If you haven’t seen it yet, Gawker has posted a three-minute clip reel that may be the last word in bad-things-happening-to-local-TV-reporters videos. Please, treat yourself; you won’t regret it.
The embarrassing local news clip has become such a popular mainstay of YouTube that one of them became a plot point in the pilot of Back to You this TV season. Why, oh why, do we love them so? Maybe because
* The reporter in-the-street / in-the-snowstorm / stomping-grapes setup is so painfully stage-managed and phony that it is a relief and a pleasure to see reality intrude on the artificial situation, preferably by throwing a bottle of water in its face
* It is a pleasure to see people who humiliate themselves for a living get unexpectedly humiliated even more
* Most of these reports are such poor excuses for news to begin with that it is as though the universe itself has risen up in disgust
* Reporter run over by airplane / buried by snowplow / attacked by drunkard = funny
I’m leaning toward the last one, but you tell me.