Consumer watchdogs face an uncertain future — so does customer service

These are not the best of time for consumer watchdogs.

Many of the most celebrated TV reporters who focused on consumer affairs have been let go, reports the Los Angeles Times. That’s not just bad news for the talented journalists who used to look out for you — it’s bad for all of us.

Take what happened to perhaps the best-known of the consumer reporters (and a man I idolized as a college student in Southern California): David Horowitz.

He’s reportedly off the air, but plying his trade online. Horowitz now charges customers for his services. Working with a handful of aides, he gets $50 for an over-the-phone consultation and $250 for a longer investigation.

In the years after he left TV, the consumer gadfly has augmented his reporting by touting causes for pay. In 1998, Horowitz got $106,000 to speak out against a state ballot measure to slash electricity rates. A couple years later, he got an unknown sum to fight an L.A. City Council proposal to force cable TV companies to open their high-speed Internet lines to competitors.

Another consumer advocate, Alan Mendelson, who used to be a business and personal finance reporter for KCAL in Los Angeles, spent years telling viewers he could help them find “best buys.” But he lost his job in 2006 and has since made his living producing infomercials (many for lawyers) and a weekend “Best Buys” show that airs on KCOP Channel 13.

The website for the program promises an expert with a “black belt in shopping” but the bottom line is that Mendelson features only companies that paid to be on the air.

Very disturbing.

The problem here isn’t the consumer reporters. They’re trying to earn a living, and I think they’re doing the best they can. They also deserve a lot of credit for the investigative, pro-consumer work they did over the years.

The problem is the institutions they worked for, who are not willing to fund this important kind of journalism. When consumer reporting goes away, so does customer service.

(Photo: M. K arshis/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • Ed

    Journalism is a lost art that is practiced by very few people…they are usually new-comers who have not yet been blinded by the glow of easy money, or those with a personal involvement in what they are talking about (this can be a slippery slope because it can lead to a vendetta attitude). There are those remote pockets of altruistic journalists, but they are difficult to find in the mass of what has replaced journalism….marketing! Everybody is pushing something…everybody is out there for themselves. Whether they are marketing a product, an idea or themselves, journalists have become marketing experts, selling whatever they can to make a buck. There is always a gimmick, a twist, an agenda, an angle… It’s gotten to the point where one reads a newspaper article, you need to be aware of the writer’s personal attitude towards the article’s subject in order to get the full story…
    I have found that in order to watch the news on TV, I have to get the same story from several networks…and usually the truth doesn’t come out until I turn to BBC…for some reason, they have yet to yellow their reporting with personal attitudes.
    It’s a shame really…I don’t have that much time to gather news from multiple sources, so I generally miss things…but that’s the price I pay to not have the wool pulled over my eyes by marketing masked as journalism.

  • Les

    Reading the report about David Horowitz left me feeling like I’d just taken a bath in sludge – maybe that red Hungarian stuff.

    More than just ‘trying to earn a living’, this is betrayal of an audience that thought the reporter was trustworthy. When an actor or other performing celebrity endorses a product or cause the public is usually aware that it’s done for the money. When a previously trusted advocate starts peddling his or her integrity and reputation real damage is done.

    Thanks for the information, sad though it be.

  • Leslie

    I believe in David Horowitz’s case that he experienced a conversion to rabid, pro-business conservatism in the 90s, which would explain the sorts of endorsements he made in 1998. I remember him from his genuine consumer watchdog days in the 80s, and it is a very sad case that he went over to the other side.