When Chasing The Same Story Gets A Little Too Similar

Looks like ABC's "World News Tonight" bucked a trend that we've seen before.

(CBS)

(NBC)

(ABC)

But while originality was evident in some places, elsewhere, not so much. Oddly, in stories about the General Motors plant closings, it appeared that both "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" included brief interviews with the same seemingly random GM employee in Oklahoma City, where a plant is to be closed (NBC identifies him by his full name, ABC calls him Roy):

(ABC)

BARBARA PINTO: Roy worries about his son, who also works at the plant, their pensions and the future. Can you imagine life here six months from now?

ROY: No, I sure can't. I sure can't.

(NBC)

ANNE THOMPSON: Oklahoma City, the first stop on G.M.'s new roadmap to profitability. Here, workers build two mid-sized SUVs, the Chevy Trailblazer and GMC Envoy -- Work that will stop early next year, ending 2,200 jobs, including Rohelio Munguia's.

ROHELIO MUNGUIA: If I have to move on I will move on to other locations so I can get my 30 years.

Soundbites like this are obviously inherently unrepresentative samples, but two networks gauging "man on the street" reaction from the same man on the street?

Also somewhat of an odd coincidence: despite the fact that GM would be closing part or all of 12 different plants in the U.S. and Canada, the CBS

Remind me again what this ratings battle between the network newscasts is all about?

Update: It's been brought to our attention that it wasn't such an "odd coincidence," as I termed it, that these stories carried elements from Doraville and Oklahoma City as they are near locations with network bureaus (Atlanta and Dallas). It's still not clear how the same man showed up in different packages on different networks, however.