Whats In A Name? - Granite Grok

Whats In A Name?

“Nobody calls me silly. That is not a word that applies to me.”   —Jane Pauley

Pseudonyms for DummiesKTVU Channel 2 News in San Francisco has issued an on-air apology for misreporting the names of the pilots in the Asiana Crash. The Fox Affiliate Co-anchor Tori Campbell  reported the Asiana pilots names as, “Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow, live an on the air. Later that day, KTVU took responsibility for the gaffe, apologizing to the viewing audience.  A summer intern answering the phone at the NTSB took some “creative license” with releasing the names to KTVU when they called in. But the larger question is, “How does this happen?” Why was KTVU the only station to fall for this?

This little dupe is as ageless and timeless as news reporting itself.  Some years ago, The Simpsons featured an episode where Bart called Moe the Bartender and asked for Hugh Jass, Anita Bath, Mike Rotch, Oliver Clothesoff and Amanda Hugg. While the gag is juvenile, it is no less funny when somebody falls for it, be it a Television, Newspaper reporter or an intercom page.  In the days of my youth, the gag name pseudonym “de jour” was “Charles U. Farley”

More importantly, with the history of funny phonetic pseudonyms, one would think Newspaper and Television News reporters would be on their toes. Evidently not. “Heywood Jablowme” has ubiquitously resurfaced many times over the past Decade and made a splash into public media.

Christmas, 2009 the Quad City times in Davenport Iowa. The quote goes like this…“Cold seeped throughheavy clothing as Heywood Jablowme dug into a meal of Turkey and trimmings at Sister Ludmilla Brenda’s Christmas Day Dinner…”

Likewise, in December of 2009 the Fargo-Moorhead News featured a photograph of one, “Heywood Jablowme” digging out of a Snowdrift.

But this raunchy pseudonym goes back a very long time. Most famously, the Charleston Post & Courier published a report on a demonstrators at the Masters Golf Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club protesting the club’s exclusion of women. “Officers escorted Heywood Jablome away after he held up a sign … that read “Make me dinner”. Reporter James Scott, not detecting the faux name, became the  laughing stock and subject of newspaper articles himself. Scott’s report on being duped appeared in the week that followed.
Asiana Pilots JokeThe discussion of “Mr. Jabmowme” illustrates, not an ever-present ubiquitous funny-named individual, but  a media class that is not…well, “sharp as a tack,” when it comes to the essence of details. Clearly, there are enough people who instantly get such jokes when played. If not, the benefit of inflicting them would simply not be had.
When I first saw the screen shot of Pilots names, it took me a half second to figure out that KTVU had been punked. And call me racist, but I laughed and I laughed pretty hard.
Are News gatherers really in that much of a hurry that they cannot even recognize an obvious joke pseudonym? Or are they simply that dumb? Thanks for the laugh….

http://youtu.be/YU2m3xf99R4

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