Years ago, when reporters wanted to check their facts, they’d walk down the hall to the news morgue to consult the clippings or maybe dial a trusted librarian. Nowadays they simply type a search term into Google and click the button that says, “I’m Feeling Lucky.”
In explaining her Wheaton College commencement-speech blunder last week to the Late Night television host Jimmy Fallon, Ann Curry revealed what can happen when journalism’s oldest vice meets its newest one (after a brief commercial):
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14 Responses to ‘Never Google Drunk’
dr_redrum - June 1, 2010 at 4:15 pm
So you’re saying journalism’s oldest vice is stupidity, and it’s newest vice is not being funny?
dschrader - June 1, 2010 at 4:49 pm
It’s right in there with Elizabeth Vargas’s identification, on the day of Pope John Paul II’s death, of Virgil as a “Greek philosopher.”
12052592 - June 1, 2010 at 4:50 pm
@dr_redrum: Now THAT comment was funny!
ayottebe - June 1, 2010 at 6:21 pm
What about the heretic who translated “resurrected” as “resusscitated” at the Gospel reading of JP2′s funeral mass?
futureprof7337 - June 1, 2010 at 6:31 pm
#1 hilarious! This is almost better than watching those old guys in the balcony seats on the Muppet Show!
generally_academic - June 1, 2010 at 8:15 pm
I laughed, I cried, I blew chunks.
john_d_foubert_phd - June 2, 2010 at 8:37 am
Never Google drunk. So consuming alcohol is your excuse. You could just take responsibility without passing your error off on one of the most major problems on college campuses today, Ms. Curry.
sahara - June 2, 2010 at 9:35 am
There is nothing in this situation to admire, laugh at, or enjoy. Her sloppy arrogance and stupidity are not traits to emulate. She thinks she has been “forgiven” by the graduates of both these fine colleges, but I seriously doubt this is the case. An undergraduate committing this research mistake would have failed the course, and indeed she has failed.
goat_herd - June 2, 2010 at 10:00 am
Curry (and Lauer, and Vieira, et al) are “journalists” in the same way that the guy who reads my book-on-CD is an “author”. What do you expect from someone who apparently can’t Google either. Ann, please stick to smiling, looking pretty, and reading the copy. K?
rescomp - June 2, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I have often found the comments to the Chronicle articles more interesting and revealing than the articles themselves. This set is a pretty typical of the “intellectual” arrogance that one often finds in the reader comments. I know this incident and Curry’s attempt to explain her mistake aren offer you ample opportunity to display your self-annointed superiority. Get over yourselves.
robbyg - June 2, 2010 at 4:43 pm
@rescomp-Apparently many who comment here are without flaw.
robertkase51 - June 2, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Man… what a tough audience here. It must be nice to have never made an embarrassing mistake before. Geez. Not everything in life is so deep that one can’t understand or forgive a fairly benign mistake. Lighten up.
generally_academic - June 2, 2010 at 5:39 pm
The fact that I blew chunks is intellectual arrogance, a statement of my perfection, a deep and profound commentary on the human condition, and not an occasion for lighthearted mockery??What a strange, wonderful world a few people live in!!
goat_herd - June 3, 2010 at 10:29 am
This has nothing to do with “intellectual arrogance”. Of course all make mistakes (even I do…occasionally!). But I’m with ‘generally_academic’ on this one. If you’re going to function in the public eye and make millions of dollars doing it, then you’re going to take some skewering when you screw up. You’ll get more skewering if you screw up at the very thing you’re supposedly good at and getting paid millions to do. And you’ll get even more skewering if you do a lame job of explaining yourself on Jimmy Fallon’s show. That’s the unwritten bargain you make with the public when you cash the big check.