"tscottme" blahblah@blah,net wrote in
:


"vincent p. norris" wrote in message
...
None of us that worked
on or around them, including the Chalks employees I knew ever once
called any of the aircraft a hydroplane.

The word is in my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th
edition, copyright date 2002. It is also found frequently in the
historical literature.

vince norris

That's the point I was making. The people that put the news on TV
have as much knowldege and depth on the subjects they cover as someone
reading a dictionary. They spend more time and energy combing their
hair then they do in understanding or selecting what they should
breathlessly report to an even less informed public.




That's not always true. There are some news anchors who possess
considerable knowledge of aviation and still present an erroneous news
item.

Many years ago, one of the local news anchor presented an item about a
local GA plane crash. The anchor was a local pilot and had even appeared
on one of the local stations hosting a sightseeing flight around the area
in his twin. His ex-wife hosted a student pilot series on one of the local
community college channels. He was very knowledgable about GA.

The news story had many major errors in it. The airplane in the
picture had one engine, low wing. The item said it was a twin engine and
then gave the name of a single engine high wing aircraft. There were more
errors. Every pilot who saw it couldn't believe that this anchor had read
such an incorrect story.

A short time later, there was an FAA sponsored all-day super safety
seminar. This news anchor was one of the speakers. Of course, the first
question asked of him was about this erroneous news story.

Care to guess what his response was?

Basically, he said that most of the time he doesn't see the news item
until it is handed to him minutes before he reads it. He often didn't even
know the graphic that would be presented in advance. Then came the real
shocker. He said that he was paid to present the news as given to him, not
to write the news article. If he didn't, he could lose his job. He new
the facts were wrong as he read it, but his job depended on him reading it
as written and not commenting on its accuracy. Had there been sufficent
time, he would have pointed the error out to the news editor, but would
have read whatever they gave him, even if the error had not been corrected.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)