KCBS Consumer Reporter Crusades for Bus Riders
KCBS-TV consumer reporter Mike “Bogey” Boguslawski, who emphatically informs viewers that he is in their “corner” as they seek his help in dealing with defective policies and products, has now put himself into the middle of the 15-day-old Metropolitan Transportation Authority strike.
Boguslawski, who proclaims himself a “labor man” and a former union negotiator, has gone to the streets, imploring angry bus drivers to get back on the buses; tried to talk to MTA negotiators; and offered his station’s conference room as a site to hammer out their differences.
In a report that aired Wednesday, Boguslawski, who appears on KCBS’ 5 p.m. newscast, confronted a large group of bus drivers and told them they were only hurting riders, not MTA management, by staying off their jobs. He asked them to return to work for a 60-day cooling-off period. Though generally receptive, the drivers said they were sticking to their guns and told him to speak to MTA negotiators.
The next day, Boguslawski went, with a camera crew, to MTA headquarters. Unable to secure a meeting with negotiators, who were dealing with the strike, he interviewed the company’s director of public relations, Marc Littman.
Although Boguslawski apparently has the support of Councilman Joel Wachs and other officials, not everyone is happy about his involvement.
Littman said, “Bogey is sincere. He has a good heart. But we don’t need another middleman offering to end this strike. We need to find a way to get the two sides together. There’s been enough posturing on both sides. It distracts from the bargaining process.”
Goldy Norton, a spokesman for the United Transportation Union, was even more curt when asked about Boguslawski: “We have no comment whatsoever on what Mr. Boguslawski does or doesn’t do.”
But Boguslawski is likely to continue his efforts. “It’s not over,” he said. “I’m not throwing in the towel by any means.”
Indeed, on Thursday at the MTA, with a choking voice and tears welling in his eyes, Boguslawski pointed his microphone at Littman and said, “I can’t tell you how, inside me, I cry, how a major city in the United States of America can have such a crisis here. This has touched me more than anything I have done in 44 years.”
He continued to demand answers about what Littman and the MTA were doing to end the strike and even suggested that the union and the MTA should go to KCBS, sit behind closed doors and work out a settlement. He added that he did not want to be “a hero” in bringing the dispute to an end.
Insisting that he is not taking sides in the dispute, Boguslawski said he is personally putting himself on the line to help bus riders who are being hurt by the strike.
“Look, I want the buses to roll,” declared the gruff-voiced reporter in a phone interview this week. “People are losing jobs, and this strike is costing the working poor a lot of money. People out there are angry, and the governor and the mayor aren’t doing a . . . thing about it. This is hurting me! If I were the mayor of this town, I’d be smack in the middle of this strike.”
Within the local TV news community, Boguslawski’s reports have received mixed reviews, though at least one executive at a rival station did not view Boguslawski’s crusade as inappropriate.
Said KTTV Fox 11 news director Jose Rios: “He is set up as an ombudsman for the people. It’s advocacy journalism. It’s a long-standing tradition. If he can make something happen, more power to him. If there was a general assignment reporter who decided that he was going to solve this thing, then there would definitely be a problem. But what Bogey is doing is part and parcel of what they want him to do.”
KCBS in the last several months has promoted itself as “the station of the people,” with Boguslawski one of its principal ingredients. However, this strategy has not immediately translated into higher ratings for the 5 p.m. newscasts, with KCBS still trailing its rivals despite a potent new lead-in from the hit court show “Judge Judy.”
