Foot Fault Against Nightly News

On Sunday, Nightly News aired a story about Serena Williams's meltdown during her U.S. Open semi-final match with Kim Clijsters. Lee Cowan told us that Williams was called for a foot fault at match point. Wrong. When she was called for the foot fault, Williams was down 15-30 and trailing 6-5 in games. The foot fault brought the game to match point and then a code violation (resulting in the loss of a point) was assessed against Williams, costing her the match. What is truly incredible is that as Cowan was giving us the incorrect information, the correct information was right there for all to see. The video of the foot fault call shown by NBC clearly displayed the 15-30 score in the lower left corner of the screen. But Cowan still couldn't get it right. And how many Nightly News producers, editors and other personnel viewed this story before it aired without noticing the mistake? Almost every night, Nightly News makes some sort of error--grammar, spelling, mathematical, factual, etc. Sadly, it's as if no one at NBC News cares about what they put on the air. At the very least, a network news organization should be concerned with getting the facts straight. Although I noticed that Natalie Morales had all the facts straight on Sunday when she read a promo for Maria Bartiromo's CNBC special "1 Year Later: Reflections From The Street" (airing later that night) and when she signed off with a promo for NBC's Sunday Night Football. I guess we know where NBC's priorities are.