You Fail at Reporting

A popular meme on the Web these days is that of the "Fail." A quick and decisive judgment rendered on someone's public attempt at some task that goes utterly awry. Did it not go well? Fail.

It brings me no pleasure to offer up these Fails over the news coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden. It is astounding though at the number of news organizations who got his name wrong—and who's name they mixed it up with.

This newscaster, I'm sure, regrets his slip on a Fox affiliate channel. I think some leeway can be given as he had just said President Obama's name and he's speaking live, though presumably he's reading a teleprompter.

At least he can take comfort in these three different misspellings of bin Laden's name. Lest you think I'm picking on Fox, you'll note the last is from the originators of the English language. It appears even they are susceptible to not reading what they write.

The "s" key is pretty far away from the "b" key. I don't really get how this keeps happening.

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