In the closing moments of the first episode of CBBC's Half Moon Investigations Fletcher Moon says: "A good detective doesn't do the job for thanks, he does it for truth and justice." The same sentiments should equally apply to journalists.

Newsround has had some interesting and worthy reports to begin 2009:

Ricky's warning about pouring fat down kitchen sinks was left till after the Christmas holidays, but even so the advice should serve well for the future.

Wednesday's Newsround included a report about sports enthusiast Joseph Pritchard. He was born with only two fingers and a thumb on each hand. His dad and stepmum wrote to several companies to see if they could help, and eventually one company said they would love to make a pair of sports gloves specially for Joseph.

On Thursday we were given the lowdown on how recycling has been affected by the economic crisis. It seems no one wants to buy recycled waste nowadays, so warehouses are overflowing with the stuff. Last year paper and card fetched £70 per tonne but now it sells for £20 per tonne, and cans which sold for £200 per tonne now sell for just one tenth the price. Despite this evidence Ricky, reporting from Greencycle's warehouse in the North East of England, said that the company was confident things would improve, and we should carry on recycling.

But then there are other things going on, not a million miles from the BBC itself, like the CBBC message boards changes in December which caused so much disquiet. And another story, surely of interest, is why would the BBC spend over £45,000 of the public's money (Channel 4 News report by Emily Reuben, 16 December 2008) on a lavish launch party for Merlin, and then deliberately give so much free publicity to its direct rival - ITV's X Factor (see blog 6 January 2009) The BBC's Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thomson, speaking on Channel 4 News: "We don't party for parties' sake. We choose the programmes we're going to promote at launches very carefully. We only did three BBC1 dramas last year. When we do it, we do it because we're very proud of the programmes .."