Glorious fail by the media

[Sneezeburger]

And CNN and Reuters aren't multimillion dollar news organizations? Sorry - don't let the facts get in the way of a good prejudice.

If it happened only once, which it seems was the case with CNN, I wouldn't care. I've seen the mistake made by a number of news organizations. But this isn't the first time it has happened. This isn't the second time it has happened. And this is a network which has taken a deliberate position against this President and the Democratic Party in general. There are a number of occasions on which some Republican has been involved in a big scandal and under his portrait you see John Q. Public (R-State) citing news stories by The Onion as real news in their official blog to make Obama look weak, employing no real liberal voice on any of their opinion shows, and propagating bullshit misinformation like the "terrorist fist bump."

If they mislabeled people like Reagan and Lincoln as Democrats and accidentally listed "Osama Palin" as a guest on one of their shows, then yeah, it wouldn't matter. But virtually all of these slip-ups have been unfavorable to Democrats.

[psdew1813]

ha....that never fails

[Sneezeburger]

Oh, right. This guy likes to touch little kids. And he's NOT a Democrat.

[Alta87]

I'm still waiting for them to get stupid enough and write Osama Bin Alladin =D

[Arcilux]

As for the Usama/Osama thing, as has been pointed out both are considered correct. Technically, the FBI and military use Usama as the official spelling. It's no different than transliterating Russian, Japanese, Chinese, or any non-Roman alphabetic language.

Ironically, I kept accidentally saying Obama bin Laden all day. It was a legitimate mistake, I didn't even realize what I was saying until somebody pointed it out. I also occasionally say Andrew instead of Anthony and that is a lot more letters than b/s. Mistakes happen, not everything is a conspiracy theory or the work of idiots.

Besides, as big of news as this was there probably wasn't any time for proof reading or editing, all the news organizations wanted to be the first with the story, and it was unexpected, no real time to sit down and script the story, most of the news reports were rolling out live.

[Janaa]

If it happened only once, which it seems was the case with CNN, I wouldn't care. I've seen the mistake made by a number of news organizations. But this isn't the first time it has happened. This isn't the second time it has happened. And this is a network which has taken a deliberate position against this President and the Democratic Party in general. There are a number of occasions on which some Republican has been involved in a big scandal and under his portrait you see John Q. Public (R-State) citing news stories by The Onion as real news in their official blog to make Obama look weak, employing no real liberal voice on any of their opinion shows, and propagating bullshit misinformation like the "terrorist fist bump."

If they mislabeled people like Reagan and Lincoln as Democrats and accidentally listed "Osama Palin" as a guest on one of their shows, then yeah, it wouldn't matter. But virtually all of these slip-ups have been unfavorable to Democrats.

Right - so the right is prejudiced against the left? That's hardly new. But that's no different to the left prejudice against the right. The left takes every opportunity to, equally, bash any aspect of the right that comes along. Whether it be by a commentator like Cynthia Tucker, Howard Fineman, by a political identify (Obama himself loves to work the jibes in, and has laid into Paul Ryan personally more than once just in the last fortnight), or even in celebrity and humor (countless celebs, don't need to go there, but watch the Daily Show or Colbert Report.. any time). It's hardly a one-sided slinging match. It's thrown from every direction, against everyone. You act like the left isn't entirely propaganda as well, which just demonstrates a little political naivety. A Democratic President wasn't impeached for mis-spelling names. (And not forgetting a Republican president forced into resignation as well - it goes both ways).

PS. The Daily Show (which was used as an example) does have a go at both sides, to be fair, though is far more left leaning. Likewise, Bill O'Reilly has a go at both sides, though is far more right leaning. It's lucky there are some fairly moderate commentators around, or else the entire media would be full of Glenn Beck's and Joy Behar's.

And btw - one network taking a position against the government? Remember when Bush was in charge and that was "every network, except Fox, was against the government"? Don't pull out anti-administration sentiment as a defense for FOX bashing. The left is just as guilty of it as anyone. And multiplied by every other major network. :P

[Sneezeburger]

Right - so the right is prejudiced against the left? That's hardly new. But that's no different to the left prejudice against the right. The left takes every opportunity to, equally, bash any aspect of the right that comes along.

Absolutely. MSNBC can be just as biased as Fox News, though I think most would agree that Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann (Though he no longer works there) are far less crazy than Glenn Beck. There would be no problem with Fox if everyone who watched it did so with the understanding that it was essentially a conservative network that advocated conservative positions. That's not the case, however. Due to this fantasy on the right that the entire news media is run by liberals and communists, there is a fairly large segment of America that considers Fox News the ONLY legitimate source of news, and while this is obviously anecdotal, I have heard dozens of individuals say that they only listen to Fox News and they only trust Fox News. I have never heard a single person say that about MSNBC or CNN. To these people, Fox News is gospel, and when Fox News reports something negative about a Republican or good about President Obama, it's not actually something negative about a Republican or good about President Obama, it's just another example of how the insidious liberal media has even managed to infiltrate the sacred halls of Fox News. Are there blind ideologues on the left? Absolutely. But it has gone mainstream on the right and it's killing our political culture.

[omglaserzpewpew]

I like how that article is from Yahoo! and you people blame Fox News.... I appreciate the irony more than you can know.

[Vantheus]

Faux Knewz isn't known for its proofreading. They regularly mispell arabic names like Ghaddafi (Qaddafi to them) and Misrata (misurata to them). hell, the even spelled Osama bin Laden's name wrong in a headline (spelling it Usama).

Those aren't mispelled, the spelling depends on dilect, please dont waste readers' time with false info, either know what you're saying or stay silent please

[Collegeguy]

Its really not that big of a deal. It has happened on CNN and even The View today. Its just a slip of mind and less of a typo since the names are so similar. The joke is so old its not even funny anymore when someone makes that mistake. Time to move on.

[Chyrch]

Right - so the right is prejudiced against the left? That's hardly new. But that's no different to the left prejudice against the right. The left takes every opportunity to, equally, bash any aspect of the right that comes along. Whether it be by a commentator like Cynthia Tucker, Howard Fineman, by a political identify (Obama himself loves to work the jibes in, and has laid into Paul Ryan personally more than once just in the last fortnight), or even in celebrity and humor (countless celebs, don't need to go there, but watch the Daily Show or Colbert Report.. any time). It's hardly a one-sided slinging match. It's thrown from every direction, against everyone. You act like the left isn't entirely propaganda as well, which just demonstrates a little political naivety. A Democratic President wasn't impeached for mis-spelling names. (And not forgetting a Republican president forced into resignation as well - it goes both ways).

PS. The Daily Show (which was used as an example) does have a go at both sides, to be fair, though is far more left leaning. Likewise, Bill O'Reilly has a go at both sides, though is far more right leaning. It's lucky there are some fairly moderate commentators around, or else the entire media would be full of Glenn Beck's and Joy Behar's.

And btw - one network taking a position against the government? Remember when Bush was in charge and that was "every network, except Fox, was against the government"? Don't pull out anti-administration sentiment as a defense for FOX bashing. The left is just as guilty of it as anyone. And multiplied by every other major network. :P

So what you want is for everyone who criticizes Fox News to follow-up with "but the left media does the same"?

If someone at a party is a complete drunk, who's throwing up all over the place, and I call that guy a jackass, do I also have to follow that statement with "but to be fair, there's a guy at another party who does that same thing"?

[Janaa]

So what you want is for everyone who criticizes Fox News to follow-up with "but the left media does the same"?

If someone at a party is a complete drunk, who's throwing up all over the place, and I call that guy a jackass, do I also have to follow that statement with "but to be fair, there's a guy at another party who does that same thing"?

That wouldn't be an equivalancy. Rather, imagine you're at a party and six different guys all throw up at once. Then, ten minutes later, one guy throws up, and you go absolutely ballistic on that one guy and start ranting about how he doesn't care about other people, is just trying to cause trouble, etc ad nauseum (heh.. how appropriate). In that case, I'd say you're a biased nutjob who already had it in for "that guy" for whatever reason and are just using the episode as an excuse to bash him.

[Eldar45]

I don't see how they can make such a mistake, the S and B are far apart enough that this has to be intentional.

Easy, Obama has pretty much been THE news for the past four years. After typing his name that many times, it probably becomes a reflex.

Hell, I do it all the time.

[Sayl]

Faux Knewz isn't known for its proofreading.

I don't think any news organization enjoys a shining reputation for editing or proofreading. Online articles from outlets large and small contain staggering numbers of typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors. I can almost be sympathetic to how the Osama/Obama thing might trip some people up if they're feverishly working in a fast-paced environment, though it's still difficult to picture how such mistakes fall through the cracks.

Still, it's not quite as bad as a major news outlet being unable to correctly identify foreign countries on the map (fast forward to the 0:45 mark):



If they can't get such basic things right, I think trying to cover rocket science should automatically be off-limits, as evidenced by this gem from 2003 (no, it's not Photoshopped -- I saw it live... and face-palmed):

[Haven]

Osama... Obama... IT'S ONE PERSON!!! /faint

[Chyrch]

That wouldn't be an equivalancy. Rather, imagine you're at a party and six different guys all throw up at once. Then, ten minutes later, one guy throws up, and you go absolutely ballistic on that one guy and start ranting about how he doesn't care about other people, is just trying to cause trouble, etc ad nauseum (heh.. how appropriate). In that case, I'd say you're a biased nutjob who already had it in for "that guy" for whatever reason and are just using the episode as an excuse to bash him.

Except when you first commented, people were bashing Yahoo for their mistake right along with Fox News. It might have been a little more blunt with Fox, but that may be because they've done it before, many times, and publicly.

Seriously, the "Fox News bashing" up to your comment were:

"Fox news in it's prime"

"Fox news mixing up Osama and Obama again? Say it aint so!"

"Well, it's not like S and B are right beside eachother on a keyboard and you should expect a news cast to make it right.... Oh wait it's Fox News, never mind."

These are amid posts about it being an understandable mistake, and posts laughing about the spelling error. YOU brought up other news channels.
My analogy stands as I used it, with perhaps one exception. I'll reword it.

Two guys are at a party complete drunk They begin throwing up all over the place. One of them doesn't get noticed very often, but the other is well-known, and infamous for this sort of behaviour. If I call that guy a jackass, do I also have to follow that statement with "but to be fair, there's a guy at another party who does that same thing"?

[Janaa]

Except when you first commented, people were bashing Yahoo for their mistake right along with Fox News. It might have been a little more blunt with Fox, but that may be because they've done it before, many times, and publicly.

Seriously, the "Fox News bashing" up to your comment were:

"Fox news in it's prime"

"Fox news mixing up Osama and Obama again? Say it aint so!"

"Well, it's not like S and B are right beside eachother on a keyboard and you should expect a news cast to make it right.... Oh wait it's Fox News, never mind."

These are amid posts about it being an understandable mistake, and posts laughing about the spelling error. YOU brought up other news channels.

That's not fair at all. My first post replied to an individual who'd made two incorrect suppositions about Fox, and it was a reply purely to that post. Firstly that the mistake was made "because it's Fox". Since other organizations have made the same mistake, that makes no sense - I had to point out other networks to show the fallacy of this idea. Secondly he actually made the ridiculous assertion (supposition) that the Yahoo article must have copied it from Fox in order to get it wrong. ... That's blatant, ungrounded Fox-bashing, correct? I don't think I went overboard in that post at all.

My second post was not about Fox, but it was in reply to another person who decided to bash Fox for mis-spelling Romanicized names. I never mentioned the network at all, but simply tried to correct a misunderstood view of translating names into other dialects. Osama is no more correct than Usama which is no more correct than おさま. In other words, another individual who went on an anti-Fox rant with no basis in reality.

By that stage, someone replied to my first post, stating that it was inexusable that Fox made the spelling error, because they were a multi-million-dollar news organization, even though what he actually quoted was about two other multi-million-dollar news organisations making that mistake. When this was pointed out, that poster then decided to try the "oh, but Fox is anti-administration, so they're bad". My pointing out that other networks were anti-administration when Bush was in power is matter-of-fact. I'm not trying to defend the right. I'm just anti-prejudice.

Which leads me back to your original reply, which was trying to latch onto my statement that the same went both ways, but this was a conclusion to a number of posts, not a point I was making to stand out on its own which you've decided to reply to. It was a natural progression of conversation, and should be taken in that context. I'm not attacking anyone here. I'm defending against unsubstantiated prejudice - and if you go back to those posts where it started - you'll see unsubstantiated prejudice is exactly what I was replying to.

I hope if you review the posts again, putting out of your mind some sort of idea that I'm championing the right, that you'll find I was quite reasonable at each progressive step of the discussion.