As reported here, the reaction of some Twitter users to the revelation the Boston Marathon bombers were from Chechnya speaks volumes about the quality of American schools. Sadly, in recent days, television news crews have provided reminders that their own employees are often no better prepared for the rigors of dealing with foreign names and places.
On Friday, NBC’s Brian Williams handed off coverage of the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to New England Cable News just in time for millions of viewers to be greeted by a live s-bomb dropped by an NECN employee. Williams recovered quickly, with a quip (“Well, that was a fortuitous time to dip into the coverage of New England Cable News”) and an apology. But in the end, the damage was done.
Meanwhile, the Fox affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth fared no better in its handling of the door-to-door police search, identifying the hunted suspect in its closed captioning as Zooey Deschanel. A screen grab of the flub appears below.
Yahoo! News writes that the actress was alerted to her notoriety via a tweet from fellow celeb Joel McHale. Deschanel tweeted back, “Whoa! Epic closed captioning FAIL!”
Epic indeed.
The website Extra notes that a radio producer named Peter Ogburn also witnessed the gaffe and tweeted, “Oh come on, Fox.”
Makes you wonder whether Ogburn knows the difference between Chechya and the Czech Republic.
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