Possumblog

Geographic Illiteracy

Not kids, this time. Local news.

I really don't want to seem like I take great joy in pointing this stuff out, but it is a pet peeve of mine--that being the ability of local television reporters to misspeak. Not once, but seemingly on a continual basis.

What brought this on? Well, there has been a recent case where an elderly family and their grandson has turned up missing, and although there is a suspect, he has not been charged in their disappearance. Yet.

In any event, the couple lived in a pretty, older section of town called College Hills, over near Birmingham-Southern College. When the story first broke, even though the video showed the obligatory "College Hills" neighborhood signs, the reporters and anchors of whichever station I was watching at the time kept calling the neighborhood "Collegeville."

Now, it might not seem like a big deal, but Collegeville is a completely different place, over to the northeast by several miles, hard up by the CSX yard and Sloss Industries. College Hills it ain't. The error might be one to be expected of a stranger, but the whole thing the local stations talk about is how connected they are to the community, and such a gaffe--repeated ENDLESSLY--tends to make that claim suspect.

What's worse is the lack of self-correction--I KNOW there are people that work at the stations who know the right names of these communities, and to let the slip continue to be repeated on air--no matter if it seems minor (and no, I don't mean Minor, or Minor Heights)--just reeks of unprofessionalism.

Another case in point--a breaking news alert last night on the FOX affiliate in which a police officer was shot while breaking up a robbery at an AutoZone. The anchor said it was in north Birmingham. Which, to my ears, sounds like "North Birmingham," an actual section of the city which, in fact. once was an incorporated town. Then he gave the address--6600 1st Avenue, North. Which is in the Wahouma/East Lake area, nowhere NEAR where North Birmingham is.

Look, TV people--just because an address around here has NORTH in it, doesn't mean it's in NORTH Birmingham. And again, there are plenty of Birmingham natives in these stations to correct such nonsense, and to let it go on and on makes you wonder just exactly how many other things get reported with such disregard for minor details.

And too, in the end, if you don't care enough about the details, it makes you wonder just how accurate the rest of your stories are.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 23, 2006 09:50 AM