I have great admiration for Channel 4 News and the distinctive voice it adds to the mix of serious news reporting in Britain.
It gave plenty of authoritative and challenging coverage to the Nato summit held in Wales last week as the Western alliance wondered what to do about Russia's involvement in Ukraine.
So I have to ask, somewhat rhetorically, how Channel 4 News managed to broadcast the comments of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general, last Friday night and yet failed to spell his name right in a caption.
My answer would be that news organisations now put most of their resources into "generating content" and very little into "checking content", so cock-ups like this are routine.
One of the maxims of journalism is "follow the money". If somebody cared more, they'd hire the staff - the "second pair of eyes" - to stop this sort of thing happening. But sadly most "quality journalism" globally is now run by people who knowingly or not spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar.
It gave plenty of authoritative and challenging coverage to the Nato summit held in Wales last week as the Western alliance wondered what to do about Russia's involvement in Ukraine.
So I have to ask, somewhat rhetorically, how Channel 4 News managed to broadcast the comments of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general, last Friday night and yet failed to spell his name right in a caption.
My answer would be that news organisations now put most of their resources into "generating content" and very little into "checking content", so cock-ups like this are routine.
One of the maxims of journalism is "follow the money". If somebody cared more, they'd hire the staff - the "second pair of eyes" - to stop this sort of thing happening. But sadly most "quality journalism" globally is now run by people who knowingly or not spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar.
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