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Yet Another Baby Panda

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Part of a News Broadcast, usually the last segment, in which lighthearted or heartwarming clips of stories involving footage of waterskiing budgies, squirrels adopted by mother dogs, cats rescued by firemen, firemen rescued by cats, or otherwise crowd-pleasing cute 'n' sappy animals are shown to boost ratings. In the event of a lack of fuzzy critters, the Special Olympics, the latest social media sensation or large litters of human babies can sometimes fill this role. Often (incorrectly) referred to as "Human Interest" stories, despite the general lack of anything interesting (or human).
In the news business, this segment is called the "kicker". Its sole purpose is time filler; it can be run if there's time left for it, or it can be dropped if the newscast is running long. It can cause some pretty rough Mood Whiplash depending on what else was in the show that day (you can immediately go from a horrific car accident that left 3 people dead to a cute story of a puppy with a bad leg getting a custom scooter to walk around in).
Compare with Worst News Judgment Ever, when the kicker preempts more serious news stories. Compare and contrast Film at 11, when a regular news story is teased as though it's a kicker.
In Britain, the practice is known as an "And finally", after the catchphrase of Trevor McDonald. An older in-house name for the practice named the newsroom comedy series Drop the Dead Donkey. ITV News At Ten went through a long period of ending on a cliffhanger story about a Spanish village ritual, where a live donkey was fated to be dropped from a very high church tower. The feelgood factor was engendered by the Spanish animal welfare people stepping in on behalf of the donkey, following sustained international condemnation.
Compare to The Internet Is for Cats.
Contrast If It Bleeds, It Leads, which uses a gruesome sensationalized story to grab your attention.
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CBS Sunday Morning always ends with a "Moment of Nature", sometimes just scenery but often including animal footage.
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Osmosis Jones had two microscopic reporters talk about animal crackers being shown in the digestive tract with the headline "Panda-monium!"
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Parodied, as with most news tropes, in The Day Today. One notable example has anchor Chris Morris begin to interview a woman who is organizing a jam-making contest for charity... unfortunately, he doesn't turn off his usual 'hard-hitting-Jeremy-Paxman-asking-the-tough-questions' persona, reducing the poor woman to tears in the process.
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The Simpsons:
"Girly Edition" has Bart and Lisa becoming reporters at their school news station. When Bart records a series of highly successful (and highly insubstantial) "human-interest" stories, Lisa tries to compete with him by doing a story on (among other things) the "Crazy Cat Lady". It doesn't go well. Then she tries a train story, standing next to some railroad tracks: "The old Union Pacific doesn't come by here much anymore..." Cue heavily labelled 'Union Pacific' train going by for a very long time. Followed by another attack from the Crazy Cat Lady.
One Simpsons episode parodied the practice by showing some footage of a goat kid drinking bottled milk for the wrong stories, before the end credits.
Spoofed in "Treehouse of Horror IX":
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Darkwing Duck, having a big ego, gets a big boost whenever a newscaster talks about a crime he solved. Unfortunately, the newscast promptly switches gears to a baby panda or cute kitty, causing everyone to forget about his exploits. Subverted when the two new baby pandas are clearly fighting each other. People still find it cute.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix begins with Harry listening out for any sign of Voldemort on the Muggle news (e.g. mass "freak accidents") but realises not much has been going on when the news switches to the antics of a water-skiing budgie.
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In Airframe, a major news network is faced with running a story about a disabled Little League team when a controversy flares up around a much-more riveting plane accident. But when the accident turns out to be the result of pilot error and bad parts, they are forced to run with the former or else risk legal action, and the producer behind the hoped-for plane story is chewed out so thoroughly by her boss that she leaves the network outright. Ironically, her boss ends up with a humanitarian award in the epilogue.
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King of the Hill: After Nancy becomes an anchor, she complains about her job revolving around stories about animals. Joseph saying, "But that's the cutest part of the news" doesn't help.
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A newscast in an episode of WordGirl had a segment with a water-skiing squirrel that was interrupted for breaking news about a bank robbery.
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The Daily Show refers to it as the "Moment of Zen", a very brief piece of fluff totally disconnected with the often depressing news stories it covers. In the early years, as befits a News Parody, the "Moment of Zen" could get weird and Non Sequiturial (like a man getting sat on by an elephant), but as time went by they could be genuine attempts at a heartwarming moment. The transition is often thought to come from the first episode broadcast after the September 11th attacks, in which the Moment of Zen saw host Jon Stewart produce an adorable puppy from under his desk.
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Undertale has a segment where you play a news correspondent reporting on location. One of the items you can report on is a dog. If you choose it, the anchor will say "I can just imagine the headline now: A DOG EXISTS SOMEWHERE!". Subverted when the dog turns out to be a bomb.
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Baldur's Gate III: In Act 3, a newspaper tries to slander the party, and the editor brags how the next edition will reveal all their 'misdeeds'. One way to prevent this is to break into their offices and substitute the next edition's printing plates. One of these plates is of the "Cutest Cat You've Ever Seen," and is about a kitten being rescued.
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Parodied mercilessly in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which abounds in silly animal-related human interest stories (such as a water-skiing squirrel) — but nothing beats "Panda Watch", a recurring segment of a pregnant panda at the San Diego Zoo. No one questions the significance of that particular story — not even Veronica Corningstone, who otherwise hates being assigned to stories like this. The climax of the whole film takes place at the pandas' birth; hordes of journalists at the zoo that day manage to ignore several people jumping into the grizzly enclosure and nearly dying. The sequel continues this trend, with Ron and his crew relying on cute animal stories (and preferably patriotic ones) to great national acclaim at GNN.
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In The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Adrian falls into a severe depression when he returns home from having run away. To try to bring him back to the real world, his parents suggest he watches the news. It is full of terrible stories such as bombing and murder, and he notes that the only cheerful item is about a man with no legs who walked from John O' Groats to Lands End note from the northernmost end of the United Kingdom to the southernmost; this magnificence of the human spirit versus the cruelty of fate reduces him to silent sobs.
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Big Miracle featuring John Krasinski and Drew Barrymore was based on a true story about whales stuck in ice on the edge of Alaska that was put on the last minute of national news and somehow got to be a huge media circus that eventually involved diplomatic relations between Ronald Reagan and Russia and some say saving a whale up a glacier helped Reagan win reelection.
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In The Paper, The New York Sun always looks for a funny story to end on.
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In Bruce Almighty, Bruce is sick of being sent to cover these (and other Human Interest Stories like the "world's largest cookie"). When he gets phenomenal cosmic powers, one thing he does is contrive strange and actually newsworthy things to be discovered at the site of these human interest stories, which he just so happens to be there to cover. (A Deleted Scene from the script even has Bruce induce an improbable pregnancy in a male panda.) By the end of the film, Bruce learns and accepts that fluff stories make people happy and he's good at doing them.
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Discussed in The Truth between William de Worde and Lord Vetinari:
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The second episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver centered entirely around the death penalty. Because the subject was so depressing, John promised a video of "tiny hamsters eating tiny burritos, which is as magical and uncomplicated as you think" as a reward for those who got through the whole segment. He did indeed follow through, and it was just as "magical and uncomplicated" as he promised.
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A news show from a SpongeBob SquarePants episode plays with this: behind the newscaster is an ordinary picture of perfectly safe kittens, though she says, "And there were no survivors."
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The episode "Girth" of Pushing Daisies concluded a Coincidental Broadcast with "Next up: Kittens On Parade!"
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The reporter in Dissonance works for a show that currently has an opening montage containing footage of labrador puppies. She plans to replace it with footage of Pandora caring for an injured rat.
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A Monty Python's Flying Circus letter was interrupted as it was getting too sexually stimulating and was replaced with a scene of a man with a stoat through his head.
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On South Park, the kids create their own school news station, and one way they court younger viewers is the "Panda Madness Minute". Only problem is they're going up against non-news shows which consist entirely of cute animals. The moment the protagonist makes inroads, their rivals show animals with cute hats.
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In The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark, the protagonist goes on TV to appeal to the public for information about the mysterious disappearance of his partner. At the end of his appeal, the anchor immediately segues into an item about a squirrel that can do arithmetic.
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Comedy series Drop the Dead Donkey, set in a TV station's newsroom and following the bitter bitching and infighting between its clashing egos, was named after an alternative reference to this practice.
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How I Met Your Mother: Robin frequently complains about her job consisting entirely of these.
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The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals: Early in the show, Paul listens to the Morning Hatchetfield News' story about Peanuts the pocket squirrel, the rescued squirrel who is outgrowing his owner's pocket and now needs his own little squirrel house. Paul turns the radio off right when the anchors switch to the story about the meteor that landed in Hatchetfield. At the end of the show, Peanuts turns out to be one of the last remaining survivors of the alien invasion.
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Stories of this type routinely appear on Drew Curtis' Fark, usually with a variation on the tagline "Ugly-ass baby [noun] born in [place]." (The more "ugly-ass" the description, the more pancreas-killingly adorable said baby critter will be.)
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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Animal Tropes
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Babies, Babies Everywhere
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News Tropes
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Yet Another Baby Panda
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Yet Another Baby Panda
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