Television New Reporter's Funniest Moment

Video Transcript

"Some of the things a television news reporter may find funny aren't necessarily what some other people may find funny. You deal in a lot of tragedy as a television news reporter, and so it's--humor can lighten the mood at some point during the day. And there are some funny situations. For example, from my own personal experience, there was an occasion when I was anchoring the news. And, you know, it's a half hour newscast, and you've got to get all the way to the end. There was a story in there about underwear--dirty underwear. And I had a terrible time trying to get through that story with a straight face. It's like anything. Let's say you're at work, and you're around the water cooler, and somebody tells a dirty joke. You might chuckle or you might laugh. Well when I'm doing that it's difficult because I have to maintain a certain air of professionalism on the news. So, trying to be a professional news reporter or anchor--it's very difficult sometimes to keep a straight face when you're talking about a dirty underwear story. Another funny thing that happened at work was just recently. The--one of the pieces of equipment you use in a television news station, as a television news reporter, is a teleprompter. It's a device that--it scrolls the words past you, so you don't have to memorize the whole story. You can refer to that, and it allows you to read the story as it goes by. Sometimes there are snafus. There are difficulties. For example, I was reading a story in the teleprompter, and then I moved onto another story, and then into a commercial break. And I was shuffling papers or something, and I didn't realize that a story I had already read was back in the teleprompter. So we come out of commercial, and I look up, welcome back to the newscast, and I start reading the story. It was a story I just got done reading. So I thought it was a little foolish, and I probably looked a little foolish. So of course I had to play it off. I had to, oh, sorry about that, already did that one, and move onto the next story."