Twenty years ago this month The Watchdog was born. The newspaper editor who assigned me the role wanted to call it “Watchdog on Patrol.”
“That’s corny,” I said. “Let’s just call it The Watchdog with a capital T to give it heft.”
For my first column, my wife Karen and I attended a travel seminar where the company would charge $7,000 to make me an honorary travel agent.
With my plastic photo “Travel Agent ID card” I could, for example, pay $49 a night instead of $229 for a beachfront room at a Cancun resort. A 12-night cruise would only cost $599.
Turns out that members were offered the worst days for deals, making it hard to collect on their wish list.
Research informed me that some company leaders had prison records.
Oh, boy.
Watchdog is born
The Watchdog announcement ad ran in The Star-Telegram with this promise: “Finally, you’ve got somebody in your corner.”
My inbox heated up immediately with complaints, questions and story tips. Twenty years later, it’s still on fire — but with one major difference.
The original promotional language mentioned that my focus would be on governments, businesses and organizations.
Now I notice it did not mention scams. That’s quite an indicator of the growth of scams in 20 years — now a mainstay of this column. Yet in 2005 scams weren’t on the radar yet.
Now Time magazine reported that we are living in “The Golden Age of Scams.”
Duh.
‘Truth, justice and the American way’
Over the course of the next three years, I learned that this assignment wasn’t a typical news beat where a reporter concentrates on one topic. Rather, I realized I was defining a lifestyle necessary to survive.
With so much mail, I realized that with stories I wouldn’t take, I could instead show people how to fix their own problems without my help. They just needed to be pointed in the right direction — whether it be regulators, small claims court or myriad other ways to combat wrongdoing.
In 2008 I fused this strategy into a movement that I called Watchdog Nation.
That was the year I released my award-winning book Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong. The main idea is you have more power than you know to right a wrong.
The book contains a manifesto that ends with these words: “‘Truth, justice and the American way’ is no comic-book cliché to us. In Watchdog Nation it’s the standard by which everyone is held accountable.”
I joked that the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus was our founding member.
He summed it up poignantly when he said, “Make the best use of what is in your power. And take the rest as it comes. … If you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means; and if you find truth, you will become invincible.”
Roofer failures
Over the years my reporting taught me that at first I had no clue how to be a smart shopper. Rip-offs in my life were rare. Of course, we hadn’t entered the golden age yet.
I have to give credit to my crooked roofer for opening my eyes.
After a hailstorm, I hired a roofer who replaced the roof. The only problem was he accidentally replaced the wrong roof — my neighbor’s — in a bout of confusion.
The second roofer I hired gave me a new roof but then he filed bankruptcy, leaving more than 60 customers and suppliers out in the cold. In a rarity, the roofer — who once bragged “I never held a hammer in my hand.” — was sentenced to six months in jail.
That’s how I learned the key tenet of Watchdog Nation — the single most important development in the history of humanity when it comes to self-protection.
Google.
I noticed a pattern. Most of my complainants did a web search on their problem after they got in trouble.
If they had just searched for a company or an individual before hiring or buying, they could avoid most problems.
That technique still works, mostly. But unethical people have learned how to game the system. They create fake websites, false customer service departments and many other tactics to confuse consumers.
Google tries to keep on top of it, but in the golden age there are just too many unethical people running loose.
Watchdog campaigns
I look back at some of the campaigns I launched, hoping they made a difference in the lives of North Texans.
After I joined The Dallas Morning News in 2013, I went after the Public Utility Commission for not caring about the public. I took away their “P.”
I taught you how to file for a property tax/appraisal protest in my “Everybody file a protest” campaign.
Of course, I pushed hard for a roofers’ license, but Democrats in the Texas House killed that bill, saying it would hurt workers. It wouldn’t because only the boss/owner would need to get it.
I gave out thousands of sheets on how to shop for electricity.
I created a Watchdog Nation ID card for followers to use to stop scammers in their tracks by showing that the frustrated customer and I had a relationship.
In the past year alone, some of the topics I’ve covered include: electricity, data privacy, elder abuse, employment, crime, builders, local governments, drug prices, social media, advertising, real estate, event tickets, education, Atmos, the lottery, car buying, spam, traffic, solar energy, toll roads, the internet, mergers, auto inspections, banks, credit cards, swindlers, thieves, AI, and water.
Phew.
‘Finding truth’
The Watchdog continues because managers at The News support the concept. Very few such jobs exist across journalism.
On most stories, there’s always one party that wants a story to run and an opposing party that wants to kill it.
The Watchdog knows there are two sides to every story, sometimes even more. It’s my job to find them and tell you.
As Epictetus said, “If you find truth, you will become invincible.”
