Jim Maceda Gets An "F" In Government

Can someone please buy Jim Maceda an almanac? On Sunday's Nightly News lead story about the plane crash that killed the president of Poland, Maceda referred to Vladimir Putin as the "Russian president". Putin is not the Russian president, he's the prime minister. It's appalling that a correspondent for a major network news broadcast doesn't know this. And it's equally appalling that none of the editors, producers or other Nightly News staffers who saw Maceda's report caught this glaring error before the story aired. Because the misstatement was made in a voice-over (rather that in a talking head shot), it would have been easy to fix. But no one at Nightly News even noticed. In the very next story, Tom Aspell correctly referred to Putin as the Russian prime minister. Maybe if the producers had been paying attention to Aspell's report before the broadcast went on the air, they would have realized that Maceda had made an error. I guarantee you that if Sarah Palin had referred to Putin as the Russian president, Nightly News would have played the gaffe over and over and over. Andrea Mitchell would have spent an entire hour of her MSNBC show parsing the statement. Somehow, I doubt they'll do this for Maceda's gaffe. Maybe Maceda should borrow a page from Palin's playbook and write important stuff down on his hand. Or better yet, Maceda should move to Alaska. Then he could keep an eye on Putin right from his front porch.