The Natinal Interest

On Saturday's Nightly News, Lester Holt read a story about two players for the Washington Nationals who had taken the field Friday night wearing jerseys that were misspelled as "Natinals". It is hardly appropriate for NBC (and Holt specifically) to point out errors made by others. NBC regularly misspells names on Nightly News. And we only notice the recognizable errors like Arnold "Schwarznegger" or "Stephen" Spielberg. There's no telling how many other names they've misspelled that were not caught because the misspelled names did not belong to well-known people. On the same night that Holt read the story about the misspelled Nationals jerseys, he mispronounced the name of flight 1549 pilot Chesley Sullenberger (he pronounced it as "Sullenberg"). And that's not even the first time that Holt has sullied Sully's name. On the Jan. 17 Today show, Holt referred to Capt. Sullenberger as "Chelsey" Sullenberger (at least he got the last name right that day). On Holt's Daily Nightly blog for April 11 & 12, he referred to Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips as Capt. "Phillip". And during a broadcast of Nightly News last year, Holt referred to NBC correspondent Mara Schiavocampo as "Maria". Considering the many, many misspellings and mispronunciations that regularly plague Nightly News (and Lester Holt specifically), perhaps they shouldn't be so quick to point out the errors of others. Let he who is without syntax cast the first stone.