More Mistakes At Nightly News

On Sunday's story about the Republican presidential candidates, the Nightly News producers spelled Former Governor Jon Huntsman's first name as "John". It is absolutely mind-boggling that the producers of a network news broadcast can't even manage to correctly spell the name of a presidential candidate. Of course, Huntsman isn't the first candidate to suffer this fate. The Nightly News producers have also recently misspelled the names of Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann (both her first and last names). If you misspell the name of a presidential candidate, you are not a professional news organization. And if you misspell the names of three candidates, you are a joke. It seems that every Republican candidate is taking a turn leading the polls. It also seems that every candidate will take a turn having their name misspelled by the Nightly News producers.

Also on Sunday: During a report about on-line public school education for children from kindergarten through 12th grade, Rehema Ellis told us that, "Thirty states offer a full-time on-line education to at least some students." But in the accompanying on-screen map, only 28 states were highlighted. So in a story about education, the Nightly News producers could not manage to accurately count to 30. Unbelievable.

Last Wednesday, Savannah Guthrie told us that, "Today in Washington, the President did what presidents have done for the last 64 years now--pardoned the national Thanksgiving turkey." So if the tradition started 64 years ago, then Pres. Truman would have been the first president to pardon a turkey, right? Wrong. There is not a single shred of evidence in the Truman Library (or anywhere else) that supports this. Every news source credits Pres. George H.W. Bush (in 1989) as being the first president to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey. Even MSNBC's own "First Read" blog states that, "President Harry Truman is often cited, incorrectly, as the first president to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey." Maybe Guthrie should have perused the "First Read" blog. Oh well, she was only off by 42 years. No big deal. Funny thing--every time Guthrie reports a story for Nightly News, Brian Williams makes a point of telling us that she's a lawyer (as if that has any bearing on her news reporting). Well, if Guthrie can't even manage to do basic research on something as simple as presidential turkey-pardoning, I sure wouldn't want her defending me in court.