Oh, Matt Lauer of the Today Show made a goof. So did the lady he interviewed. I have to tell you this story about a town (Decatur, Alabama) that is 13 miles away from me and what NBC did about it.
NBC Understands Viewers:
"Superintendent Sam Houston issued a "y'all come" invitation to the New York studios of the "Today Show" after a segment Thursday morning claimed that Decatur "has bad schools."
Houston sent a letter to "Today Show" officials inviting them to see Decatur's education status. The letter is in response to a statement correspondent Barbara Corcoran made.
In a comparison of $500,000 real estate, she said a buyer could buy a two-bedroom townhouse in a gated community in Tucson, Ariz., or a four-bedroom, 3,800-square-foot house on 111/2 acres with a pond and pool in Decatur. (The home in question is just outside the city limits.)
Corcoran then ended her statement to host Matt Lauer, "What you don't get is good schools. They've got a bad school system. But taxes are only $1,000 a year."
Not only that but Matt Lauer referred to Decatur as " Green Acres." The people of Decatur were not happy.
Superintendent Sam Houston wrote a letter to Mr. Jim Bell,Executive Producer of
The Today Show.
Read it here.
NBC first they would allow a two minute retraction on the Today but the head of NBC said NO. What else did he say? He is sending Corcoran and others to Decatur to see that it isn't "Green Acres." Neither are the schools "bad."
Kudos to NBC for considering their viewers and going to the source to make a correction!!
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2 comments:
I think NBC may just be watching and learning from the other two networks on line. Sending out a whole crew is not a cheap proposition. It is great that they are doing that.
I hope that the anchors at NBC (and the other networks) learn from this that the cutsy news that's been perdominant in the last 20 years is not only useless but sometimes harmful. Offhand remarks are heard by a great many people and a great amount of them won't question it being accurate. I give credit for NBC taking real steps for recifying this situation. A retraction on the show won't make much of an impression, kind of like the ones newspapers stick on the back page of the front section to clarify a story that ran in three colums on the very front.
There is so much misinformation out there that comes from the three minute wrapups of major stories that truthfulness needs to be established as an absolute necessity.
nightbird
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