It bothered me that when I posted last time about the inaccuracies on our local newscast, I could not remember more specific examples. So yesterday, amidst watching the Olympics, I stopped to look at the news for about twenty minutes. And within those twenty minutes, I found FOUR—count ’em FOUR!—solid examples of inaccuracy.
1. Since this was the weekend news, it was a different anchor, not the “I should say” guy, yet this anchor had opportunity to say: “Auburn University is considering a raise in tuition, even though the University has MORE MONEY THAN EVER BEFORE….more money than LAST YEAR…I should say…”
2. The same anchor, when reporting on Olympic medals, noted that “so-and-so from Poland won the Silver.” Only she didn’t say “Poland,” she pronounced it “Po-LAND.” Because of course Poland is such an exotic country which nobody here in the United States has ever heard of, so it’s entirely reasonable to think that a newscaster might mispronounce it as “Po-LAND.” Right? She quickly corrected her pronunciation to “Poland.” To her credit, though, at least this time she did not add, “…I should say…”
3. The weatherman put up a graphic showing the upcoming weather predictions. For Sunday night, the words read “Rain chaning to snow.” He looked at it, chuckled a little and said, “Heh! I forgot the “g”…”
4. Going back to the anchor. I guess because it was the weekend there was no sportscaster, so the job fell to her. Apparently there is some kind of car racing going on right now, which I don’t know much about…and apparently, neither does she. She reported that a driver named “Bush,” “Boosh” and/or “Borsch” did something in the race. Now, there might be three separate drivers with all three of those names, or it might have been only one driver whose name is pronounced ONE of those ways, or something similar to one of those ways. I don’t know. But after watching her report on the race, I am no closer to knowing.
So much for “Accuracy Matters…”
One final note: in view of all this, and in view of the Olympic broadcasts, I really have to give credit to the national sports reporters for being able to pronounce some of these long and crazy names of athletes and countries as easily as if they were saying “John Smith of New York City.” They must practice their pronunciations long before they ever hit the airwaves. It’s very impressive.
