How hard it is to get good news reported

I am momentarily speechless. Here's the story:

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Utah-mayor-used-alias-to-write-upbeat-news-stories-2264370.php

At least someone is noticing...
http://www.deadline.com/2011/11/should-the-fcc-crack-down-on-tv-stations-that-cooperate-on-news-ad-sales-and-retransmission-deals/

Why bother with multiple sources when you don't have multiple outlets?

27 Stations Use Same Lead for Conan Story

This would be funny if it didn't enrage me.

Excerpted from MediaBistro.com - "The likely explanation is that wire copy associated with the original source contained the phrase, which then made its way into scripts and onto prompters with little editing. Local news is increasingly under fire for content sharing, which the RTDNA recently discovered that a whopping 78% of stations do."

Here's the link to the whole story:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/while-covering-a-conan-obrien-story-18-local-stations-use-identical-phrasing_b27924

So, have anchors' vocabularies diminished to such an extent that they all must use the exact same words now? Nah, this is just the result of extreme consolidation and forced sharing of resources in news media. Who needs accuracy when you can have consistency?