Mike Viqueira

You Didn't Get This From Me Mike Viqueira

How did it happen? How did American politics go off the rails? How did the public lose faith in the national media and the politicians they are charged with holding to account? In the novel "You Didn't Get This From Me," veteran TV news journalist Mike Viqueira addresses the challenges faced by reporters in a world of changing technology, shifting public attitudes towards Washington, and the effect the perpetual ratings knife fight has on the quality and value of TV news. Set in the three years preceding the 2016 election, the work serves as a critique of TV News priorities - as well as the sometimes too cozy relationship between reporters and politicians - in an attempt to shed light on how public disaffection with the business of Washington has ushered in a new era of upheaval. YDGTFM begins with Loretta Jean Polk, an alluring and talented widow serving in the US House. Her latest conquest of the archaic ways of Washington is admission as the first female member into a secret club of the old boy network. TV journalist Tom Salta covertly watches as Majority Leader Zach Dickey praises Loretta at her induction ceremony. But Dickey hides a personal vendetta. He aims to destroy Loretta with charges of insider trading and conflict of interest, and he wants to use Tom to do his dirty work. His TV journalism career on the skids, Tom is desperate for a major scoop and accepts Dickey's offer of tainted information with few questions asked. Before he's done, Tom's pursuit of the truth will lead to wrecked lives, romance, and the rise of a new political order. With You Didn't Get This from Me, journalist Mike Viqueira offers a timely work that chronicles the calamitous end of business as usual in Washington. Can media and politics remain shrouded in their anachronistic folkways as technology helps expose a system shot through with decay? Viqueira isn't just documenting a decline-he's documenting a death (and an uproarious wake) in his cutting satire.