February 10, 2003
Shortly after Saturday Night Live premiered on NBC in the mid-1970s, one segment of Chevy Chase’s "World News Update" involved the comedian going to reporter Laraine Newman for a live report from NASA. Newman, with palm trees swaying in the background, began describing what a tropical paradise it was. After Chase finally got her attention by interrupting her with "Laraine, Laraine", he told her that she was supposed to go to NASA--the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and that he thinks she went to Nassau instead. Newman slowly turned her head to look behind her, then faced the camera and asked "Chevy, do I have to pay for this myself?" The skit ends when it shifts back to Chase who advises viewers that they’ve just had a live report from Laraine Newman who was paying for her own vacation in Nassau.
Since the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia and the subsequent investigation into the accident, NASA has received massive media attention. Many radio and television reporters, including the occasional anchor, insist on pronouncing the name of the space agency as "na-saw". Even outlets devoted entirely to news coverage, such as Toronto’s 680News, have difficulty getting it right all the time, with some reporters lapsing into "na-saw" instead of "na-sa". We have long passed the point where many radio and television news reporters even try to learn how to pronounce multi-syllable foreign sounding names. But is it too much to expect the proper pronunciation of a simple two-syllable word like NASA? Unlike Laraine Newman’s fictional character on the SNL skit, there does not appear to be any consequences for mistakes.
Life really does imitate art.
The National Avalanche
In the middle of January, an avalanche in British Columbia claimed the lives of seven backcountry skiers. The day after the incident, The National Post devoted almost its entire front section to coverage of the avalanche and its aftermath. It was a tragic story, but hardly justified such extensive reportage. You would have thought that one lengthy article and a couple of others, such as the one interviewing Justin Trudeau, would have sufficed. It’s hard to believe that many Canadians would be that interested in avalanches to warrant that much coverage. On February 3, five men in Newfoundland drowned when their boat capsized. The incident was reported, and except for brief updates regarding the search for bodies, little attention was paid to it. The contrast between the coverage of the two events where multiple lives were lost was striking.
On February 1, another avalanche occurred in British Columbia, taking the lives of seven students from a Calgary private school who were skiing. Despite the fact that this occurred on the same day as the space shuttle Columbia broke up over the skies of Texas, the next edition of The National Post devoted four full pages of the incident. Most of the remaining front section was devoted to the Columbia. The B.C. accident was undoubtedly tragic, even more so than the first, because of the ages of the victims; however, the coverage still seemed excessive. The National Post, even drew comparisons between the students and the astronauts, with the headline of the February 3 edition being, "They lived and died boldly". Pictured underneath were the seven students and the seven astronauts. Although the 14 were all people who had their lives dramatically cut short, in the general scheme of things, the B.C. tragedy lacked the newsworthiness of the shuttle disaster.
Someone at the Post must have a thing for backcountry skiing and/or avalanches.