Robert Feder of the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
“Another Jiggetts is breaking into broadcasting: Lauren Jiggetts, the 21-year-old daughter of Chicago sportscaster Dan Jiggetts (and a recent sociology graduate of Harvard University), has been hired as a news anchor and reporter for Channel One, the educational news channel seen in classrooms nationwide. She’ll be based in Los Angeles.”
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It appears that Lauren Jiggetts will fill one of the two vacant anchor positions at Channel One. It is surprising that this company has gotten anyone to agree to come on board but it is really strange to see a new Harvard graduate accept this position.
Here is a job that takes hardly any talent. You have to be able to read words off a Teleprompter and be able to travel but that is about it. If Ms. Jiggetts decided to get a real reporting job in a city like Chicago, then she would have to work her way up to an on-air spot. She would have to earn the right to be on camera. If she didn’t do well, she would be moved to another position. That’s the real world. She chose the easy way with Channel One.
All the anchors, no matter how bad they are, have a guaranteed audience every day. Ms. Jiggetts could read the LA phone book on her day on air and the audience numbers would be the same the next day. It doesn’t get easier than this. The audience of students are under contract to watch this TV show.
Being a Channel One anchor requires you to dismiss ethical concerns about a captive audience of students being forced to watch you do “your thing.” You have to not care about the obesity crisis that is raging among schoolchildren. Pepsi and Hostess Twinkies are paying your salary to market their slop to kids. As a Channel One anchor you are a major part of the junk food marketing machine.
Ms. Jiggetts surely understands the controversy surrounding her new employer. She probably knows about the violent movies advertised on Channel One. She probably knows about the advertised movies that promote drug and alcohol consumption.
Note: Ms Jiggetts was quoted in a Harvard newspaper as dismissing the concerns of a Harvard faculty member who has written about the increase of binge drinking among sports fan at Harvard. Ms. Jiggetts worked for a campus group that helped set up tailgating parties. She said alcohol usage was not emphasized but her language was vague and not reassuring.
Does Ms. Jiggetts drink alcohol? Do the other Channel One anchors drink alcohol? Have these young people, who have such routine access to our children, ever smoked marijuana or done other drugs? Are they still doing these drugs? What do Derrick Shore and Janet Choi and Seth Doane think about legalizing marijuana?
Channel One News tells the world very little about their anchors. They even refuse to tell the public in what year they were born. This is to help keep up the illusion that these are high school kids just like many in their audience. As far as we know, all of these anchors are in their twenties. Krystal Greene, who can’t seem to leave Channel One, is probably in her late twenties.
Channel One converts school time, which has been paid for by taxpayers, into advertising revenue and then they pay employees like Ms. Jiggetts and the other anchors. The public has ever right to know who these people are. They are feeding off the public’s money and that’s not a nice thing to do.
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Channel One’s newest anchor. |
Ms. Jiggetts has two pictures for public viewing on the Internet. This is the more conservative. (We have asked Channel One’s VP of Programming, Morgan Wandell, for a publicity photo of the new anchor to substititute for this one.) Ms. Jiggetts majored in sociology. She has now joined a company that is practicing a 21st Century-style of indentured servitude. Channel One makes schoolchildren indebted to them by loaning their school TV equipment and then they make the children “work off” the debt by sacrificing their limited school time. Why would somebody join a company like that? Maybe she is doing undercover research on Channel One and its adverse impact on children in lower-income areas. Maybe she is upset with the advertising of violent entertainment in America’s classrooms and she will work from the inside to undo Channel One News. Then again, maybe she is in it for the easy money. It is, after all, a very bad job market out there. |
