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THE MAN WHO TURNED SCAMS INTO HAPPY ENDINGS–ARNOLD DIAZ
HE JUST WANTED TO HELP. HE DID!
WPCNR ON THE BEAT. News & Comment By John F. Bailey. November 5, 2023:
The WCBS2 Shame on You started when I was just of college.
They had cinema verite’ reality, before we knew that’s what we were seeing.
There was the dashing mustashed reporter with microphone with the CBS2Eye on the end, knocki, knock knocking on the office door of a corporate cheat or a boiler room scammer, with a video cameraman on his heels behind him, camera jiggling portraying tense, anything-can-happen action.
I would watch him ambush a business owner, or an executive who had done a person wrong, with this intrepid young man with the black moustache (looking like Boston Blackie) all business knocking on the door like the police would do in tv dramas a few years later.
“Channel 2 News, we want to talk to…”
No response. The video camera behind Diaz would come in closer, jiggling for drama. It was like nothing on TV that had ever been seen. A reporter getting into a story with passion, intensity. Relentless.
Mr. Diaz would knock louder, camera showing him up close knocking incessantly
“Sir, this is Arnold Diaz, of Channel 2 Shame on You can you explain these undelivered products people are complaining to us.”
‘Go away you (BEEP BIPITY BEEP) We’re not talking.”
“We want you to explain these complaints. Otherwise we talk about it tonight on Shame on You Channel 2 News.”
On the segment if there was no explanation, or the target ducked ducked, ducked–Mr. Diaz would interview complaining victims, many of whom got their money back or got their bureaucratic problem straightened out.
Inevitably the corporate baron or bungling goverment offical, would open the posh door or shabby hole in the wall some hiding their faces and Mr. Diaz, gaining entry with video tape rolling following the action, and viewers saw the cheater, conman, or fraud artist squirm or not answer questions. Other times Diaz would chase the target down the street.
I do not know the news director of CBS2 who had the courage to introduce the Diaz reports. Diaz came to The Big Apple, joining WCBS 2 in 1973. His first job was at WPLG Miami and moved to CBS in 1973.
Arnold Diaz, this young intrepid fearless reporter who knew not awaited him behind the door if it was opened, and a lot did….being spitted upon, shoved and threatened with gun in a gold seller’s office, as The Times relates, as he told Richard Sandomir in Mr. Sandomir’s obituary of the intrepid Mr. Diaz.
His reports inspired many young people to become reporters showed them why reporting was needed and more reporters – including me.
When I graduated college I got a job delivering papers for the Long Islander in Huntington NY, and the editor there, Gerald Lyons, gave me a chance to do reporting. Six months later I started at WMAL ABC in Washington in an intern program, preparing news film, but left the program due to the realization that the traininf was going nowhere. Trainees were not regularly hired there so I returned to New York, and wrote myself into a copywriting job at Prentice-Hall and stayed in advertising for 33 years.
But I remembered the excitement of news. Mr. Diaz reports that made a difference in people’s lives because of his dogged reporting and research.
I also remember my first editor, the white-haired Gerald Lyons in his rumpled wool sweater white shirt and loose tie saying to me when I informed I’d be going to Washington to the television news job, he congratulated me and, said, “Well, don’t go too far away from news writing.”
He knew me better than I knew myself. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to know thyself.
It is the people who stay with the story, follow up, don’t quit, and editors that don’t quit pushing the reporters for more, and of course great performers like Arnold Diaz, who always set things right and as Mr. Diaz said in Mr. Sandomir’s obituary, “I’ve been lucky to have had a dream job, standing up for the little guy, sticking it to the bad guys.”
I believe he started investigative consumer reporting.
But there was nobody better than Arnold Diaz
He won 48 Emmy Awards.
When I departed freelance copywriting, I noticed that the national media was not covering the protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, in 1999, (the anniversary of which is coming up November 30).
The networks were ignoring the protests outside the arena it was held at in Seattle. But the internet was showing the protests forcing the networks to finally cover the violence.
I got to wondering why there was not more news coverage of White Plains in the chain paper that put out one edition for all cities in the county.
The newsman long buried in my underused mind emerged and I started the White Plains CitizeNetReporter 23 years ago.
So thank you Arnold Diaz and Gerald Lyons for your inspiration. Mr. Diaz for his reports that made a difference every time he did them, and Mr. Lyons who told me to stay with news 55 years ago.
