Mack, you ignorant slut

Newschannel 5 television reporter Manuel De La Rosa tells me I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to local TV news. I'm posting his response (unedited, except for fixing a couple of typos, adding links and separating it into paragraphs) with his permission:

I saw your entry about the sale of KGBT-TV. I think you are little harsh and off-base on your comments.

First off, Channel 48 KNVO-TV will be starting up a Fox newscast probably early next year. It's going to be run as a duopoly with Univision. So some of the news you get on Univision will double as your news on Fox. They'll hire some English-language staffers and have a newscast at 9 pm similar to the old Fox newscast which was run by Newschannel 5. So it will offer consumers another option for news and give Newschannel 5 some competition.

The sale of KGBT-TV actually is good for the consumers. Initially, Channel 4 will be ignored while they're up for sale, but the station with some new owners may buy new equipment and hire more staff to compete with the other English-language stations. So consumers will have a choice and that's good. Competition will drive the stations to invest more and present a better newscast.

KVEO will probably never offer a newscast. They feel they can make more money with syndicate programming rather than investing in a news department.

Lastly, Newschannel 5 doesn't providea sensational approach to news. It's true some of our stories are like that, but not fair to say all of the stories are presented that way. We cover a variety of news.

Speaking from experience, Newschannel 5 actually does a pretty good job for a small size market. They also do a good job of paying OT to the staff on big stories. You may remember our coverage of the near-miss hurricane in the summer as an example. We did a great job because we had the resources to cover that story.

You rarely find stations like ours in this size market with investigative teams. That's only seen in big cities. There isn't enough news to have an I-team. Newschannel 5 has actually done some investigative stories, which shows a lot about the our commitment to news.

You missed a story we did about a former band director who plead out to having sex with a student and was able to find another job in San Benito. Our story uncovered his previous problems with the law and led to his dismissal.

If you are going to attack the broadcast news media in the Valley, I think you need to have some more knowledge about its background and history of this type of market size. As a broadcast journalist, I feel your comments were off base.