Words Fail Me

During Monday's Nightly News story about Dr. Nancy Wexler's work with people suffering from Huntington's disease, a map of northern South America showed the country of Colombia spelled as "Columbia". Incredibly, this is the second time that Nightly News has made this mistake. On the 11/9/08 broadcast, we were shown a story about how statins may help reduce the risk of heart attacks. As a list of countries conducting statin medical trials scrolled down the screen, Colombia was spelled as "Columbia". For a network evening newscast to make this mistake once is appalling. Making this mistake twice is almost beyond belief. It seems that the producers and editors just don't care what goes on the air. Nightly News often does stories about the decline of the U.S. public school system, yet they can't even spell Colombia. Wow. Apparently, the American education system is in even worse shape than anyone at Nightly News could have imagined.