giza | Mmm... donuts

This image was originally posted in a friends-locked entry by someone who prefers to remain anonymous.

The original article that was quoted follows, and points out the problem with that picture much better than I could:
Being able to pull images off the Internet has made life for the people in TV graphics departments so much easier. When a big story hits and you need a quick graphic, you call upstairs, the Artist can quickly log onto Google images and find some kind of picture that will help. But, one eagle eyed blogger says maybe TV stations should look at the pictures they are pulling off the net. The above photo is a screen cap from WAGT in Augusta, GA. The story was about how Kripsy Kreme s looking to make a a new donut that would be made of whole wheat. They say it will be a lot less calories. It appears that the Graphics gang at WAGT hit up Google images for a shot of the Krispy Kreme logo and a donut. Obviously the Graphic's person did not look very close at the photo. Check it out right below the Krispy Kreme logo.

Edit: Further coverage of this can be found here.

Also, here's a video of the news clip where that screen was grabbed from:

Watch on YouTube

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alphaggek.livejournal.com

**snort**

electropaw.livejournal.com

*LMAO*

I just don't get it, how could that graphic pass so many people before getting to air? I would think that someone would of caught it in Production, perhaps it was done intentionally? XD

lockemaison.livejournal.com

People are too busy to check on each other in that fast paced work environment and usually only one person is responsible for not letting it get past him/her, and the producers and everyone else simply won't see this kind of mistake until it's on the air. Also, i had a coworker who made this kind of mistake often.

True, I could possibly see something small like that passing through the checks by accident - an honest mistake. Especially if they preview the graphic on a tiny monitor sandwiched in between several other monitors. But just seeing the graphic up close, on a computer monitor in front of you, it could be pretty obvious.

They couldn't be that busy, are they?

I make these for a living. There is no such thing as "checks". You have to trust us to not make a mistake. I would never make this mistake because I always erase text on logos, but I did have a coworker years ago who was notorious for making exactly this kind of mistake on a constant basis due to complete and utter laziness, pure idiocy, and blatant disregard for tact. That person was eventually fired. I've seen many many times graphics much more obviously "wrong" than this get on the air.

The other reason this kind of thing gets on the air often is because non-artists who have no photoshop knowledge and no training in image copyright laws are many times in charge of finding these images. I know some stations don't have staff artists. Even my station doesn't have an artist on staff during one shift and that shift makes graphic errors literally every other day, because you know who's in charge? College kids and interns.

Okay, let's pretend the graphic is done and I've put this horrible mistake in the computer. Next there's a titler writing content specific words on these images. It might be me or it might be another person. But that person is usually typing really fast and running through them because there's tons of these and a titler person generally isn't always doing just one job. There's things to tape, other things to do, etc, so they might not be paying attention and just mindlessly entering data. 2nd chance to catch this mistake, but I've seen mistakes get missed here too, quite often in fact. ALSO, the titler might not be production person, it could be a producer using automation software and they might NEVER see the graphic they are titling. Producers can do everything remotely. These days, most words on the screen are yanked off of scripts by a computer and pasted onto graphics without anyone ever seeing them to make sure they even look right. To save time, of course.

At the most you might have a person doublecheck, but the doublechecker usually is looking at thumbnails in a sequence (like looking at thumbnail pics in a folder on your computer) just to make sure the graphics are correct and in order. They can't see the details.

This is why you see so many spelling errors in news. Nobody sees the mistakes other people made until they show up on air. There's way too much information dispersed over too many different types of media for anyone to go looking for errors after everything's done (and everything is NEVER done - news is still being written and edited as you are watching it), so we trust each other that we are catching mistakes as we go along.

Add the fact that nobody in the business works a normal schedule (get up at 3 am for morning news or work the night shift for the late news) and you have trouble.

Anyway, we think this one was done on purpose.

omnibahumut.livejournal.com

The irony...

I was just at an Alumni presentation at my school today, and one of the Alumni works at CN8 doing that very thing- TV graphics. And she told us of a time when she was making graphics and accidentally typed "George Butt" instead of "George Bush". She said that they have about 4 hours to get 50-60 graphics made for the TV station, which is how mistakes like this happen.

Also, speaking of Graphic Design, you changed the layout of your LJ...

giza.livejournal.com

> Also, speaking of Graphic Design, you changed the layout of your LJ...

Yes, it was necessarily to switch to an S2 template so that tags would show up.

I tried using the "classic" template which looked like the old one. I also decreased the width from 100% to 1024px, for the benefit of those with really high resolutions.

simbab.livejournal.com

Oh dear.

More proof that access to the Internets should be taken away from people who don't know how to use it properly.

But where would we be without stories like these to laugh at?

*proceeds to ROFL*