Arnold Diaz, a brash investigative reporter at 3 New York City tv stations who introduced righteous interest to segments that shamed con artists, trade homeowners, scammers, govt bureaucrats and others who ripped off customers, died on Oct. 24 in Greenwich, Conn. He was once 74.
The explanation for the demise, at a sanatorium, was once more than one myeloma, a blood most cancers, his son, Alex, mentioned.
Mr. Diaz sought after now not best to get to the bottom of sufferers’ issues but in addition to embarrass the malefactors for his or her misdeeds. He faced them, chased them and shoved microphones of their faces searching for solutions.
At WCBS, Channel 2, the place he spent greater than two decades, his “Shame on You” investigations had been offered with a brief animation that featured a jingle and a hand with a wagging index finger. When the section moved to WNYW, Channel 5, it was once renamed “Shame, Shame, Shame”; later, on WPIX, Channel 11, it was once referred to as “What a Shame!”
“I’ve been lucky to have had a dream job, standing up for the little guy, sticking it to the bad guys,” Mr. Diaz said last year on Channel 11 when he retired. He added that his experiences “gave voice to victims whose complaints were too often ignored — complaints about lousy landlords, greedy businesses, incompetent government agencies.”
One standard record, from the early Nineties, spoke to those who had purchased credit-card-activated fax machines for $5,500 or extra that they had been instructed, in a TV business, would reap fast earnings after being positioned in high-traffic places like airports for public use.
In the section, the digital camera zeroed in on the consumers’ losses, the quantities turned around in purple on their assessments. Mr. Diaz clutched bureaucracy that confirmed who had bought the machines; he mentioned “Shame” had referred to as 34 other people on the record, and now not one had won the apparatus. He tracked down the corporate, Distribution International, to a “boiler-room” operation in a basement in Forest Hills, Queens, the place his inquiries to Sheri Cohen, the corporate’s president, went unanswered as he adopted her across the workplace.
When she instructed Mr. Diaz that some fax machines have been put in, he demanded the place, however she refused to respond to. And Ms. Cohen, like loads of others faced by means of Mr. Diaz over time, was once inducted into what Mr. Diaz referred to as his Hall of Shame.
In early 1993, she was once charged with wire fraud by means of the United States legal professional for the Eastern District in Brooklyn — who Mr. Diaz mentioned credited “Shame on You” for making the workplace acutely aware of the case — and was once convicted twelve months later. She was once sentenced to 41 months in jail.
Around the time of that record, Walter Goodman, a tv critic for The New York Times, praised a chain of Mr. Diaz’s investigations.
“Anybody who has ever felt bilked by a car repair outfit,” Mr. Goodman wrote in 1990, “or has wound up with an over-the-hill chicken or been exasperated by the city’s bureaucracy can cry amen to these mini-exposés, which won two New York Emmy Award nominations last month.”
He ended the evaluation: “Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail to you, Arnold Diaz!”
Mr. Diaz stated in an interview with Newsday in 2022 that he didn’t invent the competitive form of shopper investigation that turned into his hallmark. But, he mentioned, he took delight in how he tailored it for a New York target market.
“New Yorkers love revenge,” he mentioned, “and, even if I didn’t solve their problems, loved that we exposed” the wrongdoers.
His reporting led to a few offended encounters, Alex Diaz mentioned in a telephone interview: People would spit and curse at him. In one example, he recalled, a jeweler in Manhattan, whom he was once investigating for shortweighing gold, menacingly slipped a gun on the desk in entrance of Mr. Diaz.
By his rely, Mr. Diaz gained 48 New York Emmy Awards — such a lot of, his son mentioned, that he lent some to prop homes to be used within the backdrops of TV methods.
Arnold Theodore Diaz was once born on June 16, 1949, in Brooklyn, and moved along with his circle of relatives to North Miami Beach, Fla., when he was once 5. His Cuban American father, Leonard, was once an airline mechanic. His mom, Florette (Cohen) Diaz, was once a police secretary.
Mr. Diaz graduated with a bachelor’s level in communications and media research from Florida State University in 1971 and earned a grasp’s level in journalism the following 12 months from Northwestern University. He quickly joined WPLG in Miami, and in 1973 he moved to WCBS, the place he stayed for 22 years.
Ann Sorkowitz, a manufacturer who started operating with Mr. Diaz at WCBS in 1976, mentioned that he prominent himself on breaking news tales and long-term investigations, similar to one on poisonous dumping in New Jersey. His investigations generated viewer mail, together with shopper proceedings. The “Shame on You” experiences started within the past due Nineteen Eighties.
“Arnold decided to call it ‘Shame on You’ because of the old-fashioned notion of people practicing bad behavior being shamed publicly,” Ms. Sorkowitz mentioned in a telephone interview. “The segments empowered people. They got their problems resolved or got their money back and vented their frustrations.”
Mr. Diaz left native tv in 1996 for a community activity as a shopper investigative correspondent on ABC’s “20/20.” “I was interested in bringing in that sense of outrage journalism,” Victor Neufeld, this system’s former govt manufacturer, mentioned by means of telephone. “He was the perfect local news person. He was very animated and energized, a crusader.”
But the tempo of a community newsmagazine, the place it took months for a report back to get on the air, “wasn’t his style,” Mr. Neufeld mentioned.
When Mr. Diaz rejoined Channel 2 in early 2003, he instructed The Daily News of New York: “When you’re in local TV, you think, ‘Oh, if I could only get to the networks.’ I’ve been there. I’ve been to the mountaintop, and the view isn’t any better. Sometimes it’s worse.”
His go back to Channel 2 lasted two years. He then moved to Channel 5, the place he stayed till 2014, and Channel 11, the place he stayed for 8 years ahead of retiring.
Alex Diaz attributed his father’s passionate taste to his Cuban background and to his upbringing, at least early on, in a working-class Brooklyn group.
“I was fascinated that he used the power of shame like a weapon or a shield,” mentioned the more youthful Mr. Diaz, who has the phrase “shame” tattooed on his stomach. “Shame is a call for introspection. It was less casting a judgment than saying: ‘You know what you’re doing is wrong. Be a better version of yourself.’”
In addition to his son, Mr. Diaz is survived by means of his spouse, Shawn Callaghan-Diaz, who met Mr. Diaz when she was once a collection decorator for cleaning soap operas and “Captain Kangaroo” at CBS; his daughters, Shayna Wade and Casey Diaz; a sister, Susan Enslein; and dual grandsons.
When Mr. Diaz retired, he mirrored on his experiences, together with one by which an insurer mentioned it might now not pay for a Staten Island guy’s prosthetic leg because there was no proof that he wanted to walk. His reporting induced the corporate to study the person’s declare and approve it.
“I leave with no regrets,” Mr. Diaz mentioned. “I may miss the excitement but not the times I’ve been shoved, spit at and threatened with guns.”