Why am I not surprised USA Today did this?
If you want a prime example of the lazy U.S. media parroting anything and everything the Bush administration says and does, look no further than the 18 February edition of USA Today.
Taking a page from the Dubya atlas of the world, the graphics team at USA Today mistook Slovakia for Slovenia in a map illustrating the stops on Bush's journey to Europe last week.
Now, a lot of Slovaks are going to be thrilled to discover that their homeland has an Adriatic coast. But conversely, I feel a lot of Slovenes will be disappointed that Bratislava has supplanted Ljubljana as their capital city.
(And yes, I realize only seven other people in the United States can locate Bratislava and Ljubljana on a map and know the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia. But it amuses me all the same.)
Taking a page from the Dubya atlas of the world, the graphics team at USA Today mistook Slovakia for Slovenia in a map illustrating the stops on Bush's journey to Europe last week.
Now, a lot of Slovaks are going to be thrilled to discover that their homeland has an Adriatic coast. But conversely, I feel a lot of Slovenes will be disappointed that Bratislava has supplanted Ljubljana as their capital city.
(And yes, I realize only seven other people in the United States can locate Bratislava and Ljubljana on a map and know the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia. But it amuses me all the same.)
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 17:19
4 Comments:
And you know what's implied from the map, right? That they think Austria is the Czech Republic! Horrors.
Holy crap, it's totally real too. USA Today has a correction on its web site: USATODAY.com. You can't see the picture for some reason, but the text is enough. They fail to mention that they had followed Bush's lead on it, but there it is, black and white. No Photoshopping involved.
At least they didn't identify Slovenia as Czechoslovakia. That might've actually surprised me even less.
It reminds me vaguely of a British sport commentator at the top of a broadcast between England and Slovakia in Bratislava. He speculated that the match was being held in Bratislava, rather than Prague, because perhaps the home side thought the crowd would be more supportive. And indeed, they likely would have been, since Prague is the capital of a completely different country.
I remember when they first broke up I found it very frustrating trying to figure out just how many countries there were. I'd read there was the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but on the Olympics or something a team was playing as the Slovak Republic, which just frustrated me. I insisted the name was Slovakia to the TV. Eventually, I heard that name again and came to the conclusion I wasn't crazy after all.
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