News

Osama’s dead, and so is Fox’s ability to spell

blog by S.J. Velasquez • May 02, 2011 @ 10:12am

First off, I must admit that I was a newspaper copy editor in a former life, but even I sometimes fail to properly edit my own copy.

With that said, here are two of the dumbest headline/ticker spelling errors I’ve ever seen, courtesy of Fox News and a Fox affiliate:

FoxFail1
Image courtesy of the Daily What

FoxFail2
Image courtesy of mattchew03

Now, for anyone who’s studied Arabic or is familiar with languages, it’s easy to understand why “Usama” is used here. Translation of the vowel sound from Arabic to English is dodgy, partly because there is no letter of the English alphabet that absolutely matches the sound of the Arabic vowel. Sometimes you just have to pick a letter of the alphabet that almost matches. In the case of Osama, American media typically use an “O” instead if a “U.” But there’s really no excuse for the “Landen” part.

Now, we don’t know if this a teleprompter error, or if this broadcaster just screwed up. Either way, he says that President Obama is “in fact” dead, before quickly correcting himself.