story out, we may be moving our story to an earlier date in February. I will let you know as soon as we have a concrete date. In the meantime, you can check our website to make sure you don't miss anything:
www.myfoxhouston.com Just check under the investigative stories for Randy Wallace. He's the reporter doing the story on Brushy Creek. The fact that other news programs are ready to pounce on this story is no surprise. When you have this many people complaining about a business, it's bound to catch the attention of many journalists.
The question about getting both sides of the story is a fair one. Please let me explain how we do things at Fox 26 News. You have probably seen many stories on local TV that spotlight a consumer complaint against a business. Marvin Zindler has made a career out of following up on single-complaint stories and trying to help people who get ripped off. And he is very good at it. One of the best. But my department is not really a consumer news agency. We are investigators. When we get a single complaint about a business, it is rare that we will follow-up with a story. Nor is two complaints much of a trend. Three or four will raise an eyebrow. When we saw the
dozens of complaints sent to the Houston Better Business Bureau about Brushy Creek, we decided to follow-up with research. During the course of a month, about 30 stories reach a similar research stage in my office. And out of those 30, we find only about 4 or 5 are compelling enough pursue. And then, well before we initiate interviews, the story goes to our lawyers. NewsCorp (parent of Fox Television) is a multi-national conglomerate employing tens of thousands of people worldwide.
One thing NewsCorp does not like is being sued. Our attorneys are among the best in the world in libel law. They are not employed in order to go after people. They are employed to keep Fox journalists from broadcasting anything even remotely libelous or misleading. They are the toughest bunch of lawyers I've ever dealt with. They often shoot down stories I believe have great merit and reflect fairness. They didn't even blink when I presented them with the Brushy Creek facts. They gave us the go-ahead. Frankly, the dozens of documents, transcripts and photographs we have reviewed are overwhelming. In my eight years as a producer at Fox, I have never seen such a well-documented investigative story.
As for fairness, let me assure everyone, we will ask Mr. Moore for his side of the story. We will arrange a convenient time for him to be interviewed. We will ask to see his facilities (but we aren't likely to give him much notice before showing up to see the facilities). We would never even consider airing a story without pursuing a response from all parties involved. I would be fired for failing to do so. But the notion of talking to happy customers is another issue altogether. Happy customers do not make rip-offs or scams okay. Let me give you a few examples:
We are airing a story in February about a major cruise line that treated a family with unspeakable rudeness. I think everyone who sees that story will be shocked at what they hear. Now, I have no doubt that the cruise line has tens of thousands of happy customers. In fact, I'm one of them! But my wonderful vacation does not make up for what they have done to others. We must air the story. I bought a car from a dealership in Houston a few years ago. I was happy with the purchase. It was a great car. But a TV station (not Fox) found out about a string of rip-offs perpetrated by this dealership and did a story on it. Am I upset they didn't speak to me, a happy customer, before airing the story? Of course not. Just because I'm happy doesn't give them the right to rip off other people and they needed to be exposed. Just last night, we did a story (available for viewing on our website) on a horrible experience by a customer of Metro's Lift Ride for disabled riders. Again, I have no doubt that Metro has offered more than a million trouble-free rides over the years, but even Metro thanked us for bringing this story to their attention.
To call the complaints against Brushy Creek a trend is an incredible understatement. We read and took calls citing the exact same problems over and over and over. "Not the same dog in the picture." "My dog arrived sick and later died." "I spent thousands on vet bills in the first months." And on and on and on. And each one of these complaints is documented with pictures, vet bills, documents, receipts and video. This is what we call in the news business, "a slam dunk."
Not only will we be doing a story to air soon. We will likely follow-up with many more stories over the course of the next year. There is no way we can fit all the horrific complaints against Brushy Creek into a single 4- or 5-minute story. Don't assume we are finished after the first story is done. And as I am learning, don't assume we are the only ones uncovering misdeeds at Brushy Creek. More updates to come.
David